Heh, I'm originally from Western NY. Once you experience California, you won't ever want to go back!

The class/pet combo functionality sounds similar to the race/class combo in Desktop Dungeons, so you could look there for reference/inspiration.

As Triplefox mentioned, the South Bay game jams have been pretty popular if you can make it down. ~45 minutes away form SF by car.

It's hard to give good feedback about the gameplay without the magic system in place. Since you are playing as a cleric, I'm assuming magic is his bread-and-butter, so he feels pretty hobbled without it.

As it is right now, how far you can progress seems completely dependent on the type and frequency of items that drop.

I feel that slimes should be one hit kills, even for a priest. fighting 2 slimes at the same time can take away most of your life, or kill you outright if you miss a couple times, which isn't something you want in the first couple screens of the game.

The art is awesome though! The items mentioned above are all fixable of course, and I'm eager to see what kind of strategy the magic system adds to the game.

I usually start from an old (usually low-poly) character and just adjust that to fit the new proportions and whatnot. It seems to be a lot faster than starting from scratch each time.

Thanks!

Using a physics/pelt-based unwrapper makes the mapping process much quicker. I use an external program called UVLayout because it's simple and bare-bones. Roadkill is another popular one.

With a pelt system, you mostly just need to specify where the edges/seams will be, and a simulation is run on the UV's within those seams to flatten them out.

Here's an example:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VTGKEbMAQc

No problem, here's something I put together before I had finished the texture:

Currently the colors are pretty saturated because each character's color means something in terms of gameplay. But once they are all in game and I can see how they look together at res, I plan on doing a readability pass on everything. Thanks for the comments!

Another:

Another one down.

Rigging trial-by-fire:

I'm terrible at rigging, but I'm slowly making my way through it. Hopefully I'll have the four main characters done by the end of next week.

Those 3d models create a burning jealously deep within my loins, ArtFade! Do you have a website?

Glad you guys like

Facial animation tests:

As Bobo mentioned, the Monocle Engine seems to be making lots of progress currently.

So much indie goodness in that list!

I was bummed I didn't get to go to this one, but the wife wanted to spend some time together since her work schedule has been hectic lately. I would have loved to have seen something being built in Pixie!  

Kinematic rigidbody does not compute collision

If I am understanding you correctly, I don't think this is correct. I use kinematic and non-kinematic rigidbodies all the time and don't have an issue with collisions. I don't consider myself a 'power user' though, so you may be dealing with something more complex than what I'm referring to.

How hard are restraining orders to get these days?