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[Fat Bard]

Fat Bard cameo!!!! Cmon he's a medieval lute welding kinda guy, totally fits. He could be a fat minstrel zombie or something .

[and]

@oldblood - You've pretty much highlighted my own reservations with that crystal! I tend to do this a lot with my pixel art, start overdetailed and then simplify it. Normally this is because I can't help but tinker too much with stuff but then have to simplify it so that it's a lot easier to animate, but obviously I want all of the art to fit together nicely too so it's important that even the non-animated stuff matches the other art.

Timescale wise, it's pretty difficult to calculate that. This is just down to not knowing how much time I have available over the next few months. It's the financed work that I've got until September - that work is 3 days a week, but we've got a baby on the way so I need to cram more time into that work over the next few weeks, which means less time on Mable, and then I'll just be fitting work and gamemaking in around looking after a baby! If I had no work in and no imminent child I'd aim to have 1, 2 & 3 done by mid July (so I'd target mid June & miss it by about a month because getting things right always takes longer than I expect), but I could never put a timescale on tweaking and polishing because I'm terrible at estimating that kind of stuff.

If I did want to realistically look at crowdfunding rather than looking for more work, I'd have to aim to launch a campaign in September or October from a financial point of view.

@TopherPirkl - Don't worry, I was just trying to guilt folks into bumping me up TIG

@Fat Bard - Done. The lute sound when it bounces off the stone would be pretty funny!

[and]

Not there yet, but a 2nd draft of the crystal to simplify it a little:



Original below:



Better?

I know it's subtle but it definitely fits a lot better in the scene I think:



Right?

[Mattie]

Have you tried to make the crystal slightly transparent? I'm not sure, but that could look quite cool. : )

[Fat Bard]

YEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!  Sorry got a little too excited there...

[TopherPirkl]

Well the new one doesn't leap out of the setting, so I assume that means it's better?

[and]

Yeah I think it still needs to stand out a bit. Transparency is a good idea for something to play around with. It might need some kind of glistening effect to make it a bit more crystally?

Anyway, I've been playing around a bit more with the the transition effect for when you shatter the crystal:



Also I've been working on new enemies for the flooded section of the forest:



By the way, how fast does this blog load for people? Am I posting too many GIFs? I didn't know whether it's worth adding a warning on the blog title that there's quite a lot of GIFs so it might load slow?

[slarti88]

It loads fine for me...  I'm on a 5MBPS connection though. The water reflection looks awesome! Makes the scene look a little 3D

[and]

Hi everyone!

Apologies for the lack of recent updates, but I've been working extremely hard on rearranging/redecorating the office in preparation for a new member of staff. Here's a sneak peak:



Surprisingly, my new 'employee' turned up a little bit early (about 12 hours ago) - but she seems to be pretty much ready to start coding right away! Let me introduce you to the new member of the team:



Meet Joni May Stewart, joining Sarah & myself as the third member of the team (I did try to convince Sarah that we should call her Mable, for the publicity obvs, but she didn't go for it).

I really just posting this because I've totally fallen in love with her and I really want to show her off (and am also dangerously sleep deprived), but it does mean that games will be taking a little bit of a back seat for a little while as my main job now is going to be cuddles & cleaning up poo & vomit.

Although, I can probably do a little bit of pixel art 1 handed, just don't expect any bugs to be getting fixed anytime soon (and does anyone know how to clean spew out of your keyboard?)

[oldblood]

Congrats Andrew!

[and]

Thanks Jon!

She's pretty amazing.

[slarti88]

Haha congrats!

That's the best employee anyone could wish for!

[Fat Bard]

Awesome. Word of advice: really push that sleeping on their own around 4-5 months. Was a rough week or so but then our boy got used to being alone/self soothing and started sleeping straight through the night. Still does to this day. Every parent's philosophy is different, but getting good sleep is something any parent can agree on . Have fun being a dad, it the best.

[and]

Yeah sleep is pretty much a long lost memory at this point, thanks for the advice!

I've actually managed to get a bit of work done on the game, but not a lot because I've got a baby sleeping on me. Fortunately, pixel art is not impossible one handed. It is just very slow.

So, here's an animated boatman helping you through the water level:



Animation is definitely the most fun thing for me to work on at the minute.

[alwex]

Congrats for the baby !
Your boatman looks very good, animation is my biggest drawback for the moment.
I also really like the way the boat goes down on the water as the boatman push it.

[jovan.vesic]

I like everything I saw so far except the weird angle of the reflection in the water.
Looking forward to the upcoming updates.
Also have fun / good luck with the baby

[Eniimal]

Congratulations for the baby !
And the game looks awesome !

[jctwood]

Loving the reflections!

[and]

Thanks guys!

Here you can check out my awesome ninja/faerie skills:



Development is going slow but at least it's going!

[jctwood]

Wonderful!