next »

[TopherPirkl]

This is a fantastic looking game, and I will never not want another tactics game in the works. Keep at it!

[Eldraev]

Both the pixel art and the illustrations look amazing.
Can't wait to see more of this!

[mankoon]

Hey thanks for all the support guys. It really gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside to see everyone excited for tactics games.
Also apologies for the lack of updates. We had to spend some time supporting Legend of Fae's build on steam.
 FreakOrama : Yes @endlessfluff & my personal @mankoon but I'm probably going to be posting a lot right here.

Ok, so let me run through some character design stuff. ( This is still work I did a while ago and I am still playing catch up)

We have a bunch of characters to design for this game, so instead of designing them one by one like I normally would I decided to do them in bulk.   I really enjoyed this shotgun approach. I didn't have to question my designs as much when I see them all standing next to each other.  It allowed me to easily see where my designs were going and make sure characters stood out on their own. The color scheme was designed in bulk too- except for Peony where I just made adjustments. She's already changed a bit from the illustration I posted earlier and I will be updating it

So here's the current rough character roster


Below are some design doodles that I went through to get to character in the line up above.
Chico & Piyachin
Yes he's a dog with a baby bird. I remember the discussion clearly.
It went something like... Kyron: "He needs something else" So, I jokingly doodled a chick on his head.
Kyron was sold. Then we designed everything accordingly.

Erisolde
I actually really like the version of her with glasses but it's so far from her description.

Tom Tildrum
This is probably my favorite character design iteration. So many different ways the design/race could go. The fat hulking cat won.(can't say he wasn't slightly inspired by my doofy ass cat ...)


And heres some cleaner drawings of the concepts above. Chico/Piyachin are already in sprite form and you can find him in the gifs.
Chico and Piyachin

His bird actually looks more like this though. I have to edit this drawing eventually.

Erisolde:


Tom Tildrum




I will post about the two other characters in a a later post.


Cheers and thanks for lookn'
 

[Jasmine]

Absolutely in love with these character designs!

[TonyManfredonia]

The creature models are the perfect mix between Final Fantasy and Pokemon.  I am digging it.

Do you think you'll have voice acting? I have a few VA friends in mind who might enjoy checking out this project.

[mankoon]

Thanks M4uesviecr and amanfr01

Amanfr01-  ff mixed with pokemon- thats a neat way to put it. As for VA, hmm not sure. We've never done a production with VA. I guess we have a lot of time to think about that, though

[TonyManfredonia]

Yeah! Just let me know down the line.

I'll be staying in touch with this project, so I'll definitely be in the loop.

Hahah, yeah! There's definitely a "pocket monster" element to the creatures, but they're a bit too fantastical to be drastically derivative of Pokemon. There's a majestic  quality to them, much like Final Fantasy monsters. They're really well done. I look forward to seeing them animated!

[Birdorf]

I can't get enough of these sort of games!

This looks fantastic.

[SrGrafo]

the art in this game is amazing, keep up the good work   

[TopherPirkl]

I love the character designs! I think you have a great eye for costume design, and I have to say one of the things that really sets your designs apart is how different each character's silhouette is. Too many RPGs lately default to one basic character silhouette and only slightly vary details here and there. These characters convey a lot about themselves just from their stature and shape, much less the level of detail you've gone into.

[ashtonmorris]

The characters look very fun and unique 

Keep it up

[Bakuda]

Yay...a tactics game!  Love these games!  And I'm loving those character designs.  This looks so great, keep it up! 

[mankoon]

Hey Guys,
Sorry, it's been a while. I really wanted to make this a daily dev post kind of thing. Thanks so much for the motivation! Someday I'll get Kyron to actually make a post in this thread too but until then you're stuck with me.

Some more Leader Unit art. Last time I skipped over the centaur and the little yellow chicken


Orowantus
When we were developing our Puzzle Game Legend of Fae, we ran a contest on our blog. The contest challenged our community to submit a description of a Fae creature they'd like to see in the game. We then took the descriptions and illustrated it. We promised that the winning entry would be in a future Legend of Fae game. The character below is the winning entry from that contest created with KimJ.
(another work in progress illustration)

She's already in game. Here's Kyrons sprite of her.


Pichon
Now on to the cockfighter, Pichon. He's probably one of our favorites so far.

Here's some sprite motion concepts.

Kyron's Sprite work:



That's all for the Leader Unit concept arts. I can't wait to make finished illustrations of these characters but I have a lot of production tasks to do.


 

[TopherPirkl]

I love every dev post you do, and each one makes me more excited for the game! And those animations are really satisfying to watch. Keep it up!

[mankoon]

Thanks Topher! You da best
Here's some Orowantus in action for screenshot saturday- she's a ranged character with chance to poison




The ground tiles have changed from the gif on the OP. I preferred the original more natural looking brick. It's probably going to be revised again since I liked the old one but kyron likes this one 

[TonyManfredonia]

I really like the new animations in the recent GIF uploads . Especially jumping down to a lower tile. Lots of fun!

[ktep]

Hey Carolina, I just wanted to say that that I really love the character designs! Especially pichon and kyron's sprite animations. It inspired me to really start returning to my own project. =) 

[Soulliard]

Valdis Story was lovely, so I'm looking forward to this! Tactical RPGs are my favorite genre - I'm making one as well.

I'm curious about how you're implementing the game in Game Maker. I used GM to prototype my game, but I wasn't able to make competitive AI that could run quickly enough. I ended up switching to Monogame as a result, which has been working much better for me.

[mankoon]

Ktep & amanfr01 Thanks thanks

Souliard your game looks super cool. I love the sprites and animations . I'm not a programmer so not the best one to answer that but we haven't bumped into an issue with gm in regards to running ai. However that might be because the design we set out to do is a lot less complicated. The combat has less menus and character actions are contextual.

Theres been a lack of posts from me. We havent stopped working on this project, I just havent gotten the hang of devlog posting. It has to be quick and dirty- So here's what I've been working on
Kyron's the spriter but I do design, initial sketches and color for him to sprite from. Here's what that looks like.



At the moment I'm doing some portrait art. I really would like multiple expressions instead of single portraits but its very time consuming especially when we have so many characters. So right now I'm working on looking for a visual style for portraits that I can do very quickly. I'm trying to figure out a style where I can do 3 a day. All I have is sketches right now though


cheers   

[Pixel Noise]

Just found this - really nice work so far