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[io3 creations]

Looks good! I'm curious about the direction her story will take.

[FrostyChao]

Just dropping by to say I'm really liking the character design here.

The pixel art is great (I love the colors, and if I may just spill my little dumb opinion, I think her hair in that last pixel art is cooler than the new hair that she has as a halfling)

Also, I look forward to see the gameplay! I got addicted to tetra master and stayed there for hours in ff9 (my first FF) when I played that game for the first time haha.

Good luck with the game!

[Pixel Noise]

Man the art is looking so tasty. I love December. Like, too much.

Also looking forward to hearing some OST samples!

[breakfastbat]

Looks good! I'm curious about the direction her story will take.

Thanks!

Me too! I've written the main endings but the middle keeps changing so not even I know where we'll end up at this point! Also I'm writing multiple storylines based on your choices as well

Just dropping by to say I'm really liking the character design here.

The pixel art is great (I love the colors, and if I may just spill my little dumb opinion, I think her hair in that last pixel art is cooler than the new hair that she has as a halfling)

Also, I look forward to see the gameplay! I got addicted to tetra master and stayed there for hours in ff9 (my first FF) when I played that game for the first time haha.

Good luck with the game!

Thank you so much! Yeah her hair had to be cut short in the back to make room for her wings. Plus I kind of like the nape of the neck so it was a good choice all around for me haha.

[[EDIT: The trading card game mentioned here may or may not make it into the final game.]]

The trading card minigame I'm building isn't exactly like the FF card games, but I had to use something well-known to give the reader an instant general idea of the concept. Plus I LOVED those games so the influence is definitely there. The game I'm developing should be really fun though! I'm going to be prototyping it in a couple months to make sure the idea plays well.

Good luck on your project too! The first song you wrote for it was pretty interesting!

Man the art is looking so tasty. I love December. Like, too much.

Also looking forward to hearing some OST samples!

Thank you! Me too! Ever since I started redesigning her I've been like "man this is, way better than before haha"

I'm hesitant to work on the OST until I have an actual area complete and solidified. I'm too afraid of wasting time producing music for an area I might end up scrapping. So I can't tell you when the OST will start popping up. In a couple months maybe.

[breakfastbat]

Working on the new pixel art for December.

Also decided that I'm going to change the title again. I did a 4-day brainstorming session and didn't come up with anything I really liked (out of hundreds of words and possible titles) so I'm putting it off for now. I think it'll come to me as I develop the game a bit more.

Here's the progress of what I did yesterday:

[breakfastbat]

Just finished December's new combat idle animation!

[breakfastbat]

And her normal idle animation:

[breakfastbat]

Hey all! Sorry for the long period of silence. The game is still going stronger than ever! But I made some massive design and story changes over the past couple months and decided to lay low while I solidified my ideas, rather than pushing random junk out and then changing it later like I have been doing. The good news - everything I release from now on will be final and ready to be put into the demo!

I changed the name again. The final name for the game is Keys to Moonspire! I'm really excited about it!

As for the demo, right now I plan to have first screenshots and gameplay footage by the end of January. There will be a couple new illustrations and animations before then as well! The demo itself won't be until mid-2017. The design changes pushed everything back but I think it will be worth it in the end, the game I'm building now is so much better than the game I introduced at the beginning of this topic.

Anyway, today I bring you all a new character - Majesty! She's a halfowl and... ???

[breakfastbat]

WOW GUYS DECEMBER IS HERE!!

And I just finished her redesign! I also sent out this month's newsletter! Just this time I will post the whole thing here, but if you want to read these in the future (they're a lot of fun!) just sign up here > http://eepurl.com/co3Alv






December's Eve

T'was the night before December, and all through the roost
Not a dragongirl was stirring, not even you-know-who.
The stockings were worn on her legs with stripes,
Because she's December, and that's what she likes!

Actually, I think December WAS stirring... her signature homemade soup (!!!) for this special occasion! But let's just ignore that for the sake of the poem.

WOW GUYS IT'S REALLY DECEMBER!!

The best magic dragongirl that is, and she is ready for all your presents!

...What? You didn't bring her any?

Aw man, come on guys!!

Okay, okay. We'll just do the newsletter instead.

---
 
FINAL NAME CHANGE

Hey there! You probably noticed something. The name is different! Unless, of course, you just signed up to the newsletter. Then maybe you wouldn't notice anything. Other than that you received an e-mail of course! But for those of you who were here for previous months, I finally have a final final REALLY FINAL name for the project! The game is henceforth known as:

KEYS TO MOONSPiRE

And boy am I happy with it! It's been so exciting to finally have a name that I'm happy with (and a lot of you guys are too, from what I've heard!), that I started working a lot more diligently on actually developing the game!

With the name change, I now have a new website and made a permanent change to my Facebook page. I still need to make the new art for the website, but you can check it out in its current state!

http://keystomoonspire.com/

---
 
December's Final Design and...!

This month, after coming up with the final name for the game, I finalized one of the main characters and did a little portrait of her! And then after that I went to go do a similar portrait of December and decided that she needed a few last-minute tweaks to her design. So a few things are changing!

- Her wings are much less mature now, only nubs on her back
- Her wrist warmers changed to full black sleeves
- No more little arrow design on her top
- Socks are now much longer and no leg skin is shown
- Her sclera is now blue, that is she has no white in her eyes
- Slight changes to some things here and there

Why did I even say all that? Here's the final December design!

(( IMAGE OF DECEMBER ))

...

...

Okay sorry about that, here it is FOR REAL THIS TIME!!

(( REAL IMAGE OF DECEMBER ))

...

(muffled mechanical noises)

(( ACTUAL REAL SERIOUS NON-IMAGINARY IMAGE OF DECEMBER ))

...

(the sound of metal impact and then explosions)



And there she is! I'll update the pixel art in the coming weeks. I just left the old one at the top of the e-mail so you guys knew it was me!

So what about the other character? After all, my new tagline is:

"the unpredictable tale of TWO treasure-hunting monster girls!"

So who's the other one?

Well she's here today! December's long-time best friend, Majesty!

She's half owl and... ???



She's the one responsible for dragging December into treasure-hunts and other shenanigans. You'll see a lot of her in the game! She'll also be featured in the new promo art piece(s?) coming in December!

I hope you will all love her and treat her kindly!

---
 
Gameplay and Demo Update

I've received a lot of questions about gameplay footage, screenshots, demo, etc. so I thought I'd give you a general outline of my plan for the coming months.

December: Finish most of the main illustrations: website art, logo art, promo art. Finish basic set of animations for December and code the animations and movement into the engine.

January: Make pixel art for the first segment of the demo (already designed). Show first screenshots. Tie loose ends in animations and basic movement code. Start prototyping the battle system.

February: Finalize pixel art and animations for everything in the first segment and for all characters already introduced. Finalize battle system. Show first gameplay footage.

If I had to guess, the public demo won't be until August. That's actually my worst-case scenario, so it could be earlier but I can't make any promises. The demo is quite long (maybe 30m-1hr) and so I need a few more months to create the other 4 segments of the demo and all the battles and music, etc. The demo will be about 15% or so of the final game.

---
 
Happy December!

Thank you all again for being here with me through the development of my game! °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

Have a great December!

And as always, tell your friends... there's a place somewhere on the internet for a thing that'll eventually be pretty cool.

Website: http://keystomoonspire.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/eidobunny
Tumblr: http://eidobunny.tumblr.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/keystomoonspire
Youtube: http://youtube.com/eidobunny

Newsletter signup: http://eepurl.com/co3Alv

Until next time!

eidobunny

[Xer0~Paige]

I love these character designs, they're so cute! Keen to see a Majesty sprite take shape.

[breakfastbat]

I love these character designs, they're so cute! Keen to see a Majesty sprite take shape.

Thank you!!

December's sprite has to be redone (but only slightly), and then I have to make the walk, jump, fall animations, and then Majesty will be getting her sprite maybe in January!

Also...

[breakfastbat]

Trying to get the sprite proportions correct after the slight redesign of December

My dayjob is on the weekends so it's hard to get things done Fri-Mon

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

i have a slight preference for the old sprite. Chibi proportion would have more impact if the tone of your game gets more mature in the game.

[breakfastbat]

I decided on this, which is a slight modification of the "NEW" sprite.



She's supposed to be taller and skinnier, and I felt that moving away from chibi was the right move. She's still got that short-ish retro graphic look to her, but I accentuate her tallness with longer legs and a smaller head.

I'm not sure really what you mean by chibi art having an impact if the tone becomes mature. I would think the opposite, chibi might feel out of place in a more mature story. But in reality my game is going to be somewhat serious but with a strong emphasis on humor. I don't think you need chibi characters to tell a humorous story though.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

what i meant is that it's not a necessity to aim for more realistic proportion , as even if you use characters with chibi tones you can tell a mature story (cf higurashi,alien9...).

but the new sprite looks good (it's actually better when allowing your brain to forget a bit about the old one)

[breakfastbat]

Ah, I see. Kinda like FF6 for example. For sure!

And yeah I think I've progressed to the point of splitting hairs on December's design, so I'm calling it final so I can get to work on other things. I have a lot of animations to do this month! I'm going to try to get her basic movement animations in over the next couple weeks so I have the framework to start building and exploring the world.

[Pixel Noise]

Congrats on your decisions - they look and sound great. Though I think Majesty's beak is a big too big on her face - it almost looks like she's wearing an ill-fitting mask; I think it could be reduced a bit.

[Eyon]

Great illustrations I love the design of your characters ! Can't wait to see other characters and monsters... 'cause I guess there will be ennemies in your game ? Maybe Bosses ?

[breakfastbat]

Great illustrations I love the design of your characters ! Can't wait to see other characters and monsters... 'cause I guess there will be ennemies in your game ? Maybe Bosses ?

There will be lots of characters in my game :3 I have 10 designed so far with lots more on the way.

I suppose you could see them as enemies/bosses... ;)

Congrats on your decisions - they look and sound great. Though I think Majesty's beak is a big too big on her face - it almost looks like she's wearing an ill-fitting mask; I think it could be reduced a bit.

Always appreciate critique, but in this case I love Majesty as she is sorry!

[breakfastbat]

Trying to finish Nightlight's portrait but ended up doing a first draft game font instead!



Here's an all-skinny version:



And an all-bold version:



Any thoughts from some font connoisseurs?