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[foofter]

You had me at "rpg with no combat and too many words." (Since my game is the same.) And at the bright colors and monsterish characters.

Cool style and world! Looking forward to it. We need more games with no combat. 

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Nice art, cool idea. Why can you be a plant when you can't be anything resembling dark skinned?

[Bricabrac]

Cool style and world! Looking forward to it. We need more games with no combat.  Grin

Thank you! 

Nice art, cool idea. Why can you be a plant when you can't be anything resembling dark skinned?

I was just updating the image with some darker tones, try reloading the devlog!   I think we've got a nice variety of tones now, but would love to receive some additional feedback.

[Bricabrac]

Devlog #7: New friends!

Hello!
During the last two months of development we have consolidated our team, saying goodbye to some occasional helpers and welcoming two paid freelancers that will be capable of giving more time and energy to the project. They are both incredible artists and have been working wonders! Let me introduce them to you.
 
ART
Lucy Kyriakidou (http://www.lucydoesart.co.uk/) is the artist now in charge of our character sprites. She somehow managed to translate our ramblings about elegance and Art Nouveau into this:

First sketches for the sprites.

She can also make people move. Pure wizardry, I tell you.

Strut like a merchant.

Since her sprites are more wiry than our temporary assets, we decided to slightly enlarge all our backgrounds to avoid shrinking her art.
Combining everything together, we got this - and we’re all damn happy with the result.

We hope you’ll like it as well.
Let us know!

MUSIC
We knew we needed a composer well-accustomed to strangeness for this game, and a name immediately sprang to mind: Devin Dilbert, composer of award-winning indie game Glitchhikers. We believe he’s very good, but judge by yourself: you can listen to his tracks - and buy them - on his Bandcamp page.

Glitchhikers is a game about driving during the night whilst trying to stay awake.
It’s good, it’s free and you can play it on Itch.

You’ll be able to hear one of Devin’s new tracks in the trailer we’re putting together! We’ll show it to you soon. Until then, may the Sun shine on your Path.

[Bricabrac]

Just passing to drop a trailer  

We also have set a date for our first demo! You can expect it this September!

[Bricabrac]

Devlog #8: oh, the places you'll go!

Chiara, our background artist, has finished painting the world map.
It's almost taller than her.

We're not joking.

In Selling Sunlight you're not an adventurer, but a merchant: exploration is not focused on discovering new places, but on deepening your knowledge of the routes you spend your life traversing.

Final result. Look at the cute cart Lucy made for us!

Some of the random events that happens while you travel are about discovering new locations, like a lake, a cave full of crystals or a small village. By putting a mark on the map, you will be able to revisit that place, slowly filling your usual travel routes with interesting spots only you know about.


Scanning the word map was also a good occasion to finish a dreadful task we’ve been putting off for too long: post-processing all the other backgrounds.
All our backgrounds are drawn on individual pieces of paper, so transforming them into actual maps you can walk on requires a fair bit of Photoshop wizardry.
First we make the collision maps, which are pictures that tell our engine where the characters can walk. To make one, we simply need to paint all the impassable areas red.

You shall not pass on the red stuff.

Then we cut all the elements you can walk behind, like columns, tables etc. and save them in a separate level.
By mixing those three layers together (base layer, collision map, overlay level) we get a playable map you can explore.

Last but not least, a small news: we'll be showing our game during the Milan Games Week this September! If you're in Italy, come say hi!
We're also in process to applying for other conventions like EGX and AdventureX. Fingers crossed!

[Bricabrac]

Devlog #9: A KICKSTARTER, AAAAH

Hello, radiant and luminous people! We’re here to announce you a big scary exciting news: we’ll launch a Kickstarter campaign for Selling Sunlight in a month! The 19th September, to be precise.
 
Selling Sunlight started as an one-girl diversion from a boring office job, but the scale of the project has grown as more talented people have become involved. Our Kickstarter goal would allow us to focus full-time on the game, and release it to you even sooner. It would also help us to fairly pay more awesome people to help us make the game extra pretty, strange and cheerfully gloomy.
 
We’re still working on the various rewards, and that’s why we need YOU: take this survey! Tell us stuff! It won’t take more than 5 minutes of your time, we swear. Help us give you something nice in exchange for your support.
 
We’re now squashing the last bugs of our shiny demo, which we’ll release to you all before the Kickstarter. We’ve getting so much stuff done lately!
Look at all the things we did in those past three months (click on the screens to enlarge):

• Increased base resolution and resized all the assets accordingly. Prettiness got increased by 75%!
• Shiny new UI.
• Started working with Lucy, a talented freelancer who’s now taking care of all our character sprites.

• Replaced ugly standard assets with our hand-painted world map.

• The bartering interface now finally makes sense.
• You can now finally buy stuff! (No selling at the moment, though. That’s very hard to program.)

     

Expect a link for the demo in 2-3 weeks, along with an early peek at our Kickstarter page.

Until then, may the Sun shine on your path.

[Bricabrac]

Hello, radiant and luminous people!
 

We just released a demo of our game! Click here!

Keep in mind that this is a pre-alpha release - there are bugs, everything lacks polish, and most importantly, the demo is very linear. We decided to make a short linear story so you could experience a bit of everything without getting lost: in the complete game, you will be able to move between different cities and storylines as you wish.
Think of it as "an ordinary day in the world of Selling Sunlight".

You can also see a preview of our Kickstarter page here. Mind giving it a look and telling us if everything is clear? We'd really appreciate some feedback. You can leave a comment here or directly on the page, if you prefer. 

The other big news is that we learned to make GIFs and feel pretty damn proud about it.

[nathy after dark]

I found this through your RPGMaker thread on Twitter which was really interesting. I'll download the demo and try it out once I get back on WiFi and not a mobile hotspot. 

[Bricabrac]

I found this through your RPGMaker thread on Twitter which was really interesting. I'll download the demo and try it out once I get back on WiFi and not a mobile hotspot. 

Thanks! I hope you'll enjoy it 

[Big Knight]

I have downloaded the demo, but I found it a bit disappointing 
If you will improve the game I suggest you to release a second demo to show all the changes  Because I would never buy it after playing this demo.
However, you are only at the begin of develipling of the game  I hope to see progresses.

Good luck 

[ionside]

Looking great. Loving the character designs and water colour kinda style.

[Bricabrac]

Hello, radiant and luminous friends!
We just launched our Kickstarter campaign. We don’t really know what to say about this apart from "AAAAAAAH".

KICKSTARTER PAGE​

Please consider backing us if you:

• Want to enjoy a relaxing game.
• Hold a grudge against the Sun.
• Like words and bees and watercolors.

Spread the word! Tell your friends!
Remember that if you’re still feeling unsure about what we’re about, you can try out our demo first.

Thanks for your support, and may the Sun always shine on your path.

[Bricabrac]

KICKSTARTER UPDATE #1

Hello! Here is our first post-Kickstarter monthly update.


This month we mostly had to focus on boring post-Kickstarter stuff (bureaucracy, money, talking with contractors, planning for the future etc.), though we also found the time to start polishing the gameplay according to all the feedback we received so far.

GAMEPLAY
Between the Kickstarter and the games conventions we attended (AdventureX and the Milan Games Week), we got quite a bit of feedback on the demo to evaluate!

The bee stickers we brought at AdventureX.

Overall, players seemed to enjoy the art and the story, but found the UI, and our bartering system in particular, a bit confusing.
That's why this November we focused on:

• Performance improvements: a few users reported lag on older devices, especially while streaming. We took the time to polish and optimize our code, hopefully improving performance for everyone.
• UI improvements: we're adding more visual clues to the bartering system, so it will be easier to understand whether a skill fails and/or offers change. We also added some new skills, like the ability to offer goods and favors to merchants for a discount.

We also finally put diagonal movement and new skin tones into the game.

• Overworld map: the overworld map got some much-needed love. Now random events can trigger while you travel, and there's a primitive weather system in place. It's still the ugliest-looking part of our game, and we know it. Better icons and UI will come next.

Look, it's snowing.

ART

Assets production is proceeding smoothly.
Lucy made people sit:

Meanwhile, Anita designed the remaining merchants for the Yellow and the Green cities.
Here is a sneak peek:

She's a jeweler!

That's all folks.
Have a radiant Christmas and a luminous New Year!

[Bricabrac]

Forgot to paste the KS update here because every time I have to adapt the BBcode I die a little inside, sorry   and Gamejolt's custom code is even worse, uugh.

KICKSTARTER UPDATE #2
An anecdote: the traveling system is the first thing we ever programmed, before Selling Sunlight even had a name. And yet we keep tinkering with it, because story and gameplay intertwine in unforeseen ways.

Behold, a rare screen of Selling Sunlight's proto-prototype made in Rpg Maker XP.

GAMEPLAY
You see, a game about merchants supposedly has to have some time management mechanics - goods to deliver on time, rotating stocks, seasonal events etc. But would people living in a tidally-locked world really care about dates? Would they even perceive the passing of time in the same way as we?
After much mumbling and reading (we especially liked this article about winter blues) we established the people of Selling Sunlight don't have the notion of cyclic time. No repeating weeks, months or years: life for them is just a placid, never-ending afternoon.
We doubt people living in such conditions would be rigid about schedules. The time management elements will be there, but they won't be too stressful - no rigid deadlines, but a simple "the faster you can deliver the goods, the better".
With this concept in mind, we tweaked the map system to help you keep track of time and plan your journeys accordingly.
Now, instead of directly controlling the cart, you draw a path first. The cart will follow it automatically, stopping only once you reach a location or trigger a random event.

We're carefully enthusiastic about this new system and can't wait to get it tested. KS backers will get to try it in our Shiny New Demo (ETA: March 2018).

ART
Chiara painted some generic backgrounds to use during the random events, like a grassy field, a forest, a mountain etc. She also made scenario elements like trees, mushrooms and... Rocks.
Not very exciting, I know, but we need this stuff.

Meanwhile, Anita worked on the look of the Golden Saints - priests who devoted themselves to the Sun so completely they became beings of pure light.
(In case you're wondering yes, one of them will be romanceable. Can you even smooch photons? Who knows?)

Anita's initial design was very bubbly! She simplified it so it will be easier to animate.

Lucy worked on minor NPCs. They won't have portraits nor storylines, but will simply hang around to make cities feel more lively.

Folks of the Green City.

STORY
We got the main storyline down - your Holy Pilgrimage to persuade some Very Important Priests that you are repentant and would like to get your mask off, pretty please.
What we're doing now is a rather tedious work of skeleton-building: using placeholder dialogues, we program the quests so the steps will trigger correctly and there will be no ways of breaking sequence. As you can imagine, this involves testing, testing and more testing.
After making sure a quest flows correctly, we fill its skeleton with meaty words. But for now, it's mostly bones and suffering.

Spooky scary skeletons from an old Disney short. Bye for now!

[Bricabrac]

KICKSTARTER UPDATE #3

We're alive! Busy but alive!
Sorry for the late update; next one should arrive in the first week of the month, as usual.

ART
You may have noticed we haven't posted new screenshots in a while. That's because we were waiting for the new scanner to arrive before scanning the new backgrounds.

Chiara has been taking photos, though. Click to follow her on Instagram, if you like!​
Watercolors are a capricious medium: the resulting images are very delicate, and strong lights - like the bright, yellow one of a cheap scanner - may distort the colors or straight up delete the more delicate tones.
Thanks to your generosity, though, we were finally able to afford a professional scanner. It arrived early this February, and we immediately ran some tests:

​
Look at the sky! Colors are way less saturated, and everything looks more detailed and natural-looking. This is a very good starting point.
We're now in the process of rescanning every single graphical asset, adjusting the colors and putting everything in the game. This will take a while, but the final result will be prettier than ever.

EVENTS
Would you like to watch our artists paint? We've getting organized to film our painting process, and we're thinking of doing some live steams as well.
Do you think it's a good idea? Let us know in the comments!

Chiara built this awkward camera-holder to film herself while painting. It works. Sort of.​

GAMEPLAY&STORY
Ursula Le Guin passed away this January. She was a big influence for us, and will be dearly missed.
Go read her novels, if you haven't already. The Earthsea cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed are just some of her most notable titles.

​
Anyway, Giada finished screaming at the new map system and moved on, focusing on quest programming. The tutorial mission is now playable from start to end, and we got some basic quests working as well.
It's exciting to see the game slowly come together, becoming a real world you can explore. There isn't much to do for now, but being able to freely move from city to city without crashes already feels like a victory.
Now it's finally time to flesh this world with some words.

That's all for now. May the Sun always shine on your path!                
          

[Bricabrac]

Hello friends!
Monthly update. Exciting stuff.

ART
In February we finally bought a professional scanner, and this week we finally finished re-scanning every single graphical asset. We now need to digitally cut, retouch and resize the improved scans before putting them in the game. It's taking more time than expected, but it's a smooth process.

Meanwhile, Chiara started working on this square. Once she paints it, Yellow Beehive (the starting city) will finally be complete. The city of Green Hamlet is also almost done, only missing its church-greenhouse.
Orange War Machine will come next: a community of fiery outcasts living in the mechanical bowels of a ruined, gargantuan tank.
Chiara also tried recording her painting process, and the results are good. We hope to put some videos online in a month or two.

GAMEPLAY
You can now invite other travelers to eat together and chitchat.
Sustaining a conversation can be tricky when you're a masked individual unable to reveal anything about yourself. By completing quests and events, though, you will obtain Stories: a special category of items that can't be bought or sold.
Offer stories during meals to unlock conversations, learn more about your friends and get new business opportunities.

This conversation system was the last minor gameplay feature we wanted to add to the game. Now we can fully focus on polish, squashing bugs and adding content.

UI
After many months, the game got a proper menu screen! It still needs graphical polish, but we're getting there.

Anita is currently giving all the other menus and UI screens another pass, trying to nail the difficult equilibrium between "being very art nouveau" and "being actually readable".

DEMO
As you may recall, during our campaign we promised to release a new demo for Peddler backers (15+ €) around March. So how's the situation?
The game is currently in a playable state, although there isn't much to do at the moment. You can visit the cities, chat with other characters and buy goods, but we still have so many quests to add!
Still, we'd like to put the game in your hands as soon as possible. You've given us an awful lot of faith and support so far, and we think it's important to let you check first-hand what the hell we have been doing.
We're aiming to finish the demo this month as promised, but we'll release it in early April - taking advantage of the situation to redo our website, bother the press and release new promotional material. We hope this small delay won't be an issue for you folks! We're a small team and we'd like to focus on one challenge at a time.
Making games is overwhelming. Releasing them is even more complicated.
We'll probably distribute the DRM-free version first, via Itch, because Steam requires us to compile a bunch of legal paperwork. We're also thinking of setting a communication channel that will be usable to both Steam and non-Steam users, like a Discord channel or a Reddit board. Start building a community.
Have a shiny weekend!

[Bricabrac]

Quick update as we fill our luggage. We're heading to London for a very busy week.

EVENTS
Is Rezzed too chaotic, costly and/or tiring for you? Come at  Bonus Stage instead!
We'll be exhibiting at Loading Bar, in Dalston (London) this Sunday with our friends from Tea-Powered Games and many other cool indies. Check up the complete games lineup here.
We'll bring our old Kickstarter demo and a ton of bee stickers to distribute. We'll also be wandering at Rezzed on Friday/Saturday, so do bother us on Twitter if you wish to have a chat.

GRAPHICS
Lucy has been making assorted idle animations for all our characters. They're pretty nice.

We also finally finished putting all the rescanned art assets into the game. The new scanner truly makes a difference!

Bad Scanner (left) vs. Good Scanner (right)

We also scanned the new locations Chiara has been working on, populated the Green city with random NPCs and started working on the light effects.
Have some screens:

GAMEPLAY
Giada has been working on the items database. We now have a complete spreadsheet of all the items you can buy and sell in the game, complete with names, categories, prices, weights and descriptions.

Game development: at least 50% of it is made of spreadsheets.

STORY
Most merchants also have a name now.
Selling Sunlight is a game about how cultures shape people, so we put a lot of effort into giving everyone a meaningful name.
Instead of using real names, we studied names from different cultures and tried to isolate what makes a name "feel" French, Japanese or Italian: recurring sounds, combinations of letters, rhythm, length. We then tried to match each of our fictional populations with the feeling we wanted to evoke.
The inhabitants of the Golden Beehive, for example, are a noble and elegant population descending from ancient warlords. To accentuate the dissonance between their bloody past and their baroque, shining present, we gave them short and harsh-sounding names full of Hs and Vs. We also gave them patronymics: a vestige of their old organizational structure based on warrior clans.
Strange-sounding names might be difficult for players to remember. That's why we also made sure to give every character a definite role (The Heiress, the Grocer, the Bard) and to always pair roles and names for easier memorization.

That's all for now! Hope to see you in London.
May the Sun always shine on your path.

[Tusky]

Newly scanned art is looking great!

[Bricabrac]

Newly scanned art is looking great!

Thank you!
Cutting all the portraits art again was a huge pain, but the result is worth the effort.
Old bad HP scanner = never again.