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[Aureus]

Taking A Fresh Look - Roadwarden Devlog

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(Roadwarden is an illustrated text-based RPG in which you explore and change a hostile, grim realm. It combines mechanics of RPGs, adventure games and Visual Novels, and you can now wishlist it on Steam!)

The last three months were the most fruitful ones in the game’s development history. Never before so many words have been written down, quests and other activities added, coding bugs and linguistic mistakes fixed. After this very long run, the game’s size has increased by a good couple of hours, mostly thanks to the implementation of (almost) the entirety of the in-game largest settlement. There’s a Lot of content now.



Not only that - the game is also in the middle of major reworks. Some of the core parts of the interface were modified and while it’s very probable that they are not in a perfect shape and need some additional testing, I believe the game is successfully pursuing something that’s very important to me - the clarity of information.

1. It’s now easier to notice the changing hit points

Up to this point, the reduction and gain of HP was only presented by the “current HP” icon. The new, very simple animation is meant to mark the spot when the player’s HP has been altered, and stays “in the air” for long enough (or so I hope) to attract one’s attention.

2. The regular “clock” has been replaced
The previous clock was presenting arbitrary values without any interpretation. Knowing when it’s “6 AM” or when it’s “14:00” doesn’t mean much if you don’t have dynamically changing visuals. I also don’t want to make a special tutorial section of “here are the specific hours which you need to memorize. for example, remember that 21:00 marks the beginning of the night!”

Since the time of the day is an important part of Roadwarden’s mechanics - you can’t travel after dusk - I’ve decided it’s important to clearly demonstrate how much time does the player have left. It’s possible that the current display will still be changed to make it look better, but we’ll see.

3. The notifications have been pushed to the center of the screen
The problem with the old notifications is that they appear too far away from the most relevant part of the screen - the text section. Very often, a notification was simply ignored by a focused eye, so the information it presented was missed. The idea behind this change is to allow the eyes to naturally head toward a popping out message.

Also, these notifications last for longer, while the “Quick save completed” now disappears quicker than before. Previously, all the notifications were lasting for the same amount of time, and I believe it was a bad approach.

4. Unlocking a new shelter or a trader results in a new notification

Thanks to the new notifications, it will be much easier to notice that the new “shelter” (a place where a player can sleep) or a new “trader” (a shop or a service provider, like a healer) are available.

5. The Archive has been updated

Many people have various ideas how to improve the Archive - a menu which saves a bunch of past dialogue blocks - but these suggestions are often outside of my humble scope of skill. Nevertheless, various bugs related to the Archive were fixed, and it has been limited to a couple of dozens of dialogue/narration chunks at once. It’s now a tool that can do fewer things, but in a more accessible way, so I think it will be more useful.

6. The world map was adjusted

The text boxes displayed on the map are now anchored to a specific spot - the place where they’re displayed is not related to the mouse pointer anymore. It’s mostly a cosmetic change, but sometimes the text boxes were acting a bit unpredictable.

Not only that, but the general contents of these text boxes are also modified. The vast majority of presented areas now display their names and offer more lore, or at least a more detailed description, using the fact that the area’s name already covers a lot of information.

7. The tests of the new font have begun


During the last couple of days I’ve been testing and consulting with many people the potential usage of a new font. I believe that the previous one has covered too much space, yet it also had letters that were too thin to comfortably read them. There are still adjustments to be made, but it looks like this change has been welcomed by many kind words.

It’s always tough to sacrifice appealing visuals for the sake of readability, but it’s very important to make a text-based game as gentle to one’s eyes as possible.


Thank you for taking a look at this devlog, for your support and kindness. Remember, you can also find me on Twitter and Facebook, and the game has a Steam page on which you can add it to your wishlist. Have a great day!

[Daydream_Sound]

Just played the demo, I absolutely adore the art and atmosphere of this - really great work. One thing I found was I instinctively went for my keypad to select responses, I saw that you can control some selections with arrow keys but I couldn't figure out how to select the dialogue options etc. Love it though!

[Aureus]

Thank you for the kind words! I must admit the arrow-based controls are not intuitive and the game kind of requires using mouse as well. Right now, I don't plan binding keys to specific dialogue options - the game doesn't have a system to automatically attach numbers to them, and there are parts in the game where you can potentially have 10+ options available at once... It wouldn't work.

Currently, the numbers 1-6 allow you to select Attitudes and the class skill (if they are available).

I really thank you for giving the demo a shot, even though it's already fairly old.

[Daydream_Sound]

No problem! Yeah, that makes sense - thanks for the reply. I've added it to my wishlist and will be sure to check up on it in the future.

[Aureus]

Thank you again! I appreciate your support. : )

[Aureus]

The new version of Roadwarden's demo is now available on Steam.

An additional area to explore, more things to do, better writing, upgraded UI, improved visuals. I'd love to know what you think. : )

[Aureus]

Invisible Milestones - Roadwarden Devlog

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(Roadwarden is an illustrated text-based RPG in which you explore and change a hostile, grim realm. It combines game systems of RPGs, adventure games, and Visual Novels, and you can now wishlist it on Steam!)

The last few months have resulted in a multitude of updates and advancements to the game. The game’s content keeps getting larger, with new places to visit, NPCs to talk to, and quests to take care of. There were also many bug fixes and behind-the-scenes changes that won’t be quickly spotted by most players, but will enhance the overall experience with the game.



A new milestone has been reached, and today we’re going to talk about some of its highlights without getting too deep into the spoilers.

1. The Player Character’s goals have been reworked
In the previous versions of the game, the “goal” was mostly serving as a personal motivation supporting role-playing. The player could decide why their character have hit the road, with the assumption that the overall “success” or “failure” in the game’s main story would be connected to this goal in the game’s epilogue, and maybe in some minor dialogues.



From now on, these goals will bring to the table a new game system. They sound similar, but are now something that requires an active involvement from the player during the course of the game. They have a new journal entry, and a unique reward for completing them.



I hope it will help them be something that is actually played with, and not just pushed to the back of one’s imagination.

2. The reworked resting system and the new night scenes
After some redesigning, it’s now easy to introduce additional events happening in the middle of the night. Some of them are specifically focused on portraying the game’s fantasy setting and providing the player with the opportunities to role-play and consider the struggles of being a traveler.



Other scenes involve a bit more stuff to do related to areas where the player can rest, quests, or items that the player is carrying in their inventory... All sorts of things. What matters is more things can be now easily added this way. : )

3. The East and the West are now connected
Riding around the entire peninsula is time-consuming, but now the player can take the shortcut connecting two distant spots in the West and the East, saving their time... But also risking some dangerous encounters.



The visuals of this shortcut differ from the rest of the game, but so do their systems and the mood that accompanies them. It’s easy, even very easy to die here, so it’s recommended that only those who are in full strength and have a proper equipment enter this forgotten path. The heart of the forest is a place with some unique interactions and opportunities, sometimes connected to tasks given to you by the NPCs from the peaceful settlements.



4. More information in the journal



The Groups & Places category contains hints related to various points of interest. Just like the People category, it’s meant to both refresh the player’s memory, and provide them with clues related to the game’s story and quests.

5. All sorts of updates
It’s hard to make a list even with the more noticeable ones. Some of them involve visuals, like the changes made to the world map:



It’s hard to spot the them without zooming in, but they fit the style of the rest of other regions. It’s now more detailed and has more colors to it (believe or not ; )). The entire map is already fully drawn, though I don’t want to spoil the rest before the release.



Another visual update fixes the old money bag icon, now presenting the more fitting pixel size of the coin.



Other updates are related to the language used in the game...



...and the writing in general. While the game is far from being finished, it keeps getting tested by new people, one of whom is now helping with editing and proofreading the game’s dialogue and has helped me improve the tutorial a bit. I can’t promise the text is definitely going to stop sounding “foreign,” but the updates are already promising.

There are also new systems, small and large. For example, the crossbow has been weakened, or rather - it now uses quarrels which also have to be purchased. Just a little thing, but adds a lot.



Also, the new alchemy system for the Scholar class is close to being finished. Listing others new systems would get a bit spoiler-y.

Also, the “continue” button has been introduced.




The main thing I try to deal with is making the experience more interactive, and not just larger. Writing things for the sake of the pure volume of text wouldn’t serve anyone. Instead, I’ve spent a lot of time adding new things to do in the older areas, filling the gaps and making it feel like the the story is not just presented to the player, but actively changed by them.




Thank you for taking a look at this devlog, for your support and kindness. I’m once again forced to push the game’s release, hopefully just to the first half of 2021. It’s sad to see how slowly the development goes, but that’s what you get when you try to give it all and result in something way too ambitious for your own sake. Let’s hope it’ll turn out to be worth it for you. : )

You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook, and the game has a Steam page on which you can add it to your wishlist. Have a great day!

[Aureus]

Improving The Basics

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The European autumn is my favorite season and its brownish, muted colors are vibing with Roadwarden’s sepia palette. The advancements I made during the last 3 months are huge, even without taking into consideration the new areas, interactions, NPCs, quests, encounters, text editing - things I don’t want to showcase too much before the game’s release.

I found ways to improve or completely redesign things that used to bother me for more than a year. Suddenly, it all just clicked. It’s been a productive season, but I’ll try to keep this summary short.



New title screen
No more a single, static picture. It’s not a video, either - the clouds are spread between a few moving layers, and the flying creatures move in their own patterns.





Redesigned magic system

Only a mage, which is one of the three classes you can choose from during the character creation phase, has an access to magic, so it took some time before I fully realized how broken their spellcasting abilities turned out to be. The original system was simple - from time to time, you are able to cast a spell that helped you bypass an obstacle. No strings attached. But if you use a magic attack, you can’t use more spells for the rest of the day.

But the longer the game gets, the more clear it becomes that a mage can use their special ability more often than other classes (fighters and scholars), and the results can get a bit repetitive. The healing spell and the offensive spell usually feel the same in most situations. There just wasn’t much decision making involved in the process. You got hurt and the game allows you to heal your wound? You just do so.



With the new energy-based spells there’s more risk to take into consideration, and more strategy and judgment involved. The spells are even more common than before, but ideally it won’t be possible to use them at every available opportunity. Also, restoring one’s energy gives another reason to spend more time and coins on resting, sleeping, or purchasing unique items.

Updated visuals

Minor tweaks and changes happen all the time among the game’s illustrations, but there also have been some more significant reworks to highlight.



The first one is the camp from the game’s opening section - the second picture ever finished for the project. Some of the mistakes I just fixed are a bit embarrassing, and I think that together with the new title screen, it builds a much stronger first impression.



This one used to be a generic mountain road, just a background displayed as the player rides through the highlands. Now it’s not only adapted to the new visual style, it’s also an actual in-game area, a place which can be explored and interacted with. 

A year ago I wouldn’t be able to handle this gap with a bridge. It’s a big step for me.



Similarly, I used to struggle a lot with some of the icons. Some items are fairly detailed, while others - especially the older ones - are very simple. I need to bring them to the same level of complexity and make them feel like a part of the same game.



The original version of attitude icons used to be a mixture of emojis and more “symbolic” images. I tried to make an all-emoji version, but it’s safe to say it was a failure.



I’ve decided to add a traveling description to almost every area in the game, but I had only a dozen of “generic” roads to accompany them, and most of them weren’t very convincing, or worked only when an area was approached from one side, but not from another one. The constant need to recycle some of them was also spoiling the effect.

Now these backgrounds are gone, and the game uses resized images from the world map instead. Thanks to this solution, I can give every area their unique road and a highly specific description, escaping the previous issues.

Reworked world map

The world map in general has went through significant changes. Just a reminder - previously, a player was jumping between specific icons, knowing how far they are even before they got there:



The new approach was meant to turn traveling into an exploration. You follow a road instead of selecting a new destination. It additionally benefits from the illustrations I just mentioned, and which display the new, just revealed part of the world:



Previously, the unvisited areas would have been revealed right away if the player had met specific conditions to learn about them (usually by gathering knowledge from NPCs). Now it’s necessary to pay more attention to the dialogues and the directions they provide you with.

The irrelevant dialogue loops are now grayed out

A small, but a relevant change. Sometimes, an NPC refuses to answer a player’s question, but only because a specific condition (such as a friendship level, or a reputation level) hasn’t been met. However, up to this point the related dialogue option remained available even after the refusal. My assumption was that a player would ask about the same thing later on - what resulted in an awkward loop. Some players were even assuming it’s a bug, and that the option was locked-but-not-hidden and should be ignored.



It took some work, but from now on, NPCs who are involved in this type of situations may be asked about a condition-locked thing only once. Then, the dialogue option gets rephrased and turns gray, and remains this way until the player actually unlocks it by meeting the required conditions.

It may be not very immersive, but makes the rules easier to follow, so at least it’s not as jarring whenever it occurs. I also hope that having a previously locked question suddenly available to you is going to result in its own, satisfying moment.

The new notifications. The new coin icon

These little, light boxes used to show up at the top of the screen. They are difficult to spot, and many people struggled to notice them or read them in time:



My first attempt at fixing them resulted in introducing an icon responsible for money. The old phrases such as “you received 10 dragon bones” were replaced by something easier to follow, and the same icon could be used in other parts of the game as well:



However, I still tried to change it a bit. The new notification box is much easier to spot, as it resembles a pop-up window, is easier to read because of the background, and distorts a part of the illustration, drawing one’s attention, instead of being pressed to the very edge of the screen:



Also, pressing the displayed text will now hide the box, so there’s no need to wait for the timer to hide it.

It may still be changed or receive some adjustments, but I think I’m on the right path.

The updated trading interface

With the new coin icons, I was able to reshape the trading menu a bit. Stores are now displayed like this:



Then I made an extra step. The old way of selling items to traders involved jumping through a bunch of dialogue options, where an NPC was commenting on every specific item in the player’s possession they were interested in - even if the player refused to sell it 10 times already. Now it offers a completely new menu, with convenient buttons just nearby the core text. Pressing them leads to a related offer from a trader.



It’s both more convenient and quicker in the long term.

Loitering around - a new health-restoring tool

If the PC is at one of the three inns in the early morning, they can choose to spend the rest of the day on chilling. It restores some HP and, if you play a mage, energy points, in amounts comparable to a full-night sleep,



However, since the game is meant to have a time limit (most likely - 30 in-game days), I believe it’s going to be a useful option for desperate situations, but not something most people are going to look forward to.

The “wait” button

This quality-of-life addition makes it easier for players to take control in the rare scenarios where an interaction can take place only during the later hours of the day, or during the not-so-rare scenarios where the player wants to finish the day early and send their PC to sleep. You just press two buttons and skip forward. Nice and easy.



More tutorials, notifications

As the game grows, some of its rules are getting a bit more complex. Thanks to the testers, I had a chance to explain them more clearly.

Here, for example, you can see the “item selling” tutorial.



And here is the idle-resting tutorial.



Tutorials are one thing, but I also try to convey more information on-screen. For example, you can see if your character still needs to eat before sleep by pointing at the HP counter. Previously, it was a somewhat cryptic information hidden in the inventory menu.



In general, the game explains its rules more clearly, and also provides more notifications marking specific actions that used to be presented only as a part of the narration. For example, the player is now informed whenever their character eats a meal.

The greatest change from this category involves the “d6 icon”. It marks the choices which involve a random chance, allowing the players to save scam if they want to, or to accept that the result of their action was partially outside of their control.



Since this change occured, I was able to alter a bunch of in-game events, adding to them and balancing new ways of interaction. The vast majority of the game doesn’t involve any sort of dice rolls, but I sometimes desperately needed them and couldn’t use them since it wasn’t clear if the action was meant to end with a failure / success, or is there something weird happening behind the curtain.

Adding this information allowed me to improve a couple of scenes, and that’s just great.

Bonus: Text parsers now accept capitals

This little detail doesn’t fit anywhere else, but I think it’s worth mentioning. The game was not allowing the player to input capital letters while writing things in interactions involving text parsers (simple commands you write with a keyboard). From now on, if you really care about writing down names “properly,” you can do so.


Thank you for taking a look at this devlog, for your support and kindness. For now, I expect to release the game release sometime around September of 2021. It’s quite a ride, but I’m proud of the progress I’ve made so far. The game is bigger and better than I ever expected.

You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook, and the game has a Steam page on which you can add it to your wishlist. Have a great day!

[Aureus]

Everything Gets Better - Roadwarden Devlog

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Greetings, travelers! It’s been a while since the last post, but the game’s development is moving forward, and better than ever! My recent endeavors are split between a few different ventures, the largest of which wouldn’t fit in a devlog - I now mostly write new content, introducing new areas, characters, quests, and dialogues, as well as reworking some older activities.

It doesn’t mean the game’s overall design is foolproof. As I attempt to avoid repetition and add some new surprises, I expand my toolbox and find ways to improve the shortcomings of the project, removing, adding, and reworking various features. Here is the compilation of the best changes from the last 4 months! (Spoiler-free!)



Updated visuals

While drawing the final set of illustrations, I realized how much my style and understanding of (basic) geometry has improved. The newest areas had way more interesting designs than the older ones, to the point where they didn’t really match each other.



I needed to level up my game and go back... Waaay back. I spent more than a month completely focused on pixel art, updating few dozen of the older areas. In some cases, “updating” meant “making them from scratch”.



I estimate that about 98% of the game’s visuals is now finished. I must say, I’m as proud as a peacock with the results. It took a lot of learning, but I believe this is IT - this is how Roadwarden is going to look like.




Updated audio

Roadwarden is most likely going to be a 30+ hours game, and its 1+ hour of OST (+ a couple other tracks) is just not enough to fill up the game without making it sound too repetitive.

To solve this, I’m adding the ambient nature tracks to the areas that are a part of the wilderness. They allow the actual music to stand out a bit more, and introduce a much needed variety.

Soundcloud - Ambient Track 1
Soundcloud - Ambient Track 2

Some additional details for those interested:

a) Usually, ambient plays without music. It's a bit intense and doesn't combine well with other audio,
b) It usually plays in areas where the player doesn't spend too much time at once. For example, it doesn't appear in settlements,
c) In some cases, ambient goes through soft alterations, responding to player’s actions,
d) Ambient and music have different volume bars in the setting, just in case.

These steps also allowed me to rethink how various music tracks were used in the game, and after moving them around and using them more sparingly their general vibe was improved.

New time-related systems

I try to spice up the the passage of time, adding more variety to the experience and making the world more “alive”.



The game will have a time limit - most likely 30 days - and some quests will be in one way or another related to specific periods and their own restrictions. It’s important to me that the setting feels like it’s outside of the player’s control, allowing a healthy dose of freedom, but also offering some structures to follow, building tension between the two.




After every few days, daytimes will get slightly shorter, what in the final stage of the game will result in having over one hour less per day, slightly increasing the difficulty level. Still, it’s more about flavor, than challenge.

The in-game interactions that used to be locked or unlocked depending on how late it is are now flexible, and will adjust to the actual "day length", making them more resistant to bugs.

These tools allow to add other systems as well. For example, the bogs are currently more restricting time-wise than the other parts of the realm, forcing the player to leave them earlier.

For now, the game doesn’t have de facto any weather system, but the skeleton for such is now implemented and works fine. If it turns out the game could benefit from deeper simulative aspects, adding rain and fog (and their mechanical alterations) won’t require a ground-level redesign.

Updating the healing tools for mages

It used to be that some situations allowed the mage to cast a healing spell to recover a hit point lost during an encounter, but I don’t think it worked well. It was a) overpowered b) repetitive c) didn’t involve much planning d) wasn’t always possible, and the exceptions made it quite a jarring mechanic e) required a lot of effort on my part, introducing bugs whenever I made a mistake.

The new system transforms this healing spell into an overnight ritual. It allows the player to spend some of their pneuma (mana) to recover an additional HP point. At first, it happens through a regular narration, but is then replaced by a more convenient button:




The result takes less time, less repetitive reading, and allows to introduce some strategy through consistency. It will also be easier to balance it by increasing or reducing the pneuma cost.

Working on the vocabulary

Didn’t expect this one, did you?

Roadwarden’s fantasy setting, Viaticum, is over 10 years old, and as I get more experienced, I find that some of its terms, phrases, and details are ready to be replaced with something more interesting and cohesive.

For a long time, I had issues with the names of the three core religions of the Empire, and I’m now ready to give them some more distinguishing labels:

Common Church - > The United Church
Church of Truth -> Orders of Truth
free churches -> Fellowships

These religions also introduce their traditional “parts” of living beings:
shell - the empty, material host of pneuma. usually used as "body"
pneuma - the breath. the living energy of all beings
soul - psychê. the unique mind of a human. it can manipulate pneuma to create magic

And, therefore:
soul carrier - any creature that potentially owns a soul. who this category includes depends on one’s beliefs. (for example: humans, Deity, spirits, goblins, dragons)
heart, will, thought - words to replace mind and brain

Spirit is no more a synonym of soul. Instead, it specifically references all sorts of hypothetical, invisible beings - deities, demons, forest guardians, ghosts... Think of Japanese kami.

Some awkward phrases, like magic crafter, are now replaced with something more elegant, in this case - enchantress. I think I’m too old to keep running away from some overdone tropes when I don’t have something more interesting to offer. Time to embrace the solutions invented by my predecessors.

It’s all a part of learning how to be a better writer / worldbuilder. These same efforts push me into updating the in-game fictional accents, or rewriting the game’s older dialogues and interactions. I’m more confident with the things I try to express, and therefore the game’s text gets shorter, more precise, with not as many lines of unnecessary clarification.



Deaf support

Step 1. Make a text game, describe sounds instead of using them.
2. Add ambient sounds.
3. Now text repeats them and is pointless.
4. Remove the text.
5. Now people who don’t use sound in games don't know what’s going on.
6. Solution:





Cleaner UI

Months of testing helped me realize the small issues were pilling on, forming a bothersome experience. The colors are now easier to read; the main menu buttons respond to being pressed by getting brighter; it’s much more difficult to mistake the save and load screens; the game hides the sections of the inventory that have nothing to show, instead of showing an empty label.

The game now remembers which section of the menu was displayed last, so if you enter the journal, then close it, then enter the menu again, it now returns to the journal instead of switching to the save screen, as it used to.



The “notifications” were completely reworked. Different position, colors, frame. They now can be closed prematurely with the left mouse button, and are sensitive to being clicked anywhere, not just on the text. I can’t believe how much work it took, but here we are.





I keep working on the tutorials, explaining more and more rules or finding ways to explain them more clearly. It used to be that the game would hide parts of its UI before introducing them with the relevant bit of the prologue, but from now on, turning off the tutorials will instantly show the entire UI, reducing the awkwardness while replaying this section of the game. It also works better on screenshots. ; )




Another tutorial upgrade: in most situations, a button that’s meant to be pressed by the player to move on during the tutorial sections gets highlighted. Having the text box right beneath it was not enough, having gray text in the center of the screen was not enough, so maybe this will help. ; )



The text parsers, at least those not related to PC’s name, now ignore spaces. The player can still use them while writing, but the game will simplify the result and compare it with the limited scope of positive interactions.

In other words, the game will forgive the players who mistakenly started or ended their parser by pressing the space button, or made a double space in the middle of the phrase. However, the players who are as pedantic as I am, will still have an option to keep the text pretty.



---------------------------------

Thank you for taking a look at this devlog, for your support and kindness. My ambition once again forces me to postpone the game, this time to 2022, what saddens me, but also gives hope that the results will be fantastic. The main reason why it takes so much time is hidden in testing. Some things just don’t work as well as I intended them to, and I’m successfully fixing them... at least I hope so.

You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook, and the game has Steam and GOG pages on which you can add it to your wishlist. Have a great day!

[Ramos]

It long time since I checked your dev blog, you made beautiful progress.
Your art and color palette are in my fav top 3 of all time, you truly managed to trigger emotions and atmosphere in all environments and gameplay design.
Beautiful!

When will you finish it?

[Aureus]

I really appreciate your encouragement, thank you! : ) I don't think I'll be able to finish the development before 2022, but trust me, I'm doing as much as I can. : )

[Alain]

Your art and color palette are in my fav top 3 of all time, you truly managed to trigger emotions and atmosphere in all environments and gameplay design.
Beautiful!

Couldn't agree more. The first, map-like view is my favourite image. In the very last one we can see how you incorporate the very bright beige. I assume you do this to guide the players attention, which works great and at the same time pushes the contrast. That makes the image even more pleasing to look at for me.

[Aureus]

I assume you do this to guide the players attention, which works great and at the same time pushes the contrast.

Thank you, Alain! Your reading aligns with my intention. : ) You may be interested in seeing a comparison between the first and the second versions of the image at the top, where I failed at leading the eye into the center. And here you can see how in one of the oldest images I tried to have bright grass and dark roads, until it was pointed out to me that it a) looks bad and b) usually, grass would be more "shadowy", and therefore naturally darker.

[Alain]

Nice, thanks for the comparison. I know feel like I know these things in theory, but tend to not execute them well enough yet. Great job on these visual iterations on your side!

[JobLeonard]

I missed this devlog for almost two years!

Looks amazing, my kind of game concept too. Insta-sub

I bet the color palette would work great as an IDE color theme actually. You could release a "Roadwarden" palette for the big editors as a subtle bit of marketing

[Aureus]

Thank you! I rarely post devlogs since some of them were Pretty Boring and I didn't enjoy working on them, so I'm now just gathering the updates for months and sharing them once I'm sure I have something to work with. : P

I'm not the actual designer of this palette (it was invented by @Xavier_Gd from Twitter) so I don't want to take credit for it, but I hope to one day share my working files with all the sprites I made / adapted as a Creative Commons work. (can't go full Public Domain since some of the sprites have other credits required) 

[JobLeonard]

Still, good choice then at least! 

Is the palette public?

[Aureus]

Here you go!

[JobLeonard]

Awesome, thanks!

[Ramos]

Here you go!

Much appreciated! Thank you!