Last week’s achievements

* Sent character feedback for Tango (final) and Jig (round 2)
* Updated AI for various enemies to make them more aggressive and/or more likely to summon partners when alone
* Wrote bestiary flavor text for Archweaver, Dryad, Griffinaire, Kobold Rogue
* Wrote pixel art requirements for Seaside Slime Cove

Current focus

Wrapping up character art, starting pixel art, and the transition to 2D.

Sample stuff

Character design for Tango Moonlight! As a bard, he’s a good support mage and a “narrator” who’s present within the story.

Other stuff…

Flavor text for Kobold Rogue:

With their mastery over basic transcendent-speed techniques, kobold rogues can exceed light speed in small bursts. By taking advantage of the surrounding territory of their preferred environments, heavy forests and caves, a single rogue uses tricky movements to intimidate aggressors by appearing as multiple kobolds lurking in the shadows. However, like all other kobolds, their bark is worse than their bite. If forced into direct combat, they’ll back off quickly from experienced warriors.

Flavor text for Dryad:

“Which came first: the dryad or the tree?” This famous riddle hints at the popular assumption that every tree has a guardian dryad; hurricanes, earthquakes, and tidal waves may devastate the hardest of rocks, but a fallen tree has almost never been observed. Dryads themselves are rarely observed even inside forests, but usually the appearance of one of these female forest spirits signals a disturbance in the natural order. With her excellent magical talents, a dryad quickly corrects problems—and sometimes that problem is the traveler who sees her.

Weekly goals

* Send character design feedback for Winter
* Send pixel art requirements for Miharu overworld, Den of Kobolds, Deltarei Tri-Port, Spring Lake Valley (and more of Seaside Slime Cove if more detail is needed)
* Write bestiary flavor text for at least ten enemies
* Figure out how to use 2D Toolkit (and other Unity assets if needed) to get basic top-down map movement functional

Comments

With the impending release of Super Smash Bros. 4 on Thursday night (Pacific time advantage!), I thought it would be nice to get something rolling that will be productive even when I’m not: time to start paying for pixel art!

…but gathering references for that makes gathering character design references look like a breeze. =P For one thing, character art is always widely available because it’s used as promotional material, but tile sets or at least area maps have to be ripped by someone who cares about the game.

For another thing, now I see why RPGs are often loaded up with generic locations like “ice cave” and “port town.” I’m specifically aiming to avoid that because I want memorable areas, but that also means the things I want to create either haven’t been done or haven’t been done in numerous popular games that I can cite for references. For example, in my Spring Lake Valley, I want a forest area where the land rises up like a hill and then curves downward to form an elevated “bowl” that contains a lake. Here’s a crude diagram:

I’ve never seen this in an RPG; usually the water level is below the ground level, not above. I don’t even see this in photographs of Earth (which is what I had to resort to for my Seaside Slime Cove)—the closest thing would be some of the lakes inside volcanoes, but that’s steep rocky terrain and I’m going for a curvy grassland.

One way or another, though, I’ll figure out how to convey info on what I need art-wise. Interesting locations or bust!

(…except for the Den of Kobolds. That’s just a heavy forest—it’ll be memorable, but not because of the environment. Consider that a teaser. =) )