Innkeep! - Serve Ale. Collect Rumors. Make Coin.

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Hi all. Another busy week with gamedev this week. I did a wrap-up post linking to different screenshots over here:


https://www.reddit.com/r/gamemaker/comments/a6c5l6/screenshot_saturday_december_15_2018/ebtseya

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Hi all. It's time for dev diary #16!
 
Featuring:

- Player walking animation.
- Working candles
- Shadowmap - ambient light integration
- Spawnable guests linked to a dialogue window
- the sexiest barrels you ever did see
- less waffling!

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Hiya all! Time for dev diary #17. ;-)

[Jubal]

It's been fun watching the anims come together on Twitter - very cool to see them in the game!

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Thanks Jubal!


Yeah I really am enjoying the animation process. There's going to be a hundred or so animated guests once I'm done (working off a few dozen base models). It should really help the place come alive once you have 9-10 animated characters on the screen at once.

[Jubal]

Yeah. I should learn more about how to do these sorts of pixel-animationy things, it looks an interesting process but I've never made myself sit down and look at how it's done practically.

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

If you are ever interested in trying your hand at pixel art animation I can really recommend Pyxel Edit. Super user friendly and powerful.



https://pyxeledit.com/


Using this and watching some simple youtube videos was enough to get me started.


Here's one I used to learn how to do a walk animation using the same software.


https://youtu.be/nQZECTSzaaI

[Jubal]

Ooh, thanks for the links

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

No prob!


I put off doing any animation for years because it looked really complicated. Turned out there's just a few simple steps to follow
to get something looking half decent.

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Hi everyone. After another long gap it it's time for another dev diary. ;-)

https://youtu.be/Qm85-t4wRIM


This time I get to show off the new menu and the opening scene / exterior area.


This is all building up towards a working demo.

[Jubal]

Really neat!

A couple of thoughts. The outdoor scene looks very barren - which I guess it's meant to be, but I feel like one or two more scrubby little bushes wouldn't hurt - and the road feels weirdly dark compared to the landscape for what's presumably meant to be a dirt road.

I really like the idea of the tutorial and how it's meant to unfold, that sounds great. Though I hope the innkeep's death isn't toooo grisly.

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Thanks for the feedback!
Yes I agree about the barrenness. It's partially intentional, because it is a kind of empty steppe, but it's also because I'm still finding trees and such quite difficult to draw. ><So rather than get bogged down I was thinking I could populate some of the back layers with a few more details later on.

Re: the dirt. I am wondering if this is partially due to the video, and if it looks more natural in-game. The dirt is very dark but usually covered by all the grasses. If I get this feedback consistently I guess I will need to consider making some changes.

[Jubal]

That's all very fair (sorry for the super slow reply!) - natural features, especially ones with complex, non-consistent shapes, are generally hard to draw well in any format IMO.

How are things going?

[BeerDrinkingBurke]

Plugging away! I've been working on the dialogue system and animations for the opening scene. ;-)

[Lizard]

I only get more excited about this - I've been pouring a lot of time into Graveyard Keeper recently, as well as Moonlighter, both of which feel somewhat similar to what you're going for? Keep us updated!