Tales From Windy Meadow - fantasy pixel art Visual Novel

[Tusky]

Both of these look great, really nice job 

[Aure]

Thank you, Tusky! Although, I decided to make a longer comment about our development:

Serious talk time! Nothing to be worried about, just explaining the current situation.

For months we were sharing our concept arts and images, but only recently we started to show you longer videos and GIFs of Tales From Windy Meadow.

Also, trailers are so important in the world of game development, but we still don't have one! Why is that?

Here is the problem - we're building the game layer after layer, not scene after scene. It makes showcasing the progress really tedious, even if we finished like 90% of the game's graphics.

The "layers" we already have include: dialogues, interface, backgrounds, character portraits (and their emotions), basic character sprites, a majority of the non-character animations - rain, fire, doors...

The layer we DON'T have yet - and which stops us from recording more in-game videos - is the character animations. Walking from one place to another, or sitting down, or throwing a spear, or just smoking a pipe... There is an example of it shown in the video - it's the only part that was simple enough to draw that our writer / developer was able to make it mostly by himself.

The current approach is good for the game's quality... The main thing that suffers is our marketing. : P

So just a few words of comfort: new content is coming. Once we finish more character animations, we're going to have a lot of things to add to the game and finish a whole bunch of new scenes at once. Trailer and cool screenshots are on their way, we just have to survive this last part of the marathon. ; )

A big thank you to all of you for your support, we appreciate and hope to do our best turning Tales From Windy Meadow into the best Visual Novel we can. 💓

Happy #screenshotsaturday!

[Aure]

Can you help us decide how "dimmed" should a non-speaking character be?

[comrade_general]

Medium.

[Jubal]

I suspect medium too, though I'd be interested to see what that looks like when switching between them as a conversation unfolds before I could be really sure.

[Aure]

I see, thank you! Twitter says "dark", I think I'll focus my tests on these two alterations.

[Aure]

We would appreciate even harsh criticism. ^^ Happy to finally reach this point of development!

[Jubal]

Just watched through the video on fullscreen - now I look at it in big, it definitely needs more contrast between the characters.

Also, it felt weird to be constantly looking over to the left to see who was speaking, and not to have an indicator of that from something more central where the text I actually wanted to read was. Different coloured text for the different characters in the discussion or some kind of central visual indicator would mean people's eyes moving around less and make the conversation much easier to follow, I think.

[Aure]

Thank you! I keep thinking about adding borders to every portrait to make them look more like an overlay, though I need to test it. I will possibly use it for the next ScreenshotSaturday.

[Jubal]

Look forward to seeing it

[Tusky]

Also, it felt weird to be constantly looking over to the left to see who was speaking, and not to have an indicator of that from something more central where the text I actually wanted to read was. Different coloured text for the different characters in the discussion or some kind of central visual indicator would mean people's eyes moving around less and make the conversation much easier to follow, I think.

I agree, those things would be a good indication. I suppose often when there is dialogue there, games often put it in a speech bubble, and you can easily spot who is talking that way because it points at someone. Won't work for where you have it on that UI though but maybe a tailored version of that may work?

Looking really nice though

[Jubal]

I wonder if there's any way you could sensibly rejig the UI to move the names side to side as well, which would make eye movement a bit more natural...

[Aure]

Would you agree that the new portrait outlines and a easier-to-read font size make a difference? : ) If it's not enough, I do intend to experiment some more, maybe including, for example, this "swapping sides namebox" that you mentioned before.

[Jubal]

It does make a lot of difference, yes - I think that I'm now not really looking at the name text, that said, but I can certainly keep track of who's speaking better with this system. Whether it's worth considering moving the name somehow may depend how important it is for players to remember everyone's names/how often people's names get brought up in dialogue anyway.

[Aure]

Whenever a character is mentioned in the middle of the conversation, player can point at the name to see their short bio. So I would say that remembering every name is not crucial.

Thank you for the fast feedback. : )