Hey guys, sorry for the long wait; I've been busy heavily revising and polishing the very first portion of Dead Gear. Here's a big bunch of screenshots to take a look at! Click on the images to zoom in on them, but keep in mind that the image compression's a little on the heavy side.
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| Daytime Title Screen |
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| Nighttime |
As you can see, I've redone the original title screen. I liked the idea behind the original, but it was too barren for my liking. So I zoomed way in; showing Illyia waiting on the airship. The airship slowly ebbs down and upward, and the sky still shifts from day to night, to day again. I'm playing with the idea of maybe adding more characters into the title screen as Illyia meets them, might be a cute touch.
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| Delicious exposition |
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| Yes, you did. |
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| Harrison in the intro |
I decided to move the very beginning of the game into the ruins of the ship itself, and established the character Harrison right off the bat, instead of 30 minutes in; giving the player some urgency in the story.
You might also notice that I did away with the small box portraits to do more full-body portraits. I felt too restricted to the tiny boxes, and letting me expand past them allowed me to flex some more art muscles.
You might also ALSO notice that I've jazzed up Illyia's base sprite. Her original sprite was too desaturated and as a result, would often blend too easily into the backgrounds. I increased her sprite size, gave her a more saturated blue for her hair, added detail to her clothes, and gave her a hair ornament. (Which isn't in the new portrait yet!)
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| Mysterious! |
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| Illyia Ph.D |
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| Tutorials? In MY metroidvania? Yeah, maybe. |
There are tutorials! Don't worry, they're mostly just tiny blurbs like this about which keys to press.
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| Time |
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| To |
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| Kick |
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| Ass |
Combat is finally in! Enemies can damage Illyia, Illyia can cast and equip magic to attack, and it's pretty fun!
Take that, enemies that have no AI and sit there idle.
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| I'm a fan of this room. |
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| I'll get you one day, sleeping bird |
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| Portraits for everyone! |
Much of the very beginning is fairly new; and not in my original design. I felt that the player needed to be eased a little more into the system. It's a little easier with console games and more actiony metroidvanias; there are only so many buttons to press and your demographic are people familiar with the genre.
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| WIP sprite for the first big boss; testing out the size |
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| Exploring the ruins of the airship |
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| It's flooded! |
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| What a mess. |
Hopefully this quenched your thirst for updates! I'm still working hard as ever on Dead Gear.
