Valiantine is a 2D-3D hybrid RPG being developed by Narwhal Productions (that's me!) targeting a Q1 2024 release date. You play as Emily, a young woman on a quest through the abandoned ruins of a castle on the frontier of a vast and deserted kingdom, searching for an artefact magical enough to risk her life for. Take heart, adventurers.
- Explore Castle Aleyssia, all that remains of a time long gone
- Defend yourself against foes both vicious and mild using a magic blade
- Experience a mythic and mystic take on Valentine's Day lore and tradition in what may be the greatest Valentine's Day game ever made

Promotional material will be linked here as it releases; in the meantime, please check out my developer log! Valiantine has been in development since December of 2022, so there's a lot to dig into.

A 2D-3D RPG about love, courage, and longing

Valiantine

AndrewExclamationPoint

From the team that brought you Pillar...pillar-adjacent assets Tall Pillar (I realized I would need pillars in rooms with enough depth in the z axis that the top might show) and Pedestal! Just some stuff that's easy to spin off an asset tonight, although that doesn't make either of them less necessary.

Made a pillar today! Who doesn't love a good pillar? It's got a nice octagonality to it to help break up how square things can be in the castle.

Modeled a small secret treasrue room on the walls of the castle and got to try the technique I mentioned of silhouetting the wall - I think it worked pretty well! Not sure if the camera will capture it in this scene, but it's there just in case.

The model for the final save room before the boss! It's a little more grand, what with the arch and pillars.

SWE ran long today, so I just started getting my rooms set up in Unity! No pics yet...

The first heal statue room! Will this need to be wider? Maybe! Tomorrow will hopefully be some in-engine tweaking for these first 3 rooms to see.

Another room - my Lost Maze 4-way room. You might be wondering, "Andrew, where are the darn front walls on these rooms?" And the answer is the game camera would be behind them more often than not if they existed, leaving me a choice: Either lock the camera bounds to align with the hypothetical front edge of every room, or kick it old school, take some walls out, and fill in the unused "tiles" with a solid black so that we can actually get a good look at the whole room. Option 1 doesn't work for all of my room designs - case in point - so Option 2 will be how this works in Unity.

Model for a small tower room! I'm going to flood this in Unity to give it some more personality. Turns out my stair texture looks pretty good, so that's nice.

Working on one of the smaller room models to get into the spirit of making the castle; while it's not aces at texturing standard geometry, Sprytile works just fine as long as you play by its rules and have your polys at about the same size (which is great for me, it means all my rooms don't have to just be boxes!)

Just some touchups and retoolings today - I needed some metal bar assets, so I reworked the structure of my gate into a few different sizes, and gave the fountain a bottom and adjusted a few textures scales.

The last of my tiles, as far as I can tell! These check off every box I had left on that list I made in October. On the left are ones for ledges/rims for different elevations, on the right is a pillar texture, and in the center is a stair texture - my current plan is to just have ramps textured as stairs, but we'll see if that works out visually since I made the tile as though it were going in a top-down 2D RPG. Maybe I'll do a little more work on the geometry to match the perspective.

Just a couple ground flowers for tonight, shaped like proper roses - a little billboard decoration to keep the balance with the 3D assets. ('Twas the night before software engineering lightning presentations...)

A chunky vine for some additional foliage! I considered making some tile-based vine assets, but I think a few of these strewn about will be more fun.

Workin on some connector tilesfor Valiantine! They're a little location-specific, but I wanted some of these for a few rooms. It's unfortunately gonna be slow going for a little as the semester wraps up, but I'll do what I can.

Working on my plaque interactable today - found a few bugs related to camera control and level collision that I'm still puzzling over. For some reason, this one isn't triggering its associated camera movement.

Working more on my fountain - spent some time messing with Sprytile's painting functions and attempting to do it that way, but if there's a way to loop textures rather than stretch them, it's not immediately clear (it will scale a tile to fit a poly by default, resulting in a lot of mixed ratios if you model without actively maintaining a tile size), so I tossed it all out and just started doing things the regular way.

Today I worked on the main plaza fountain for Valiantine - I'm trying to get through all my unique assets I'll be needing. (Good luck and good hunting to all you jammers! I hope I have the time to join you brave souls next semester, but I had to pass this one up.)

The "Here Stands" plaque has a proper setup now! I also made an alteration to the plaque model I think is noteworthy - the lettering and edge decor have been pulled back in, indents in the metal, rather than carvings that stick out. The latter setup I initially had just felt too close to outright using voxels, which don't mesh well at all with the texture-based Super Nintendo popup book I'm making.

Made a barrel today! Not the nicest barrel ever, but I think I get points for being economical and reusing my door texture. Can't go taking up too many kilobytes on the cartridge, right?

Got some tutorial text today! Wrote a script that I can put on anything I only want to be visible in this first scene. I also finished adding the bearcrow's animations.

Levelling up now happens as a consequence of winning! In addition to some good old fashioned healthy random stat increases, the gem you have equipped will also give you a bonus in certain stats; there are 7 different corresponding level up messages to clue the player in to that minor feature.

Today I started setting up the win condition for a battle. Today was mostly just architecture and a few bug fixes; I expect animations and things to sort of fall into place since they all already exist in some form, but I'll need to reconsider how I dispose of enemies since my fade effect doesn't work on opaque materials.

One can never say never, of course, but today looks like my last big away-from-laptop day until release, and so it’s fitting that this is one of, if not the, last concept sketches I’ll be doing - I’ve drawn everything I can think of that I’ll need! These are for the final area in the game, after its climax - a walk out on to a balcony and up some stairs, to a locket most mystic and fabled.

Today I did some bug fixing and cleanup on my cutscene (movement is now consistent/doesn’t get stuck on geometry sometimes, can no longer pause or open inventory while in a cutscene) and started adding the Bearcrow to the scene, getting it all set up with its own scripts and remembering all the things that my enemies need.

It still needs sound, and a skybox, and maybe some some fog in that hallway, to really sell it, but I think this is what we in the business call an opener. 

The other concept in the running for this title card was a camera pedestal up over the lip of the castle to reveal that Emily had just walked into a giant, sprawling, ruinous maze of a fortress, but between you and me, I didn't have the budget. I think this works just as well, if not better - the upwards tilt still conveys a sense of smallness against the comparatively immense wall of the castle, while also invoking the imagery of a wistful look upwards into the sky before making a big decision.

Today I set up my drawbridge and chains - the physical elements of the scene are basically done! Next step are the interactables, mainly the doors and Bearcrow. Some additional details as well for cherries.

Today I just had time to tear up the castle a little more - the player won't be able to see anything beyond what's in this shot (a little less, actually), so the facade will hold.

Forest floor decor and trees are filled in on both sides now! Slowly but surely, the forest comes to life.

The needles REALLY help break up the basic grass texture a bit - today I added them to the whole walkway stretch.

One thing that felt off when I was working on my opening scene yesterday was that the ground felt kind of empty, and that makes sense, y'know, because forests have a bunch of leaves and ground cover that's smaller and looser than rocks and plants. I whipped these up today to try out tomorrow and see if some dead pine needles tie it all together a bit better.

More environment work today - mostly density of decor stuff, but also adding animated water that bobs up and down, and doing a little more work on the castle, as well as finishing adding all the fences.

Something I love about working on this project is the variety of things I get to do, and the respect I gain for the artists and programmers who make those things their livelihoods and passions. That's not to say I didn't respect them before, only that walking a tenth of a mile in their shoes gives me new perspectives on their work. All of that to say, then, that today goes out to environment artists. There's so much that goes into even just a simple forest!

Trying out some big doors - while my metal gates, which also open, are spritework, I feel like having the doors be actual models will give them some more weight. No texture yet - I'm interested to see how painting one on with Sprytile might work when I make one, though.

Today I made some rubble! My previous attempts at more broken geometry showed me that sometimes it's best to keep things simple and identifiable, so I just have some stacks of bricks in enough different arrangements to rotate and spread around for some flavor.

Didn't have a lot of time today, so I just toyed around with tearing up Sprytile's tiles a bit and using its paint tool. I'm no expert with the Blender knife, but it looks like the tool can accommodate fun little alcoves and divots just fine.

So, today I took a step back to do some administrative work, to see where I am and where I'm going and tally up everything that needs to happen for Valiantine to be a complete game by the time I want it to be complete. This is a screencap from the mega-scene spreadsheet I set up today - Valiantine will have a total of 23 scenes (22 playable, 1 main menu). This sheet will serve as my checklist to make sure every scene has what it needs. When I take everything into account that needs doing - scenes, finishing the combat experience, and music/sound design - and the time I have left, it's going to be close - but if I keep my wits about me, I'll make it.

Preliminary analysis is in: This is going to be one of the largest scenes in the game. I set up collision to do some test walkarounds and played with my trees - I think I have the path at the length I want for the intro sequence (learn to walk => hey what's that ahead => combat tutorial => hey what's that ahead => pan up, title card, let's get going) so now it's time to fill it. I'll probably be experimenting with either some fog effects or just classic cubes of varying alpha levels for some darkness effects? Maybe? I can probably get away with having a full forest if I want, I can't imagine a bunch of billboards and low-poly models are too expensive, but we'll see.

Here we go! Today I used Sprytile to model the outside of Castle Aleyssia, learning quite a bit about the import process for this amazing little tool. I still need to set up collision, model a bridge, add water and foliage and other details, etc etc, but I'm super excited for all of it and hopefully set the standard for my scenes going forward. (Normals, again, gave me a good kick on the nose and reminded me to pay attention when I model. I think twice will be enough for it to stick.)

Castle Aleyssia only has one way in - its front gate. I've nearly got all the assets I need to put it together! Now, where did I leave those big doors...

Today I made a water tile for the moat that will be around the castle at the start (I've decided I want a moat, and I plan on having an odd room or two near the outer walls be semi-flooded as well to help with navigation) and set up Sprytile in Blender! Image shown is a little piece of terrain I made just to get a grip on the basics, using one of my tilesets from It Bears Repeating.

Hurt and defeat animations for the bearcrow! It really is the best enemy, because I don't need to do any other animations.

Bearcrow! I don't think there's much more to say. Everyone needs a tutorial enemy.

I worked on some path tiles today! Colors might need to be saturated a bit more, but I'm very happy with the texture - dirt is very easy to do poorly and very hard to do well, and I think I'm a smidge closer to "well" with these.

Some more forest assets today - the last of my billboards and the first of my tiles. The tilemaking process actually had a really interesting facet for me - so many ICONIC pixel art grass tiles are made for 'top-down' RPGs, where everything is sprited as though the camera is looking down from a 45 degree angle, which necessitates building three-dimensionality into the tiles, creating plant matter with depth on a 2D plane. But I'm in 3D for real, and I had this little moment where I was like, "Oh wait, I gotta do this like Minecraft instead," and so while this tile is a little simpler than tiles of yore, it still creates a convincing 'grass-like' texture when you look at it in a 3D space! I love pixel art.

Working on some more decorative assets for the forest intro scene today! (Notice anyone familiar underneath that moss?)

So, today I ported in my trees, good stuff, and I also set up an experiment. I put together two versions of the same asset (both a little rough around the edges, but more or less how they'd look in game) and put them in the same scenario. I'd love to hear input on a preference if you, the reader, have one, because I'm a little stuck - endeavoring to use more billboard assets helps keep the SNES popup book vibe alive, but I also feel as though the use of traditional 3D assets for traditional 3D forms still fits and makes the game's 3D...existence feel a little more natural. I think either approach will lead to something nice, but they'll both snowball into noticeably different end products.

Workin on another tree today! I am again moments from completion, so I'll wait for the final photo post-midnight.

The buzzer beat me by about 15 or so minutes tonight - I'll send another snapshot of this tree when I'm done! I've just been making more leaf patches, texturing the trunk, all that. It needs a topper, some shading, and a little extra love and care to be done.

More color testing! Ironic that being short on time this week is actually giving this tree more of my effort. I'm definitely going with the left trunk color, but either way, I'm excited about how this one's gonna turn out.

Got home today! Had a fantastic weekend. I did some color testing on pine leaves for the trees that will occupy the outside of the castle. I'm happy with how distinct the leaf structure is from my cherry trees while still being readable and matching stylistically.

Another list today (a little slimmer of a post than I’d like, but adventure waits for no one) - this time, thinking of every unique non-tile asset I’m going to make, some of which I sketched yesterday. I guess the most interesting thing on here is the matte painting idea - using flat images at my scene change points to create the illusion that you can see another room. In the grand scheme of things, do I need to save those resources from not having empty models of adjoining rooms? Probably not, but I’d like to try and save them anyway.

Some sketches I did today of more unique assets I’ll be needing that aren’t just tiles!

Happy homecoming weekend! Although I’m on an adventure this weekend, game dev waits for no one, even on a road trip. Today I made a shortlist of every tile asset I think I’m going to need - I’m going to do this for my bespoke modeled assets as well; while they won’t be comprehensive as I find little things I missed, it’s a helpful document to get me 90% of the way there.

Today I worked a bunch more on getting particle effects to play correctly on immediate application of a buff or debuff, to very little forward progress. Something about the timing or the way I'm sending the requests to play these things is just resulting in them playing at times that shouldn't even be possible (and of course it is possible because that's what the code says and I wrote the code). That usually means I tried something silly with the implementation and was too stubborn to give it up, so I think coming back to this one after a bit will be for the best - fresh eyes and all that.

Today I started in on tying a visual effect to a mid-turn stat change (sort of like Pokemon, where a move that applies a buff or debuff is accompanied by the up or down effect). I didn't have too much time, and I also wanted to do something visual, so...

The Skullmet now has all 4 of its moves, at least as far as programming goes! Helmet Bash (not shown) is a stronger direct attack it gets after a certain level, currently dealing 130% of base ATK, and War Cry (shown) is its final move, buffing every stat of every living enemy by 15%. Sure wouldn't want to run into a pack of these guys late in the game...

I'm starting in on giving everyone their actual moves - each enemy will have 4, and then each of the player's gems totals their move count to 8. The Skullmet's 2nd move is a double bite with less attack power that lowers the player's defense by 20% for 3 turns.

Today I fixed some bugs:
- An animation glitch with the shine effects on the inventory gems
- A glitch where you would keep moving/sliding if you opened the inventory
- The player could collide with cardinals (again, somehow? I think that one snuck back in)

I also played around with some things:
- A bit of fiddling with lights in Unity
- Experimenting with the look of my main wall texture in-engine, including normal and height maps applied within Unity (I learned how to make a rudimentary normal map!)
- Looking a little deeper into Sprytile,  to the point where I think I'll try using it for large parts of my environment building (thanks to Diana for a very comprehensive starting point in the resources channel, coincidentally made just before Valentine's 2023!)

If yesterday was proof that the systems were there, here's proof that they can look good! Some additional backing on the text elements, some improvements to the cycling code, and a little spritz of animation have turned this effect into something I'm honestly really satisfied with. (I also fixed a bug where in-battle stat changes were persistent out of battle - that would be a hell of an exploit!)

Now we're playing with power! The visual side of what I programmed yesterday is working - although currently only configured for Emily, and in need of a few extra touches of love, buff and debuff indicators will cycle on the player's turn. This will occur for all enemies once they're set up. These indicators vanish once the player takes an action, because the player's turn is the only time you'll need to know the information they provide.

Today was just scripting the visual side of my buff/debuff system -  turning things on and off, cycles, all that. Nothing to show for it yet aside from a neat little class, but the next step is making some moves that can test its mettle!

Fixed the normals! Gotta be honest, pretty wiped today, but I'm excited to get over the hill of finishing the status displays this week and dig into programming all the moves! At least on the back end, all of the moves are just a combination of dealing damages and applying stat changes. (I'm gonna need a fire effect and a lighting effect and some other funky stuff, too, so it's not all counting beans.)

Today I made a plaque asset for my little opening setpiece; I'd love to show it in Unity, but we're in a bit of a tussle right now (and it is, unfortunately, my fault from what I can tell - the normals on this model are a little screwed up, so Unity is rendering most of the front face in the entirely wrong direction. Things for tomorrow).

Today I figured out how I'm going to be displaying stat buffs and debuffs on the field - it was a surprising little design exercise. Text alone is hard to read when next to the character / against a variable background, so I spent some time figuring out what kind of effect would look good, what kind of good effect could I generate in a way that was consistent for player and enemies, what good and consistent effect could be used to communicate both buffs and debuffs? I'm going with this half-circle + text at the being's feet: The half-circle is easy enough to generate moving up or down, is visually clear without obscuring any other elements, and will look good behind any being if properly adjusted.

It's a patch notes kind of day!
- Added in a buff/debuff system for easy addition of temporary stat buffs and debuffs in battle; it allows for a stat modifer to be placed on any stat for any number of turns by any being.
- Updated damage number positioning to avoid z-fighting; added a fade effect on damage numbers, because we're classy here.
- FINALLY made it possible to start a battle when the player and enemy are on the 'incorrect' side of each other; everyone leaps a little further to get into approximately their normal spots. Built on incremental changes that have summed up to removing physical interaction between player and enemies.
- Resolved several animation glitches when interacting with interactables.

Today I prefab-ified all of my trees, setting them up with their own petal generators, and properly set the cycle time on the wind system so it will be less frequent and a little more random. I also added some more animation to getting an item from a chest - now the item display will bob up and down, and the item will look like it jumps into your inventory when you're done reading the text!

Lots of good stuff today! I quashed a couple bugs (one related to rendering order that I posted about in advice, and one concerning the action indicators not fading out), accounted for the condition of the player fleeing a battle when they have killed the parent enemy (just reversing the death animation proved surprisingly effective and silly as a visual shorthand for the battle remaining unbeaten), made the attack choosing arrow spin and bob like all the best video game objects, and added in critical hits - a 1 in 100 for everyone to do double damage and turn those damage numbers red.

Oh, and my favorite bit - the player's chance to land a crit is doubled on February 14th.

Emily's leaps and bounds finally work! A consistent theme here is going to be that some animations need retiming, but bear with me, there are bigger hurdles first. Skullmets now have hurt and defeat animations added, and everyone gets a nice little upgrade to their hurt animations in the form of some classic damage numbers.

I did (am doing) more work on Emily's attack sequence today - I worked on my old method of moving her, found a new one that looked better, and have spent the better part of the evening wrestling it into a state of functionality without compromising its visual appeal. I am becoming increasingly glad that Design Brain Andrew had the good sense to make most of the other battle animations keep the characters stationary, because moving the sprites around the battle in unique, non-reusable ways is getting silly.

Today I created a player version of the routine that the Skullmets use to move in battle - there are actually are some core differences between the two on account of how they get their input normally (an automated set of routines vs. controller input). Beyond the simple act of moving, I wired up 3 or 4 classes to make this action possible, connecting the player's classes together just like I did the Skullmet's.

Today I messed around with some fancier status indicators, since I'll want to show if ATK, DEF, and SPD are buffed or debuffed on the player and enemies mid-battle. Something little to break from a big implementation push.

Emily can now feel pain! The player is all set up to have an animated response to taking damage. I also made a really nice god ray particle effect with some help from the web, and added in the dust myself. (Just something I'll want to use later that I was thinking about.)

Em and the Forgotten Lover both have their battle entrances ready to go! I plan on making the time from contact to jump shorter, because as it stands I would rather keep the very clear on-contact visual feedback than wait half a second for a few frames that make it 'cohesive.' (Do you like how fast the Lover is? I'll probably slow him down a little, but I want him to SPOOK people when they run into him for the first time.)

Today I programmed in Emily's item get animation and snazzed up the chest a little bit with a little flashy backer for the item that gets picked up. I also patched a few bugs involving unintentional re-interactions with single use interactables along the way.

Today I implemented the Petal Golem's overworld and battle enter behavior - unlike the Skullmets and Forgotten Lovers, they won't chase you. They don't mind much of anything! There's also an alternate sleep behavior I can toggle so that their overworld behavior is just napping. You'll notice a few visual glitches - these are actually layering mistakes on individual pixels made in Aseprite, and I'm not looking forward to fixing them.

(On a more contemporary note, I'm super bummed about the Unity news, but I also know I'm getting off pretty easy as far as things go. I'll keep at this nonetheless. Take heart, adventurers.)

The Forgotten Lover is in the game! Today I implemented all the non-battle animations and movement patterns - lurching and standing around.

That's a wrap on the Forgotten Lover's animation set! It definitely took a bit longer on account of the more complex character design, but the spritesheets always make it worth it.

Today I drew the last piece of concept art for the Forgotten Lover's animation set. I ultimately went for a stationary, ground-based attack because it seemed more interesting than a vine lash or stab - perhaps it takes less energy to push a vine through the earth than to drag this corpse a few more steps. (Plus, for gameplay purposes, it will be a little quicker than the character walking up, attacking, then walking back into position.)

Finished up the battle entrance today - the attack animation is next!

I was only able to get the windup done on the Forgotten Lover's battle entrance animation today, so here it is! Leaping great distances is yet another advantage of being dead and inhabited by sentient rose vines.

*Though true love is everlasting,
Lust and want and fear are passing.
So thus he went, as all things must,
From ash to ash, and dust to dust. *
(It was great to meet so many people today! I hope showoff becomes filled with the new wonders you bring.)

Today I animated the spellcast action for the Forgotten Lover! The flower section of the animation will be looped for longer in gameplay, but so as not have unnecessary frames, it only occurs once in this .gif export.

Today I animated the front and back walk cycles for the Forgotten Lover. 4 more animations to go.

I wanted a break from character animation today, so I decided to mess around in Blender and make a little test environmental asset. Ultimately, it's best practice to establish more broadly relevant scenery like walls and floors before doing things like this so there's actually an aesthetic to match, but it was still useful to make a test piece - a light check with a camera, if you will. (It will probably look less like cheese next time.)

Today I took it easy and dug into a couple long-standing bugs related to player and enemy positioning with battle entry - namely, that there really wasn't any precision to either of them. It turns out that the player and enemies were pushing on each other when the battle started, often causing one or both to miss their intended position by a wide margin; disabling collisions between the player and 'spawned' enemies generated for the battle has solved quite a bit of it, and the final step is converting the basis of the battle start from a direct enemy-player collision to a trigger-based interaction with no risk of the planes touching each other. (In the process, I also found and fixed another bug related to repeated battle entries and exits, which was nice.)

This is definitely my favorite single animation I've done for Valiantine so far - the very concept of this character design, this rotting corpse with an illogical amount of malicious plant matter inside, invites so many more cool ideas than I have time for. I'm glad I get to play with that concept a little with this hurt animation.

Today I did the left and right walk animations for the Forgotten Lover - it's one of those sets that will make more sense in-game, with the effect that when the limp leg has to be dragged forward the enemy will move very slowly, and when the vine leg gets to step forward it will move faster (hence the arm vines jerking forward, like they're pulling the rest of this shambling semblance of self because they want to go faster).

Today I animated the front and back facing idle poses for the Forgotten Lover. They are, in fact, the last front and back facing idles I'll need to do for the game, because the final boss only has a sideways one. It's good to take pleasure in the little milestones sometimes.

Today I sprited the front and back perspectives for the Forgotten Lover - it's always a bit of a mind bend to rotate a sprite like this, but I'm excited about how well I think the motion guidelines I've established will translate to these perspectives. I'll be needing them for front and back idles and walking towards and away from the camera.

Today I did concept art for a lot of the funkier moves the Forgotten Lover is going to have - piloting a corpse through the day-to-day is one thing, but battle is a whole new garden!

Early post today because the night will be full of adventure and excitement - I finished all of the Petal Golem's animations! The images are the three spritesheets necessary for animating it - its body, its front foot, and its back foot, which will all be on separate planes in the 3D space to create a more convincing sense of depth between the parts. In a sense, I'm only halfway through animating this little guy, because I'll have to string its pieces together like a puppet in Unity! (If you want to see an example, check out my thread in #💻game-development !)

Today I did some concept art and move planning for the Blossom Titan, the game’s final boss. It’s an oversized and ancient being, and while I’ve had a few preliminary final boss options in mind for a while, the Blossom Titan ultimately aligns with the environmental storytelling of the game the best out of all of them.

Today I tuned up my first pass at Valiantine's main theme to the best of my ability - there's no denying that it's a little rough, but I'm happy with it. I'd like to do some tutorials on music theory and composition before I take a stab at the rest of the soundtrack, but I had the musical idea and just couldn't wait to do this one. (Ideally listened to with a backing track of wind ambiance.)

Today I finished the “structure” of my main theme (and some animation, but I’m nowhere near my files tonight); the next step is doing some tuning, because the note timing is all over the place in a small but immensely irritating way. Excited to hopefully share it tomorrow!

He approaches...I did the forward and backward walk and idles for the Petal Golem today, and I did a lot of work on Valiantine's title theme! It's pretty minimalistic, but so far it carries a melancholy that benefits from that. I'm excited to share it soon.

Today I did a handful of animations - flipping the idle for Forgotten Lover, and L/R walking, getting hurt, and getting defeated for the Petal Golem - but none of those are the coolest thing I did today, which was make a song! After a video tutorial to get me set up, and with far too much confidence considering I've never done this before, I made a short little cave theme off the cuff as my first practice, not to be used for anything in particular. It's very simple, befitting someone new to this, but it was fun to just play around and take it slow.

Today I just did a little animation coloring - the day before class always gives me nerves. Each of my enemies is a challenge to animate in their own way - the trick with the Skullmet was making jaw-based locomotion believable, and with the Forgotten Lover, it will be conveying the effect of a corpse being puppeted around, not just moving of its own free will. To that end, the plants are generally going to be the primary motion (see the arm, always pulling forward, or the leg, propping up the body) and the corpse will follow suit (see the arm, flailing about, or the leg, locked in place by the way the bones are standing).

Idles, walks, and potion drinking are now all implemented! It took a little troubleshooting to get the spritesheet and player animator straightened out, but now they're both raring to go.

That's a wrap on animating Emily - here's to putting her in the game taking less time than putting her on the page. 💝

Today I made the wireframe for Emily's attack animation - the final one she needs, and admittedly one that requires more thought to animate, which is why it ended up last on the list. Tomorrow will be coloring, and then onto the full spritesheet.

Valiantine

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