Level 1 Spells in Action

     Now that all the spells are finally coded I can show you what they look like in game. Keep in mind that the game is still in development and I'll be touching up the spell sprites and animations a lot as the summer goes by. For now, I'm happy with how they look. My next step is adding little effects like flame particles shooting out when the Pyre spell blows up and little lightning bolts for the surge spell. I'll also need spell icons for each to make the action button and spell summary page look nice.

Check out the video on YouTube!

New Pixel Art Plan

      I've been brainstorming ways to more easily turn my pencil and paper art skills to become my mouse and pixel art skills. I've decided that the best way to go about it is to simply draw assets I want on paper, scan them in with my printer, play with the size, then start lining up pixels. Drawing all the environmental stuff and complex characters from scratch using only MS Paint pixels ranges from hard to impossible, but drawing what I imagine on paper comes naturally.

      I'm going to give this idea a try. Filling up a sheet of copy paper with doodles of things I need (drawn approximately to scale) with details included. I can scan the sheet and start making all my pixel art then touching the sprites up in Gimp.

Status Report #37

     School is finally over. I can hardly believe it. Just two more years and I'll have a lot of time to make whatever games I want and live in a place where I make the rules. I'm getting a taste of freedom now by having the first ever summer where I focus solely on making a game. No part-time jobs this year. I will be focusing purely on creating Unicorn Quest!

The End of Spring 2014 Semester status report is after the jump.

Spring 2014 Semester Is Over

     Today marks the last day of school. I am just one Statistics final away from glorious game development freedom. In case you haven't noticed the tone of nearly every single post this month, I'm very excited to have some free time this year. I'll overcome this last hurdle, pack up my things (all but my trusty laptop) and leave for home in the morning.

     I'd say the only thing I'd miss this summer is my girlfriend, but I'll just try to occupy myself until I get to visit her again. Shouldn't be too hard. After all I still have to finish every spell's upgrade, create at least 3 special enemies for each region, make 10 common enemies, design boss fights, code AI pathfinding, make a more detailed world map, make sprites for several spell upgrades, make a dynamic text box system, and create all the different items.

    Those are just what I have in mind to start with. I hope to get to a point where I'm just putting pieces together in late July. Once all the hard stuff is done, making a game out of it all should be easy.