Devlog tags

ProtoDungeon 3 demo bugfixes!!! 6 October 2026

Pixel-art screenshot from ProtoDungeon: Episode III showing a character walking through a walled garden courtyard with hedges and grass.

Every day I must decide that it will be enough 19 September 2026

Me: [working on ProtoDungeon 3 by placing decorative tiles behind a cliff literally no one will ever see] 7 August 2026

ProtoDungeon 3 update: he will NOT let you read the books. 5 August 2026

ProtoDungeon 3 update: Mustache guy has a house in progress! 31 July 2026

Also did a thing where I can just move rooms around now! 30 July 2026

Was drawing an NPC and then forgot about it to go help make dinner. 30 July 2026

Droppin’ some trees so you can have your carbon dioxide processed while you explore :) 29 July 2026

Steam likes to send me these reminders every month this is fine it’s fine cool thanks 29 July 2026

Wanna play ProtoDungeon 3 early??? 28 July 2026

Hmmmm 23 July 2026

Little MIDI piano ready to make some SNES music for ProtoDungeon 3

ALT 10 July 2026

The Starflower Engine - Dialogue Creator 4 June 2026

Even though ProtoDungeon: Episode III is still planned to be in 2D, The Starflower Engine can handle the transition… 19 May 2026

There’s sort of this pressure I think to always have big, quality, detailed dev posts, and sometimes I get so deep into… 27 April 2026

Flowers is important! 25 March 2026

Vrin by Studio Spacefarer 20 March 2026

The Starflower Engine 11 March 2026

My stance on generative AI 1 March 2026

Postmortem/Smallnalysis - In which I make assumptions on why ProtoDungeon Episodes I and II have low numbers 19 November 2025

Steam Sale results??? 27 October 2025

PD2 Steam update progress! 20 October 2025

Progressing on the PD2 update is going well! 20 September 2025

IT’S HAPPENING 1 July 2025

Trying this again? 30 June 2025

Studio Spacefarer Steam Dev Page 8 June 2025

Hi y'all, if you played ProtoDungeon Episode I or ProtoDungeon Episode II on Steam, it would be super helpful to me if… 1 June 2025

Hey y'all just a small bit of news that 30 May 2025

ProtoDungeon: Episode II in one week!!! 23 May 2025

Wishlist Episode TWO on Steam 15 April 2025

I am being forced to invent ladders 11 April 2025

ProtoDungeon: Episode I - update status and so on 3 April 2025

ProtoDungeon: Episode I goes live on Steam TOMORRAHHHH 30 March 2025

Trying Some Stuff 10 March 2025

## 63 Wishlists 2 March 2025

Thankful today for my two kids and for our new baby. 17 January 2025

Redid the Game Over scene in ProtoDungeon 3! 13 November 2024

the shadow is back!!! (you probably didn’t even know it was gone) 23 September 2024

## Face your fears! 24 July 2024

😈😈😈😈 you too can wishlist ProtoDungeon on Steam and join the evil horde! 20 July 2024

The State of Things Yet to Come 9 July 2024

Testing a new method for tall grass :) 17 April 2024

Intermission 19 March 2024

The State of Things Present 5 February 2024

The State of Things Past 8 January 2024

2023: 8 Years and a Christmas Carol Devlog 1 January 2024

Um wow you know that thing they say about how 2 October 2023

Devlog update 27 August 2023

this is fun :D 26 June 2023

update de palette! 10 May 2023

One of the things that had been blocking me (heh heh) was various collision and 3D issues with the pushable blocks. 6 May 2023

In order to do borderless windowed, I had to turn off the normal window frame. 16 April 2023

Made a lil freecam so I can debug! 4 December 2022

How to use GameMaker’s filters for lighting! 19 October 2022

I made it better! 14 July 2022

AHHHHH 18 June 2022

protodungeon 3 enemy 15 June 2022

testing a bunch of these bouncy friends all at once 10 June 2022

My only regret is not setting up autotile earlier I was a fool, this is SO MUCH EASIER AHHHH 14 May 2022

Working on a different method for nighttime (and possibly contrast/brightness/etc) and accidentally created something… 4 May 2022

Been playing with my new depth sorting and come up with some stuff that works surprisingly well! 16 April 2022

As a follow-up, I wanted to see if depth was the issue, so I added a sine motion to it. 27 March 2022

I’ve been trying to figure out WHY depth sorting isn’t working for the blocks, so I cobbled together a matrix for a 3D… 27 March 2022

bridges are working!! 14 March 2022

stairs are working again!!! 12 March 2022

Depth-sorting is solved! Z-tilting rules! 8 March 2022

The January Experiment 2 March 2022

April 2021 11 May 2021

Debugblog: Darn Diagonals 31 December 2020

$New title card! And a very enthusiastic lever which is only visible in debug mode for some reason! {{PC_IMG:0}}$ New title card! 8 November 2020

Z-Height: how it’s done 21 October 2020

DEVTOBER 01 - 04 4 October 2020

Spacefarer Newsletter: September 2020 1 October 2020

Spacefarer Newsletter: August 2020 31 August 2020

Spacefarer Newsletter: July 2020 1 August 2020

Spacefarer Newsletter: June 2020 2 July 2020

Spacefarer Newsletter: May 2020 9 June 2020

Episode II dev update! 2 December 2019

ProtoDungeon: Episode II by Studio Spacefarer 13 November 2019

Retrospective - ProtoDungeon: Episode II 4 November 2019

Spent all my free time today hunting down a nasty bug that resurfaced recently. Turns out our duplicate items are back after quitting and reloading the game in some instances. I believe this is due to saving the game before an item is able to destroy itself, meaning when the game loaded, it was pulling in an invisible, undead version of that item that could not be destroyed (which I guess is appropriate for Halloween). I moved the save to a more appropriate location, which seems to have fixed this instance of the bug. However, I believe other, similar bugs could occur due to the way certain state machine values are saved and loaded, so I will be looking into that post-launch. So yeah, kinda exhausting and not the way I wanted to spend the penultimate day of devtober, but there you have it. Tomorrow I’ll work on the other game-breaking bug and hopefully finish up the outro!

devtober day 30 31 October 2019

Finished the intro cutscene–it’s a lot smaller and more like Episode 1’s intro than I originally intended, but I think that’s a good thing. Keep that scope tight!<br> I’ll make the cutscenes easier to manage in a later episode (they’re not that bad, just creating/drawing sprites is a bit particular).

devtober day 29 30 October 2019

Oops, forgot to post yesterday… ## devtober day 27 Played around with a musical motif today. Also wrapped up the writing for the bookshelves, tombstones, and so on! Getting sooo close to being done. ## devtober day 28 Working on the intro and outro cutscenes for the episode! New game now jumps into a quick opening scene, which properly loads the game when complete–still <br>very WIP of course. I’ve also done some major task organization, including publishing prep for Episode II, the feature roadmap, and plans for the poll for Episode III! :D

Oops, forgot to post yesterday… 29 October 2019

Fun stuff today: writing! It’s a bit of work, but it’s a blast and makes the world feel more alive. And now you can read the gravekeeper’s ledger in the basement, just like you’ve always wanted.

devtober day 26 27 October 2019

Added better sound effects for the menu! Now they’re not freakishly grating! This gif secretly has sound!

devtober day 25 26 October 2019

Sound effects are a lot of work! After messing with Bfxr unsuccessfully, I switched back to FamiTracker to create my day/night shift effect. After this, should just be the menu sounds (which are currently awful) and audio will be done!

devtober day 24 25 October 2019

Today I got some good stuff done: - Fixed the pit room puzzle in the catacombs–a previous fix (which I made so the player couldn’t get stuck) made it so that the apparent solution was actually a really long and tedious process. That tedious solution worked, but I don’t want to leave that in to annoy the player when the real solution takes a bit more thought and is more fun. - Saved the current music blend so that the correct track will play on load. - Balanced some of the audio (tall grass was obnoxiously loud in particular). - Created some new sound effects for the ring blocks and a few other things. We’re getting VERY CLOSE TO BEING DONE AAAAAAAH

devtober day 23 24 October 2019

More bugfixes! - **Severe**: Fixed an issue where obtainable items (keys, ring upgrades, etc.) were improperly saving some of their data. When this data got loaded back into the game, it overrode the correct data, causing various and sundry errors. Mainly, when picking up an item, you would get two of that item, and the item wouldn’t disappear. - **Severe**: Fixed a memory leak by cleaning up the state machine data structures - **Severe**: Fixed a crash when loading the game under certain circumstances. This was actually related to the improper saving bug above and would have been fixed simultaneously, but I added some extra handling to prevent the crash regardless–just in case. - **Major**: Retrieving a ring upgrade, leaving the room, quitting the game, then continuing that same game and going back to the place where the ring upgrade was located would grant you another ring upgrade. Fixed this so the ring upgrade would properly destroy itself. **This means all (known) severe bugs have been fixed, and many of the major/minor as well!**<br>

devtober day 22 23 October 2019

Lots more spritework! Hoping to wrap these up very soon! Featured today is the opposite of the moon plants: the sun stones. The gravekeeper also has one of these mysterious headstones in his hut–lucky guy!

devtober day 20 20 October 2019

devtober day 19 20 October 2019

Worked on this guy some more–coding, writing, pixeling. As you can see, his home decoration skills are impeccable!<br>

devtober day 18 19 October 2019

Did some project management and organization, cut down on some duplicate tasks, moved a few things to the Episode III board, and combined some of the tiny task cards into checklists instead so I’d be less overwhelmed with the amount of stuff to do (it worked!). I also released **v0.13.0** of the alpha for patrons, which includes: - -MUSIC - -Updated art/decorations - -A handful of bugfixes Oh… and I started spritework on our new guy up there. :)<br>

devtober day 17 18 October 2019

devtober day 16 17 October 2019

Small change today: the interior of the mausoleum is now dark! A bit tricky due to the bizarro way I designed the mausoleum–another lesson added to the list lol.

devtober day 15 16 October 2019

Balancing audio is DUMB AND BORING so I started working on the dungeon darkness instead.<br> I started off intending to do pitch black when not in the overworld/above ground–and may still do this in the future–but I didn’t really properly design the dungeon for it in this episode (and I’ve already tackled way too many features in Episode II anyway). It wound up being more annoying than interesting. SO I stuck with the night palette instead. Still pretty pleased with how the lighting turned out!

devtober day 14 15 October 2019

I forgot to post yesterday, but I got some good stuff done. Added a fancy toggle trigger which is a big advancement on my previous trigger objects. When the player touches it, it runs a script (which I can set per instance, including parameters), deactivates itself, and activates all the other toggle triggers on the same channel (a channel is just a string in this game–in this case, “musicBlend”). I hooked a few of these up to the music manager and now they trigger the blend between the two versions of the music. **This means music is DONE!**

devtober day 12-13 13 October 2019

devtober day 11 12 October 2019

Today I worked on the music manager object. I’ll expand on this more in later episodes (maybe??), but for now it’ll determine when to play the music and which track to play. Using the Wandersong audio engine is really starting to pay off.

devtober day 10 11 October 2019

devtober day 8 9 October 2019

Got the blend editor working so that I can smoothly switch between the two versions of the music. I still need to tweak some of the curves so that the switch isn’t so sudden, but other than that, I’m pretty pleased! Here’s a gif of protogirl dancing to the beat!

Got the blend editor working so that I can smoothly switch between the two versions of the music. 8 October 2019

Busy day around the house and got very little done. I did dig up my episode 2 music tracks (which I had for some reason saved in a completely uninutitive location) and imported them into the game. To continue, I’ll need to scale down the audio engine’s blend editor, and I don’t have the energy for that today. :)

devtober day 6 7 October 2019

I finished converting most of my sounds in-game to use the Wandersong audio engine without a hitch! Okay, so there was a small hitch–the Wandersong audio engine has an included file that gets modified by the audio editor. I removed this a while back, thinking it was unused. Turns out it IS used… and its absence means that my audio settings weren’t being saved. All it took to fix was to reinclude that file. Anyway, here’s a gif with a bunch of sounds! You’ll just have to use your imagination!

devtober day 5 6 October 2019

I FIXED IT! (MOSTLY!) Somehow the Draw event for the Wandersong audio engine hadn’t made it into my ProtoDungeon project. Copied it over and BAM we’re back in business. Also organized my audio into groups so it can be used by the engine! Look! <br>

devtober day 4 4 October 2019

I wanted to completely reset the audio editor stuff and reimport it fresh, since I’d been tweaking it in another solution. The first reimport attempt somehow kept some of the changes I (shouldn’t have) made to the audio engine, such as purple background AND purple text (??). Well, the git revert went bad and removed a bunch of stuff I didn’t want it to. After about fifteen minutes of panic and one failed attempt, I reverted the reversion, and we’re back in business. Except that the audio editor is in Purple Unreadable Edition, which is 100% my fault (and why I was trying to revert it). Ehh. Anyway. Starting to fix it piece by piece: 1. added a cursor sprite since my game hides the mouse altogether 2. fixed the font–editor needs to use the debug font that came with the audio engine instead of my sprite font

devtober day 3 4 October 2019

Still working on importing that Wandersong audio editor. Spent most of last night and my lunch break today just trying to figure out where one specific field was located in the code since it’s not scaling to the correct position. I found it! But having trouble figuring out where its position details are. :P Also spent some time watching the tutorial on how to use the editor and am pretty excited to get it up and running. I think I may start moving the updated code over to the ProtoDungeon solution and just deal with little visual quirks since it seems pretty much functional at this point.

devtober day 2 2 October 2019

ProtoDungeon: Episode II alpha update v0.12.0 14 September 2019

Quasidaily Updates - ProtoDungeon: Episode II - August 31 - September 13, 2019 14 September 2019

Quasidaily Updates - August 24-31, 2019 1 September 2019

Quasidaily Update ProtoDungeon: Episode II - August 21, 2019 21 August 2019

**Quasidaily Update - August 20, 2019**<br>-Added… uh… SPECIAL HANDLING in case the player positioning in the save file gets messed up<br> And this is a very happy update, because…. ## The save system for ProtoDungeon/The Waking Cloak IS COMPLETE YAAAAAAAAAAY Well, the first pass anyway. And until y’all find all the bugs I missed.<br> <br>

Quasidaily Update - August 20, 2019 -Added… uh… SPECIAL HANDLING in case the player positioning in the save file gets… 21 August 2019

ProtoDungeon: Episode II 19 August 2019

Hey, so, wow, it’s been a while, yeah? I’ve been hard at work putting Episode II together for everyone, and we’ve hit an important milestone: the alpha is complete and available to patrons! Art’s not done (as you can see) and it still needs a lot of polish and good ol’ bug-fixin’, but if you’re a patron (or want to become one!) and want to help test, **[here ya go](https://www.patreon.com/posts/28167267)**! Even $1 tier can access the ProtoDungeon alphas!

ProtoDungeon: Episode II patron alpha is live!!! 6 July 2019

$This was quite a journey the past week or so. My original plan was to just have darkness, with torches and a lantern-like item to help you survive at both night and in the caves: {{PC_IMG:0}} As it turned out, this really wasn’t what I wanted. It was TOO MUCH darkness, especially when large portions of the game would be spent outside at night. I still wanted the idea of scary, dark caves, but it would be way too irritating for everything doing it this way. And besides, this method was *super slow*. First, I tried to simply fix the lights so that they looked better. {{PC_IMG:1}} Oops. After talking it over with a few people on the Discord server, and due to the upcoming item mechanic, I decided to split out the “lighting” into three states: - Day - Night - Dark Dark would be for caves and unlit dungeons: black, unless you had your light, or if there was a light in the room. Meanwhile, you would be able to see at night with a light, and that’s what I started work on: {{PC_IMG:2}} This was actually getting pretty close. It doesn’t adhere to the palette, which isn’t great, and a few people on the Discord server still felt it was too dark. After some conversation, I decided to try a different method, one I’d used a long time ago. **Pixelated Pope’s Retro Palette Swapper**. The reason for this was mainly because I didn’t want to create two sets of images for every single piece of artwork in the game. Inevitably, I would’ve missed some, or updated one sprite and forgotten to update another. It would’ve been a lot of work and code modification. So, a shader seemed in order. I started by doing some mockups of how night would look, using some existing images. I took this opportunity to consolidate my existing palette, remove unused colors, and add a few new ones to support the night palette: {{PC_IMG:3}} **Version 1 was a bit funky and bright.** So I tried again: {{PC_IMG:4}} **This was…. much better**. After some more tweaks, I had a new palette ready to go. The night palette (the bottom row) only used colors from the day palette (the top row). {{PC_IMG:5}} And so I began the process of working with the palette swap shader. It actually went pretty well, though for some reason it wasn’t hitting certain objects, like the player, or jars and other interactable items. {{PC_IMG:6}} It took quite a bit of digging to figure out what was going on there. Initially I thought the palette swapper was ignoring certain layers (since I was applying the swapper shader to a specific set of layers), but that didn’t hold up. Torches and gates, for example, were also on those layers, and they were palette swapping. After a lot more digging, it turns out that the shader was missing these objects because I was modifying their **depth**. In GameMaker, changing the depth means the object gets put in a temporary layer for drawing, and that temp layer is not accessible via code. In other words, the shader would never apply. I spoke with Pixelated Pope, and there were two methods I could try: 1) apply the shader to a depth range, or 2) apply the shader to the full application surface. I tried the depth first, and while it worked, it was amazingly, unusably slow. So it was time to try applying the shader to the app surface instead. The palette swapper has scripts to apply the shader to sprites, layers, depth, and so on, but nothing as far as surfaces. I fumbled around for a bit threw some code together to apply the shader to the app surface, and ***voila**.* {{PC_IMG:7}} Yeah, so it was pretty apparent I had no idea what I was doing. After more consultation with Pixelated Pope, it turned out I hadn’t quite been calling the right functions in the right order. With everything moved to the Post Draw event, and automatic app surface drawing disabled, I had it: {{PC_IMG:8}} But drawing the app surface manually does mean that I don’t get nice, automatic resizing for all monitor resolutions and aspect ratios. It worked fine on my 16:9, 1920x1080 laptop monitor, but in the past, 4:3 and 16:10 (and so on) have caused the game to stretch or squish badly. This was the case when I changed my resolution to 1024x768, so I spent more time messing around with the app surface until it was drawing at the right scaled size (with 1:1 pixels to avoid distortion), and centering it. Unfortunately, the GUI layer, which is drawn after the app surface (and after the Post Draw event), did not want to behave. {{PC_IMG:9}} It may not be totally noticeable here, but the GUI was stretching beyond the sides of the game, which not only looked weird, but caused some minor distortion to those sprites. It took a long time to figure this one out, and it all boiled down to using **display_set_gui_maximize(zoomLevel, zoomLevel, offsetX, offsetY)** (using the same parameters as I did to fix the app surface drawing/scaling/centering), instead of **display_set_gui_size**. Finally, I had to get lights working. Since I didn’t want to make the shader somehow exclude the lights from the palette swap (I would have no idea how), I followed another Pixelated Pope suggestion: the lights now draw an extremely faint, white circle at 0.08 alpha. It’s not noticeable to the human eye, but it IS noticeable to the shader. The shader doesn’t swap the palette of anything touched by that light. {{PC_IMG:10}} And that’s all! I hope you enjoyed reading this. Next up, I’m planning on working on true darkness for scary, unlit caves and dungeons. This should be easier, since I’ve already worked with the overlay method–I just need to change it to complete black and tweak it until it looks and plays nicely (famous last words?).$ Night and torches are now working properly! :D 15 May 2019

$Day/night will be very important in The Waking Cloak (and, by extension, ProtoDungeon), so here’s an early test version of palette swapping on the fly! It’s NOT done by any means yet–objects/player aren’t included in the palette swap for some reason, while the torches and lighting aren’t working. But we’ll get there. :) I spent a lot of today revamping my existing palette. Removed a handful of colors I wasn’t using anywhere, consolidated a few other similar ones. I did add 2-3 more colors for night, but since I’d removed so many other colors, I actually have fewer than when I started, so that’s exciting! (This was also a nice opportunity to tweak some of my existing colors that weren’t my favorite and fix some sprites that used an even older palette lol.) Anyway, top is day/normal, bottom is night! Night uses only colors from the day palette! {{PC_IMG:0}}$ Day/night will be very important in The Waking Cloak (and, by extension, ProtoDungeon), so here’s an early test version… 12 May 2019

For protodungeon is each room its own room in 12 May 2019

ProtoDungeon: Episode I by Studio Spacefarer 6 April 2019

Building a ProtoDungeon 28 March 2019

FINALLY starting to add art to the #ProtoDungeon. I feel like it’s gaining some life at last. :)

FINALLY starting to add art to the #ProtoDungeon. 2 March 2019

Some pits drop you down to lower floors! (Don’t worry, they’ll have different sprites so you can distinguish which are which).<br> Also including some new circle transitions I whipped up, and dust clouds (which are admittedly obscured by the temporary player sprite…)!

Some pits drop you down to lower floors! 25 February 2019

Higher quality version of this post. 24 February 2019

When you upgrade the swap spell, you can control its direction… with your miiiiiind! 24 February 2019

So pleased with how levels and cliffs turned out in the ProtoDungeon! Something I’ve really been thinking a lot about is how best to get “height” working in a 2D game, which is more complicated than it looks at first glance. I’ve got a big ol’ post about how it’s done coming soon!

So pleased with how levels and cliffs turned out in the ProtoDungeon! 16 February 2019

I also have two types of swap objects now: jars, which break when you swap with them, and “that diamond thing (patent pending, probably won’t actually be a diamond in game)”, which is downright indestructible! <br> *Just a reminder… this is all programmer art. Not final. Please don’t think this is the final art.*

I also have two types of swap objects now: jars, which break when you swap with them, and “that diamond thing (patent… 14 February 2019

Another ProtoDungeon update! I already had pits that could “drop” you to the floor below (basically by teleporting you to whatever location you specify), but I wanted to add a falling “animation” to make that clearer–and for a bit of personality. :)<br>

Another ProtoDungeon update! 10 February 2019

$Here’s the first in-game “whitebox” for the ProtoDungeon! Nothing’s hooked up or finished (hopefully that’s obvious lol), but this will be useful for getting the foundational stuff working before committing to art! This is a going to be the first demo for The Waking Cloak, specifically for the swap mechanic, but since I don’t want to spoil anything, I’ve been considering just what exactly I’d like to do artwise. Do I use all my existing tiles and sprites–even Tav? Do I go for something completely different, maybe sci-fi? For now I’ve settled on somewhere in the middle. I’ll use the existing tiles, but maybe recolor them. I’ll create a new set of player sprites (I think it’ll be an orange-themed girl). I’d like to include hints and clues for The Waking Cloak, but I’d also like this to be a completely separate experience! But **before all that**, I need to get some big pieces in place. Right now I’m getting the doors and stairs to work properly! They’ll need to essentially “teleport” the player object to the proper location, which is a bit trickier than it sounds because the camera also has to follow suit. Since the camera has a fair bit of code around it to make sure it smoothly scrolls between rooms, I have to sidestep that entirely… which currently means this, lol: {{PC_IMG:0}} I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to figure that out today. Then it’s on to a transition so the player won’t be completely bewildered by the teleportation–probably some kind of wipe to black.$ Here’s the first in-game “whitebox” for the ProtoDungeon! 7 February 2019

$The ProtoDungeon makes a reappearance!! :D This is where I’ve been testing a lot of my code. It helps to work in a place that almost entirely ignores aesthetics so that I can get the mechanics and feel down. If it feels good while it looks like this, surely it’ll be even better once I add the art and effects. :) In this case, I’m getting my old block pushing code to work with the collision code I updated recently. In the process, I found out I could make pushing the jars feel even better than pushing the blocks, so that’s nice! Finally, a bit of a mini-announcement: ## The ProtoDungeon is going to be the very first “demo” of The Waking Cloak! It’ll show off the swap mechanics while not spoiling anything from the game–it’ll be a completely different scenario. This will also get me some good practice on dungeon building and, of course, feedback! I don’t know at this point when it will be available (will probably be several weeks at least), but I believe I will first make it available to [Patreon patrons](https://www.patreon.com/mrdaneeyul), and then to those on the [Discord server](https://discord.gg/v7rf8h2). ## And one more thing… My wife and I had our baby!! She is very cute. :3 {{PC_IMG:0}} Our dog Kiwi is 100% in love with her and will protect her with her life (and gives her lots of gentle doggy kisses) {{PC_IMG:1}}$ The ProtoDungeon makes a reappearance!! 27 January 2019

Momo is helping me work on The Waking Cloak’s overworld! 11 January 2019

I am still learning 30 November 2018

I did one final gamedev stream before the baby comes! 21 November 2018

$I know I’ve been silent for a while, but it’s because I’ve been **very hard at work** on this for you guys. :) ## The New Inventory Screen This ended up being a massive undertaking. I thought I’d just clean up the old inventory screen a bit, make it look a touch nicer, and get rid of a few of the things that were obsolete. Little did I know that I was going to spend about a month hammering away at every aspect of the game in order to complete the redesign. Here’s the ***old*** version! {{PC_IMG:0}} And the new one, for easier comparison: {{PC_IMG:1}} So what all changed? - I redrew **every single sprite AAAAAAAAH** (seriously, this took forever) - Added a map (which necessitated having the overworld more or less laid out)–it’s not functional yet, but someday… - Switched the HUD to be darker and thus easier on the eyes - Added amulet and tablet fragments to the HUD beside gems - Added a mini-map to the HUD - Got rid of the mana (I’d dropped it a long time ago but it just kind of sat there on the inventory screen anyway) - Simplified the frame (for a while, the frame corners even had white “bracket” things making them *too* fancy and distracting!) - Rearranged pretty much everything - Dropped useless key items, including the seed box, the egg, the water bracelet, the scroll, the thorn, two keys, and the four orbs - Finalized dungeon concepts/location concepts/item sequence (this *alone* took a week or two) so that I could finalize my equipment - Cut and trimmed equipment: dropped the mirror, simplified the staff, re-added the wind item as a fan (used to be Soli’s Satchel back when we first created the game!), and upgraded the ring from a key item (partly taking over one of the staff functionalities) - Added a pretty background that will reflect whether it’s day or night~ - Added the orbs frame… these will mark your progress through the game - Lots and lots of tweaking everything, etc., etc., ad infinitum I’m **extremely pleased** with the final result (though “final” is a loose term–it’ll change as the game continues to evolve, just not as drastically), and I hope you are too. This was a great exercise that really solidified a lot of important stuff. I hope you enjoy! :)$ I know I’ve been silent for a while, but it’s because I’ve been very hard at work on this for you guys. 13 October 2018

Just when you thought this couldn’t get any better, you add line-of-sight boxes and IT BECOMES A WORK OF ART.<br>

Just when you thought this couldn’t get any better, you add line-of-sight boxes and IT BECOMES A WORK OF ART. 19 August 2018

HAS SCIENCE GONE TOO FAR? WHICH ONE IS REAL??? I got the walking AI pretty much wrapped up, and I figured the best way to test it was to drop a buuuunch of clones into one room and see what happened. Which resulted in a lot of giggling on my part.

HAS SCIENCE GONE TOO FAR? 28 July 2018

$I ran a poll on Twitter asking if people wanted to see my WIP map of The Waking Cloak, and the overwhelming majority were very excited at the prospect! ## All the disclaimers~ - I’ll keep things spoiler-free, but you *will* be able to see the basic layout and roughly where some locations will be. - This is a **first draft** and an **early** **work-in-progress** at that. Nothing is done, nothing is set in stone, things will definitely change. :) - It’s somewhat rectangular on purpose. I like the idea of a map and being able to explore every corner, which means every corner will be utilized! - This (obviously) does not include dungeons, caves, interiors, etc. - Areas are *temporarily* blobbed out with tiles. For example, the final forest in the game won’t be a big blob of tree tiles–it will be filled with lots of paths and secrets and places to explore. - Tiles are not completed either! Ok, I think you get the idea… click below to see the maps. {{PC_IMG:0}} My first sketch! I made this a while ago and have found it very helpful for visualizing things. :) I’ve blurred out most of the labels! {{PC_IMG:1}} I started working on the map in Tiled! I wanted to begin with the lower left section because it’s pretty contained and manageable. {{PC_IMG:2}} Here I’ve done a lot more detail work on the bottom left island and blobbed out some very generic features. I did also add the town and the cliffs on the southwest end of the main island. The grid is just Tiled objects that are the size of the screen (320x160) so I can visualize what you guys will see and so I have a sense of scale. {{PC_IMG:3}} Here I started adding a lot more general details: the forest in the middle, the northern mountains, and so on. {{PC_IMG:4}} Then I decided to start making it more like my sketch. I squished up the southern sandy area and moved the swamp over, and added some other rough details. {{PC_IMG:5}} And here it is without the regions, just for niceness! You can see there’s a LOT left to do, a lot of empty space, and the details are still very primitive. But it’s fun to show off some of my progress here, especially when I’ve been doing a bunch of behind-the-scenes work lately. Of course as I continue to get closer to finishing the first draft, I won’t be able to show anymore! Much too spoilery. However, I am going to continue to work on this, adding details, paths, landmarks, secrets, and so on for you guys to explore. :) Building the world is easily one of my favorite tasks while making The Waking Cloak.$ I ran a poll on Twitter asking if people wanted to see my WIP map of The Waking Cloak, and the overwhelming majority… 21 July 2018

$My wife and I took a vacation last week! MUCH needed time in the beautiful forests and mountains of Arkansas. I made it my mission to rest from creative stuff while we were there, but I did take a few hours one afternoon to write some of the game’s lore and backstory in my sketchbook, which you can see above! Also here’s Oreo, the wandering cat of the property, who became my friend: {{PC_IMG:0}} {{PC_IMG:1}} Alright, so on to this week! Didn’t get too much done, but the momentum is definitely building back up. :) **Tuesday** Worked on the first draft of the overworld map. Got the town more or less settled in its place on the island, and have begun to extend it to include the castle and the surrounding countryside. **Wednesday** Was feeling pretty unmotivated today, even for my day job, so when I wrapped up work I just played some games (Hollow Knight!!! I’m taking notes……) and did some organization (digitizing our media library). **Thursday** Worked on Draft 3 of the novelization for writers group this Saturday. The game and the novelization have been really feeding off each other. My hope is that, even though I’m going to hardcore trim the story for the game, that the novelization will lend extra depth and worldbuilding to it anyway. **Friday** More work on that novelization thing!$ Week of July 8, 2018 14 July 2018

Week of June 17, 2018 23 June 2018

$I forgot to actually add AI to this enemy and give it its own sprite. So… it’s more like a poseable mannequin? And it looks eerily familiar, like someone you know? Anyway, I went ahead and added the AI script. I’m not sure I got this right. {{PC_IMG:0}}$ I forgot to actually add AI to this enemy and give it its own sprite. 16 June 2018

Week of June 10, 2018 16 June 2018

Week of June 3, 2018 10 June 2018

One of my favorite things about the setting of The Waking Cloak is fitting in some pretty wild boss concepts! This one is a WIP for sure, and I’m going for maximum creepiness as usual. :)

One of my favorite things about the setting of The Waking Cloak is fitting in some pretty wild boss concepts! 2 June 2018

Week of May 27, 2018 2 June 2018

Bug… or new dance troupe?? 26 May 2018

Week of May 20, 2018 26 May 2018

Week of May 13, 2018 19 May 2018

Testing out new collision and some new knockback code!! 12 May 2018

Week of May 6, 2018 12 May 2018

Weekly Repoooorts 5 May 2018

“Sure I’ll rework the collision! It’ll be easy!”<br>

“Sure I’ll rework the collision! 31 March 2018

What happened 29 March 2018

It’s been a long few weeks, but I still got some stuff done! First, did a bit of a “palette cleanser.” Still some tweaks to be made (lots of samey reds for example), but I’ve already removed a lot of colors that were too similar (wayyyy too many grays) and messed with a few of the other minor colors. Also some (very) WIP walls! As you saw in the pushin’ blocks gif, I switched to a more traditional Zelda-dungeon view for my interiors (I’m considering a post on why I went this direction, but essentially it allows for more flexible level design). Oh, and the blue walls have a very special secret about them that nobody will know until the game releases! :D

It’s been a long few weeks, but I still got some stuff done! 24 February 2018

Block pushing is now past prototype and you can actually do it in the game! Woohoo! Aaaaaaand some new dungeon tiles!

Block pushing is now past prototype and you can actually do it in the game! 10 February 2018

Here’s my new, revolutionary block-pushing mechanic… and a rare glimpse one of my prototype rooms for [#**TheWakingCloak**](https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheWakingCloak?src=hash)! The neon colors motivate me! The prototype room lets me explore and refine mechanics before I put them in the wider world of the main game, which has a lot more code. It’s a good way to untangle and refactor without getting lost. I originally was attempting to make it as ugly as possible by picking horrible colors, but it actually ended up looking kinda neat…<br>

Here’s my new, revolutionary block-pushing mechanic… and a rare glimpse one of my prototype rooms for #TheWakingCloak! 21 January 2018

Today I'm back to my day job! 8 January 2018

The Waking Cloak Discord server has launched, and YOU’RE ALL INVITED!!! ## **[https://discord.gg/v7rf8h2](https://discord.gg/v7rf8h2)** Come hang out with us! :D For those who are unaware, Discord is basically a better version of Skype mixed with live community forums with a dash of me posting whatever I’m working on. There’s also channels for you to share your own stuff–games, art, fanart, writing, whatever. We’d love to have you join us!

The Waking Cloak Discord server has launched, and YOU’RE ALL INVITED!!! 2 January 2018

2017 and Onward 1 January 2018

Roll attack is in the game!! Still tweaking various values to make it feel really good and squish the major bugs, but I’m excited to have it in there.

Roll attack is in the game!! 30 December 2017

Working on enemy AI for the first time. Accidentally made a clone that wanders the entire map. What does it want? Where is it going? Is it hungry? IS IT SENTIENT??

Working on enemy AI for the first time. 28 December 2017

Mini-update! 23 December 2017

TheWakingCloak.com now has **2,000 followers** (AND as of this posting, there’s also nearly **900 followers** on my [Twitter account, @MrDaneeyul](http://www.twitter.com/mrdaneeyul)!) I’m so amazed and incredibly thankful for all of you (yes, even you bots!). At the beginning of 2017, there were only a few hundred followers. I never dreamed The Waking Cloak would have almost 3,000 total. And we’re just getting started. It’s mind-boggling and humbling that so many people would even have a passing interest in my little game. I will continue to pour my heart into The Waking Cloak in your honor. I hope that you’ll continue to follow along, and I hope that, when the game finally does come out, you’ll have a labor of love on your hands that you really enjoy playing. :) **Thank you all**

TWO THOUSAND FOLLOWERS 21 December 2017

Facebook page launched! 20 December 2017

MAN it feels good to be back. Here’s my roll attack animations for [#TheWakingCloak](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23TheWakingCloak). :D <br> Essentially it’s the first several frames of the roll, the last few frames of the attack, with some transitional animation frames in between. This is what you get when you hit the attack button while rolling–the area of damage ends up being bigger, and I’ll probably set it up to do extra damage (maybe 1.5). I haven’t “eased” the animation yet, but I’ll get to that during programming.<br>

MAN it feels good to be back. 9 December 2017

Hey, everyone! 9 December 2017

Hey ive been learning gamemaker for the better 24 October 2017

State of the Game Oct 2017 18 October 2017

“I do not approve of this shabby compartment,” is the first thing **Roderek** was heard to have said when boarding the refugee ship. It’s not certain whether his wrinkled nose is a feature he was born with, or if it’s just something that’s become permanently a part of his face after making disgusted expressions all the time.<br> He never calls anyone by name or even by respectful titles. Usually it’s “boy” or “little girl”… regardless of age. Roderek’s opinion on everything is always heard, and his way is always the best way. Don’t tell him of your woes, because he’ll either one-up you or utter terrible phrases such as, “Why not get a real job instead?” I drew a completely different sprite for this guy, decided it didn’t fit (but I’d still use it later), saved it, and then started over. You’ll see that other guy someday! It’s kind of unfortunate that I wasn’t able to create a making-of GIF for Roderek, since he changed so much. He was originally shorter, with a *much* bigger head. Maybe appropriate to his character, but it didn’t look very good! He also wore red clothes which my I realized (almost too late) were a ripoff of [Ziddo’s original clothes](http://www.thewakingcloak.com/post/164529083535/ziddo-is-cool-and-hell-be-the-first-to-let): red with a white belt and white diagonal middle. So I fixed his Roderek’s head, but it took a long time before I was happy with his clothing. I experimented with different vests (which his old arms [curse arms!] kept covering up). Making him one pixel taller and redrawing his body helped a lot. Got a bit fancier with his clothes too. The wide stride was not on purpose, but I like how it makes him look overly confident. :)

“I do not approve of this shabby compartment,” is the first thing Roderek was heard to have said when boarding the… 11 October 2017

How did you get your smooth camera movement 11 October 2017

[Seni](http://www.thewakingcloak.com/post/162907962748/seni-works-hard-as-the-town-runner-carrying)and [Bipso](http://www.thewakingcloak.com/post/163722877432/bipso-is-that-kid-you-know-the-one-thatdespite) call her Mom, but **Lyda** is also the best (and possibly only) baker on the island. Her blazberry pies are to die for, and she has baked often for King Ogwarther XV and his father before him.<br> Little known fact: when Lyda was younger, she was a bit of an adventurer herself! She used to roam parts of the island (though not the mountainous northern region, nor the depths of the forest, of course), and has even visited the Turtle Tribe on occasion. Her husband is a bit of a timid sort, and they tend to clash on how much freedom to give their children. Does the old sprite look familiar? It’s the same as for [Firula](http://www.thewakingcloak.com/post/160774018650/meet-firula-what-to-do-when-you-have-a-love-of)! When I originally started remaking the sprite for Firula, I ended up going in a couple different directions–the young diva and the kindly mother. The mother sprite didn’t go particularly well at first, so I saved it away and finished up Firula. I only made a couple tweaks, though, to the new mother sprite before Lyda emerged. I’d already been toying around with another sprite and ended up making a head I liked, but didn’t fit that character. I replaced Lyda’s head with that one, fixed the arms (as ususal), ironed out some kinks with the dress, and voilà!

Seniand Bipso call her Mom, but Lyda is also the best (and possibly only) baker on the island. 4 October 2017

Careful you don’t plunge to your death! That edge is dangerous. I’m pretty happy about getting bottomless pits in the game. They’re great obstacles for you guys to overcome, and another tool in my belt for creating interesting and varied puzzles!

Careful you don’t plunge to your death! 30 September 2017

$**Baka** thinks he knows a lot, but when you set him down in an unfamiliar situation (pretty much any situation), he shows his true colors: he has no idea how anything works, and he has no idea that he has no idea. Sure, Baka’s pretty easygoing, but don’t count on him to avoid putting his foot in his mouth. True to form, he’s boarded the refugee ship thinking it’ll be a nice tour of the bay area. Little does he know he’s about to embark on the journey of a lifetime! Pretty appropriately to his character, I set out to create Baka without any direction on what he’d end up looking like. Usually I have a pretty good idea (or two or three) what I want, and it evolves from there. Not so this time! I started off by giving him a magnifying glass, which he held up to each eye. I thought it’d be funny if he was the clueless guy but had the tool most recognizable for finding clues. He kind of ended up with a Sherlock Holmes-style hat, then swooshy hair, then bald, then a receding hairline. And I had problems with arms (as usual). But something wasn’t right. It was difficult getting the magnifying glass to clearly look like a magnifying glass with only three colors. As a test, I sent that version out to see what people thought without saying what it was. The response was also appropriately clueless: “Wh-what’s wrong with his eyes??” So I went with my gut and scrapped it! After that, finishing him up became about ten times easier! {{PC_IMG:0}}$ Baka thinks he knows a lot, but when you set him down in an unfamiliar situation (pretty much any situation), he shows… 27 September 2017

$He’s not mentioned in any folktale or legend, unlike Vanth, but recent reports tell of a new, menacing figure accompanying the apparent return of the witch. **General Charun** commands an army of monsters without a single word. What will you do if you are unlucky enough to meet him? Here’s a special edition NPC reveal! Turns out this guy is the most complicated NPC I’ve drawn (go figure, since he’s also four times as large as the rest). My initial mental image didn’t work out in the slightest (as you’ll see below in the process gif, lol). I was thinking something like [General Onox](http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/General_Onox_(boss)) from Oracle of Seasons to parallel Vanth being loosely based off Veran from Oracle of Ages. I flailed around quite a bit with the design, attempting quite a few helmet styles, and took some stabs at a body design at the same size as Vanth, before throwing him at my little brother and begging for help. My brother was a big help on this one. He had some great suggestions–change the color, make him bigger, don’t make him look like a power ranger or an 80′s cartoon character with the spikes on his shoulders. I lucked out quite a bit on the arms (arms are hard), and since I was having immense trouble with the legs (which you’ll also see in the process gif), I went back to a bit of the General Onox design and did the leg/trenchcoat/armor/thingies. It seems to have worked out. :) The promised process gif! Sorry about the lopsidedness at the beginning: {{PC_IMG:0}} Oh, and a bonus from our critique session: {{PC_IMG:1}}$ He’s not mentioned in any folktale or legend, unlike Vanth, but recent reports tell of a new, menacing figure… 16 September 2017

More of a message then a question but i love your 14 September 2017

Nobody on the island–not even the adventurous Pono–has met the mysterious old lady in the woods. Some say if you stand up on the cliffs by the castle on a moonless night, you can look out over the black waters to the tiny sister island and see strange lights waxing and waning. Magic from another age, maybe will-o’-the-wisps. Or *maybe* the myths about the Dragon Kings are true and someone does live out there–watching and waiting for some unknown purpose. I actually had some trouble with this one, because I’d already drawn another old woman (whom you may have seen in the rolling gif and dialogue tests!). It meant I had to figure out how to differentiate them in a visible way other than just the obvious color change–I didn’t want just a palette swap. Lots of experimentation and redrawing finally led to a unique hairstyle, and everything branched out from there! She’s actually one of the shortest NPCs I have (if not the shortest). She was originally made shorter in order to fit a hairbun on top, but even after I changed the hairstyle, I left her short. I like it because it makes her look hunched. Perfect for the character. :)

Nobody on the island–not even the adventurous Pono–has met the mysterious old lady in the woods. 13 September 2017

How did you pick your color palette for your game 10 September 2017

What gamemaker games are a must play also know 9 September 2017

Yo! Here’s a gif of the (VERY WIP) roll attack. The process has been a bit different for this one, since I cribbed animations from my roll and my attack–kinda nice to have that foundation instead of starting from scratch. But I still did a basic sketch (in red) of where I want the sword hitbox to be, and then used that to fill in the gaps in the middle. Remember that the sword “smear” is the hitbox… so the roll attack hits a bit wider than your standard attack. Plus it hits harder too! Of course, it takes longer to actually do than a normal attack, so it wouldn’t be worth it to do roll attacks constantly. But it makes a good opening strike, or a swift comeback after a dodge!

Yo! 9 September 2017

**Pono** is the most adventurous of the turtle tribe (at least until Opo grows up), venturing far outside the swamp and into the rest of the isle. Unfortunately, Pono’s adventurous spirit don’t quite match up with his luck–he’s extremely accident prone. If you meet him during your travels, you’re much more likely to find him stuck on his back than actually doing any adventuring! But he’s a kind, helpful soul, and there’s something to be said for his sense of wonder and curiosity. I drew the first version on Monday, completely forgot to update him yesterday, and scrambled to finish him up today during my lunch break. I “condensed” him a bit–while the turtles from the turtle tribe are generally much larger than humans, I didn’t feel like the proportions were quite right. Turns out making him one pixel shorter worked pretty well! The awful shading on his face is gone, and I got rid of the brown. We’re still technically one color over the limit for Game Boy Color sprites (as I’ve mentioned before, they could do four colors, but transparency counts as one of those colors). Most NPC sprites in the game will stick strictly to three colors for consistency and style, but the Game Boy *did* have a method to add more colors to a sprite: create a new sprite with the new color and overlay them. In this case, you could consider the “belly” of the shell as its own separate sprite. Of course, this is shortcutted a bit–I’m not strictly sticking to the ten-sprites-per-row limit (never mind that the game’s base resolution is twice as wide), and I’m just making this guy one sprite instead of multiple. Modern amenities, right?

Pono is the most adventurous of the turtle tribe (at least until Opo grows up), venturing far outside the swamp and… 6 September 2017

Who needs to walk when you can roll? Rolling is in The Waking Cloak, and now you can recreate your favorite Hyrule Field memories! aka, never actually walking like a normal person! Of course, while it’s faster, rolling is more imprecise, and you might end up bonking your head on stuff if you’re not careful. The only reason the gif above works is because I’m a trained professional at rolling. Up next: the roll attack!

Who needs to walk when you can roll? 2 September 2017

Spent a bit of time today tweaking Vanth’s animations and a few other details! 31 August 2017

$In darkness she walked, down in the vale, illuminated by the moon and starlight she coveted so desperately. Whispers said monsters do not harm the strange figure, that she controlled the monsters, summoned them… or perhaps she was one herself, for in the wars she struck down warriors and innocents alike. **Vanth**, they called her. The witch, they called her. But that was all in a past age. Now? Now she walks only in nightmares. Vanth is the second character ever we created for The Waking Cloak, but I didn’t actually draw her until a few weeks ago! I didn’t really have any concept of what she would look like, except that I knew purple would be her color. I wanted to give her similar detail to [Veran](http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Veran), the antagonist of Oracle of Ages. However, after struggling with that for a few minutes, I went to study Veran and see how they pulled it off. Turns out [her sprite](https://zelda.gamepedia.com/media/zelda.gamepedia.com/3/30/Veran_Sprite.png?version=56762d24455510a01edb884f427ba663) was actually different from the rest–she was 24x16 pixels–8px taller than all the other NPCs in the game! The idea of breaking convention for this one character really appealed to me. She could be taller, more intimidating, maybe something more than human. Well, as you can see, the first sprite didn’t go well. She wasn’t intimidating in the slightest. I’d pretty much just drawn the hat and then drew her under it about five or six different ways (I still like the hat, actually). Everything about her just said “hip teenage witch,” which was the wrong impression. So I scrapped her completely and started over. This was a much smoother process! {{PC_IMG:0}} *(Sorry about the weird quality of this gif. This was the first process gif I did, and I recorded it as a video originally… so this is a gif of a video, lol. Also, yes, the finished version here is not the same as the newest version.)* The hardest part was getting her face right, since the standard eyes made her look too “cutesy.” A veil solved that nicely, plus made for a more unique character. Another convention I decided to break was the number of frames I’d use. All NPCs have only two frames, but I decided to animate her hair, her dress, and her veil. Not only does six frames allow me to animate all those nicely, but it reinforces an otherworldly aspect about her without breaking too many rules. I hope you like it! :)$ In darkness she walked, down in the vale, illuminated by the moon and starlight she coveted so desperately. 30 August 2017

**Ziddo** is cool, and he’ll be the first to let everyone know just how much cooler he is than you. He’s got it all: looks, charm, muscles, a smooth hairdo, and a sweet v-neck. When Ziddo enters a room, everyone’s eyes are drawn to him. He’s always bragging about his success with the ladies. So then… why leave his home and jump on a refugee ship to cross the sea for the Eastern Continent when you’ve got it this good? Well, the refugees could use some eye candy, and so the entire world has a chance to bask in your glory, of course! Big fish needs a big pond! Another early remake I did! First thing (after correcting his color palette) was to give him some more movement. Just moving the head wasn’t enough, of course, so I messed with his arms–for once, the arms didn’t give me trouble! What did give me trouble this time was the clothes. Nothing I tried looked right… until I accidentally gave him a really wide neckline. I couldn’t stop giggling at how silly it looked, and so I pulled it down even farther until he had a deep v-neck. Inspired and amused by this stroke of luck, I finished off the sprite by decorating his belt so it didn’t look like he had a midriff. At the beginning, I knew I wanted an egotistical bully-ish character that claimed credit for most of the things you did as a player. Once Ziddo’s sprite was done, I knew I’d found him. :D

Ziddo is cool, and he’ll be the first to let everyone know just how much cooler he is than you. 23 August 2017

After drawing a whole bunch of individual frames for an animation, I like to create a mockup to see how it will work, how much I want it to move, and to refine everything. This mockup alone helped me fix quite a lot of issues (especially with the north-facing roll)! I thought it’d be fun to decorate the scene a little bit more too. I like to think Farmer Hibu is either cheering Tav on… or acting as a drill sergeant.

After drawing a whole bunch of individual frames for an animation, I like to create a mockup to see how it will work… 19 August 2017

$Most villagers have never *heard* of **Odys the Hermit**, never mind seen him. Dak the Lumberjack will occasionally leave out a basket of food in the deep woods–maybe an animal takes it, maybe it’s something else. Or someone else. But Odys does exist (at least, he thinks so, most of the time). What would drive a man to live among the treetops and live alone as a hermit? Does he just like his peace and quiet? Or is it perhaps some other reason… a mysterious past that he can’t face? I ran the Monday poll as usual. It’s always fun to guess which NPC people will vote for, but this time I ended up way off the mark–my initial guess was for the Witch’s General, but after the first vote, he didn’t really take off. The witch herself was in the lead for quite some time, so I went ahead and drew her up. Of course, the hermit pulled ahead near the end, so today’s lunch break was all about finishing this guy. I’ve got a treat for everyone this time… a process gif! {{PC_IMG:0}} This is pretty fun to do, though it skips all the false starts and undos. The method works by undoing everything you’ve done, starting up GifCam, and recording all the “redos”. The process makes me look quite a bit more skilled than I actually am, lol. So what you don’t see here is how many different times I tried to draw the hermit before undoing everything and starting over. I struggled with the beard in particular–distinguishing it from the face, giving him a body, making sure he didn’t look naked, making sure he didn’t look groomed, etc. Then the arms. Arms are always difficult!$ Most villagers have never heard of Odys the Hermit, never mind seen him. 16 August 2017

Some SNES Instrument Demos 15 August 2017

Because I love you guys, here’s a goofy bug gif back when I was ironing out combat movement. 12 August 2017

Flashing sprites with a shader in GameMaker! 12 August 2017

**Loros** has arrived with his trademark pedantry and snobbery! But when he’s not talking pointless facts or faking a laugh, he’s dancing–which is something he’s actually quite good at. In hopes of passing on his illustrious knowledge and glorious skill, Loros has created a school of dance. Sadly, no one has yet taken him up on this offer (except Firula, but Loros considers her much too dramatic and inconsistent to take classes… and he’s not wrong). One of the earliest NPC remakes I did. I enjoyed making him more dance-y since the original moved very little! An important tip for doing this (especially at low resolution like this) is to make whichever part of the body you want to give movement an odd number of pixels wide. Then move that body part one pixel left and right. In this case, the head! It looks like more in Loros’ case because his weird fringe thing is also moving, just in the opposite direction Giving him feet helped too, of course. :) One thing that’s a bit unfortunate: I couldn’t keep the monocle. The only reason it worked originally was because it was a different color from his skin. Once I trimmed the colors down to the limit, it ended up looking like a weird blob/scar thing–difficult to “read.” Clarity is important.

Loros has arrived with his trademark pedantry and snobbery! 9 August 2017

I’ve gone back and forth about whether I want rolling in the game, what purpose it will serve, and so on. I think I decided to include it when I saw Minish Cap had rolling! I’m still figuring out what kind of gameplay effect it will have. Faster movement? Bashing into things? Dodging enemy attacks? I’m pretty certain I at least want to have a “roll attack” (whether you start with it or learn it later) that does more damage. You’d have to hit the attack at the right time just before the roll ends. I also like the idea of using it to dodge enemy attacks, but I want to make sure people don’t just spam it (and I don’t really want a stamina bar, I don’t think). Maybe the only invincibility frames will be in the middle. Or maybe there are certain attack types that can’t be dodged. The best route I think for this will be to look at Super Smash Bros! Feel free to let me know if you have any further thoughts! <br>

Look, a roll mockup! 8 August 2017

A quick and easy way to do a sword-slash effect in GameMaker! When my enemy parent object gets hit (all enemies are children of this object, so any enemy that gets hit basically), first check to see if a hit alarm has already been set. If not, go ahead and set it for 1/10th of a second, play a sound, and call instance_create_depth to create the slashEffect_obj. Note the x and y positions–we’re adding a random number from -4 to 4 to x and to y. This is so the slash object is not always created in the exact center of the enemy object. The slashEffect_obj’s Create Event then picks an angle using “image_angle = choose(90, 180, 270, 360)”. We could include more or less angles in the choose function here, but this works pretty well. This, combined with a bit of randomness to the x & y coordinates of the object, helps the slash effect look a little different each time. The image_speed of the animation is also set (I’m setting image_index = 0 here for some reason, but it’s totally not necessary). The only other event is Animation End, which calls instance_destroy() to kill the effect object. (Oh, and back on the enemy object, when the alarm hits 0, it will set “isHit” back to false and the enemy can be hit again.) **EDIT:** I have this working in game, but it’s not yet ready to show what this looks like. Keep an eye out–should be ready next week, I think! In the future, I’ll try to show code of stuff that I’ve already shown you guys. :) Let me know if you have any questions! I don’t always have something visually interesting to show for #screenshotsaturday, so I set up a poll to see if people were interested in seeing screenshots of code (people have requested this before, but I couldn’t tell if they were serious or joking!). Turns out 80% so far are actually interested, so here ya go, lol. This is kind of nice for me because working on a game isn’t always working on the glamorous visuals. I spend most of my time here in the code!

A quick and easy way to do a sword-slash effect in GameMaker! 5 August 2017

This is an incredibly important question will the 3 August 2017

**Bipso** is that kid. You know, the one that–despite never being fed blazberries or anything even remotely containing sugar–still has more energy than everyone in the entire village. Combined. His parents have received plenty of unsolicited advice from concerned neighbors, but none of it has worked. Their only hope is that he goes into the same field as Seni, his older sister, which will allow him to run everywhere for the rest of his days, but he’s been quoted saying, “That sounds boring. When is dinner ready? Ooh, is that a bug?” Also, when interviewed about his talents, he reportedly said, “Talking and running,” except with a lot more words and a lot more movement. Bipso was a really early sprite. I saved a sprite of “[Bipsom](https://zelda.gamepedia.com/Bipin_and_Blossom%27s_Son)” (aka the non-canonical name for Bipin and Blossom’s son from *Oracle of Ages*) and told my brother I wanted a tiny, hyper kid like that. Of course, he readily agreed. I don’t even remember if the original sprite was actually supposed to be the tiny, hyper kid, but that’s what I transformed him into! :D Beyond that, I pretty much just decided to make him smaller. And fixed his… uh… feet. And gave him funky hair. And fixed his palette.

Bipso is that kid. 2 August 2017

Meet **Fen**! She’s traveling with her mum and dad and the other refugees to the eastern continent. Since her father is ilfen, he has faced a lot of discrimination. Fen’s mother did too, just for being married to him. Neither of them wanted Fen to have that kind of life–especially since she takes after her father–and they often discussed leaving the city. Unfortunately, that was not a peaceful exodus as they had hoped; it came about through a regime change, riots, and anti-ilfen sentiments at an all time high to boot. Fen’s feelings on the journey are mixed. She’s always been an adventurous sort, but moving meant she also had to leave behind close friends. But she inherited her mother’s fierce and determined attitude, and she intends to make the best of things. Being of the more outgoing persuasion, she quickly decides quiet Tav will be her friend… Fen went through a LOT of different renditions in a lot of different ways. I’d known pretty early on that I wanted a green-haired girl in the game, and that she’d be one of the more “main-ish” characters. I also wanted to represent the ilfen in one of the characters that Tav interacts with regularly, since they’re a big part of the story too. But that didn’t all come together for quite some time… One of the first remakes I did was a blonde woman. I was having trouble with that, so I did a version with red hair (which ended up being Zhar’s daughter), That went surprisingly well. And I knew I still wanted the green-haired girl in the game, so I did a quick clone and recolor of the redhead. At that point, all three had white skin. Fen had a white dress too, so she was *extremely* pale! For months, every time I would work on another remake, I’d come back to Fen and try to fix her. I’d tweak a few things–hair, dress, color, face shape, arms (arms are hard for some reason)–before getting dissatisfied and moving on to something else. But I think she improved a little bit each time. Her hair started from a generic “mid-length” hair and ended up over her shoulder. I went back and forth on how many ilfen features to give her as I decided what the ilfen actually *were* (the ears were the last thing I added!). I made the dress less billowy and messed with the neckline for ages (seriously, when the dress is four pixels tall, it gets *difficult*). I even briefly gave her a dress like [Firula’s](http://www.thewakingcloak.com/post/160774018650/meet-firula-what-to-do-when-you-have-a-love-of)… and scrapped that because it didn’t fit Fen’s character in the slightest. But the hardest part was getting the skin tone right. You’re only allowed three colors with Game Boy Color style sprites (though *technically* you could add more colors by layering sprites on top of each other). Black counts as one color, and since pretty much everything is outlined in The Waking Cloak (gives it a cartoony style and helps with readability), that leaves us with two colors to work with. And every brown/black from my palette I tried just either didn’t work with the green or didn’t work with the black. I tried switching back to white skin, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I checked out other sprites from the GBC (namely Dragon Warrior since they actually had dark-skinned NPCs) to see what they did, and unfortunately they didn’t have any secondary color–it was brown skin with black/white clothes. Tried black clothes on Fen and it looked like she was wearing a void into nothingness. And I didn’t want to scrap the green and give her white hair–that would just defeat the purpose! In the end it worked out. I’m not sure exactly what happened–I switched back to the first brown I’d used, and it just… clicked! It finally looked right. Maybe it was because I was using a newer shade of green, maybe not, but either way, I was so excited to continue working on her and finished up her sprite that day.

Meet Fen! 26 July 2017

Closer and closer to mimicking the music of the SNES! 23 July 2017

Mayor-King Ogwarther XV has ruled/governed the island for decades, as has his bloodline before him. Even though he would be loathe to admit it, the mayor-kings serve as stewards, rather than actual kings, and his jeweled bowler reminds him of this fact often… it’s no replacement for the lost crown of old. To make up for it, the mayor-king rules what little he can of the island with an iron fist–shout at enough people, and maybe they’ll forget the ancient dragon kings ever existed! So far, it seems to have worked; he’s been reelected ten times (though to be fair, he’s the only one running for election). The creation of the mayor-king was a fun one. Basically, I couldn’t figure out what kind of ruler I wanted for the island, so for a while I referred to him as, “the mayor or king or whatever.” That got shortened to “the mayor or king,” and when it came time to make a decision, I *still* couldn’t decide. Hence, mayor-king. With this title, it was pretty clear to me that he’d be a bit of a poser, and he absolutely needed a combination bowler/crown. His sprite actually went relatively quickly, though I wasn’t happy with him right up until the end. His head was much too square and too high, and his bowler/crown combo was getting way too complicated. But lots of tweaking (aka, grabbing different parts and moving them around), giving him a moustache, lowering the bowler on his head (in order to make it taller), and cleaning up all the stray pixels on the bowler… well, suddenly it all came together!

Mayor-King Ogwarther XV has ruled/governed the island for decades, as has his bloodline before him. 19 July 2017

$I’ve been working on combat for three weeks. Mainly, teaching myself to animate better took up most of the time, though there was a lot of travel and busyness that got in the way too. But it feels good to finally be over the bumps. Now I’m at the point of implementing one feature after another, fixing bugs and so on, and it’s a bit of a relief! One of the better bugs that popped up: {{PC_IMG:0}} So there’s still work that needs to be done, of course. Hitboxes are a main focus, I’ve got some little movement glitches to clean up, and the animations will still need some polish. I’m actually only about halfway down the list on my combat checkbox, which includes some big changes to enemies and so forth (though to be fair the animation items were the most time-consuming, and I’m blitzing through the rest). BUT. Combat actually feels really nice and responsive already, and I’m extremely pleased it feels this good this early. I removed the “sword charge up” at the beginning, so the “wind up/anticipation” is really snappy. An attack will run through the entire animation, including a few “wind down” frames at the end, but if you use the sword again while still attacking, it’ll queue the next attack and skip the wind down frames (you can actually attack a lot faster than seen in the gif above). This is a pretty big departure from the the old combat, which is more along the lines of Link’s Awakening (except it had a weird, very tiny combo input buffer that was really hard to hit): {{PC_IMG:1}} *(The sword is red because it’s a hitbox… sadly it’s not a lightsaber.)* I think this is much better: {{PC_IMG:2}}$ I’ve been working on combat for three weeks. 15 July 2017

I threw together a Final Destination-style stage to showcase the combat rework. Figured you guys might want a change of scenery once in a while! :) While this location probably won’t be in the final game (though I won’t say no outright), it gave me the chance to work on a couple different sky backgrounds, as well as use some tiles that had been sitting in my tilesheet for a while. Combat is coming veeeeery soon. :D

I threw together a Final Destination-style stage to showcase the combat rework. 15 July 2017

**Seni** works hard as the town runner, carrying messages from house to house, and even to the mayor-king himself. She wants nothing more than to restore the noble profession of messenger, but the island is much too dangerous now, and it’s rumored that something terrible happened to the only other major town that once existed. Perhaps somewhat incongruently, she’s good friends with Firula. Seni plays the flute and tries constantly to get Firula to take hard work seriously so they can perform together. Man, talk about a redesign. For one thing, the original was *very close* to a Dragon Warrior sprite. For another, I wanted somebody distinct from Firula–I already had a dress-wearing NPC. I started by giving Seni a different sort of headband (more across her forehead), then, with the idea of giving her better “active” clothing, worked my way to adding a vest. After I was happy with that, I moved the headband back to its original position and did some cleanup. I find that changes like this often inform the personality of the character. Before, Seni might have been a dancer, like Firula. But the headband change (even though it was temporary) put me in the mind of someone much more active.

Seni works hard as the town runner, carrying messages from house to house, and even to the mayor-king himself. 12 July 2017

Starting to use some of the methods *real* artists use, and it’s definitely made the drawing/animation process so much easier. Here I used references to draw a keyframe sketch and then broke each part out into layers. This isn’t actually the final pose I went with–mostly I tweaked the sword position and arms–but making the needed changes were much simpler when I can just mess with the “Arms” layer quickly, or grab the “Sword” layer and rotate only that layer. I’m almost done with the player combat animations (at least this iteration). *As a reminder, [I’m on Patreon](http://www.patreon.com/mrdaneeyul), and if you support me there (even for just $1/month), you’ll be able to see all of Tav’s combat animations later today–a week earlier than everyone else!*

Starting to use some of the methods real artists use, and it’s definitely made the drawing/animation process so much… 8 July 2017

$Ladies and gentlemen… Puppies and kittens and the tiniest of birds… ## The Waking Cloak is on Patreon! If you like, you can help me bring my dream to life for as little as $1 per month! Every bit matters. Just click on the image above ~*[or right here](http://www.patreon.com/mrdaneeyul)~* to head on over! If you’d like to help support but can’t do so financially, you still count! **Reblogs** are free and help more than you know. :) So what will I be using this funding for? In short: *making The Waking Cloak!* In long: - Various game development tools - Potential artists for cover art and promotional stuffz! - Attending conferences and events! - Rental of a PO Box to allow me to keep my privacy for the business and mailing list - [TheWakingCloak.com](http://thewakingcloak.com/) domain name and eventual website hosting (tumblr is free, but I’m gonna make a dedicated site at some point) - Legal and business fees (such as trademark registration and so on) - Translations/localizations?? - Marketing - getting the word out! A quick note: I will not be cutting any past or future content from here to post on Patreon. A lot of Patreons have patron-exclusive content (and there’s nothing wrong with that!), but a video game doesn’t lend itself super well to exclusive content. What patrons *do* get is earlier access to that same stuff, along with a few other goodies as a thank you for super-believing in The Waking Cloak! {{PC_IMG:0}} **So please–reblog and/or head over to the Patreon to lend your support!** Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a wonderful day. :)$ Ladies and gentlemen… 6 July 2017

$Hibu the Gibu Farmer is all about old-fashioned, often indecipherable wisdom. He’s older than he looks, but manages to stay young and strong by getting up before the sun and taking care of those gibu–they won’t take care of themselves! Hibu serves as a mentor character to Tav, which, despite confusing metaphors and wacky idioms, is very welcome! This sprite changed a *lot*. The old version is definitely groovin’. I think he was the most inspired by the Zelda sprites rather than Dragon Warrior sprites, so his body/feet worked a lot differently than the rest. During the overhaul there, I *had* to give him overalls. :) Despite the Zelda foundation, the old hat was *very* similar to an existing Dragon Warrior hat, so I made sure to spend a lot of time there too. Only one question remains: **what is a gibu???** Maybe you’ll get a peek sometime… :) **Two for the price of one today** (since there was a ~TIE~ in the poll). Meet Poupou, the self-acclaimed magician! {{PC_IMG:0}} Poupou purchased his turban from the Shady Merchant, and despite being repeatedly told otherwise, believes it gives him magic powers. His tricks and “herbal remedies” have been decried as lame sleight-of-hand and random shrubbery leaves, but nonetheless, Poupou persists. This sprite was a pretty massive change as well! My brother and I couldn’t figure out how to draw a turban (”Just put more folds in it!”). I experimented with giving him dark skin in the new sprite, but the purple/brown mix was way too saturated compared to all the other sprites. I took a look at other GBC sprites with dark skin and noticed most of them have black or white clothing–no other colors. So… while I’m rethinking how to approach that (I have a handful of other darker-skinned NPCs!), it kind of helped define this guy’s character as a ridiculous “cheap fortune teller”-type.$ Hibu the Gibu Farmer is all about old-fashioned, often indecipherable wisdom. 5 July 2017

A swarthy sailor that keeps the refugee ship afloat! These guys have followed Captain Strande for decades in COMPLETELY LEGITIMATE BUSINESS ENTERPRISES, and will do anything and everything he says without a single thought of mutiny. A gruff exterior hides what is probably a gruff interior as well. I drew this one in a rush at the hotel I was staying at (helping my wife out at a conference) and finished it up in the airport. Pretty good for just being thrown together, haha!

A swarthy sailor that keeps the refugee ship afloat! 28 June 2017

June State of the Game 26 June 2017

Meet **Opo**, the smallest of the turtle tribe! Exuberant and speedy (able to run a blazing 3mph), he tends to talk over his elders and can barely stand still longer than a minute. He longs to leave the swamp and venture to unknown parts of the island… maybe even meet a human! So when I put up the poll for this week’s NPC, I had a pretty good idea “Turtle” would win. :) Unfortunately for me, I didn’t actually have any of the turtles drawn yet. My intention was to draw the main turtle you meet in the story, but this lil guy came out instead! Oh well.

Meet Opo, the smallest of the turtle tribe! 21 June 2017

$The final (~for now~) version of the east-facing sword attack! I redid a **bunch** of details after 1) great feedback on the size of the slash and sword positioning, and 2) discovering the sword “smear” looked super weird when rotated 90 degrees for the south-facing attack. My original thought was to make the sword smear and the sword into a singular hitbox. It would be the exact same animation in all four directions. This is what the old Zelda games did. However, the only thing I could get looking “right” at the time was about a 45-degree angle slash, which isn’t very powerful. Take a look at this old gif (the red is a hitbox test, not a lightsaber… although now that I mention it…) {{PC_IMG:0}} What helped with the new animation is separating the sword smear from the actual blade itself. I decided that only the smear would be the hitbox, and the sword could just go wherever it looked best. (This idea actually came from Crawl–the game is a bit gory for me, but the artist has some great [**videos**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys-tiUXIxjQ)and [**articles**](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/300004/Game_Design_Deep_Dive_Creating_the_striking_pixel_art_of_Crawl.php?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter)on animation.) It was a freeing decision, but still a bunch of work! Mainly because I’m still developing my animation skills. The current method is just to attempt *every single combination of pixels that could possibly exist* by brute force until something looks right. :) Needless to say, this one’s definitely been a lot of hard work and frustration. While there may still be stuff to do, I couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s turning out. And it’s a big step in the redesign of the combat system–making it feel fluid and alive is a top priority!$ The final (~for now~) version of the east-facing sword attack! 20 June 2017

Finally getting to the point where the combat animation feels GOOD. I had grand plans to completely implement the new combat system, record Tav fighting a ferocious monster, and slap it on the internet to reap the rewards of fame and glory. As usual, this did not come to pass. :) The animation system is working well already in the game, and I’m working on drawing up the animations themselves. Hopefully we’ll have awesome combat in a week or two! Regardless, I’m pleased with how this came out. Thanks to the [#constructive-criticism channel on the Pixel Art discord](https://discord.gg/AXYwv9). Got some *fantastic* tips for improvement. There still may be some more work to be done, but we’re getting there!

Finally getting to the point where the combat animation feels GOOD. 17 June 2017

Just creepin’ aroun-ARGLHALGLABLGHALGLABALGHALGAH 14 June 2017

Planning out player states beforehand is extremely helpful! (Even with my limited flowchart abilities.)<br>

Planning out player states beforehand is extremely helpful! 12 June 2017

I know this isn’t a lot for some devblogs, and it’s a drop in the ocean to others, but it’s not for me. I’m so thankful you’re following along with The Waking Cloak, whether you’re another game developer, someone who likes old-style games, a bot, or just someone interested (or all of the above)… you all inspire me to keep working. You’re **all** appreciated and valuable to me. Here’s to many more! **Keep reblogging, liking, and spreading your favorite posts–it helps so much more than you know**. But even if that number plateaus and The Waking Cloak gets no more followers, I’m still humbled and excited that I’ve got you guys. :) THANK YOU!!

**HAPPY 1,001 FOLLOWERS!!!** 11 June 2017

New camera transitions! It’s doing an ease out (cubic) function here, which looks MUCH better than just moving it linearly. In my newly minted, amateur opinion, *all* game developers should learn about easing functions. They’re so very useful for making movements more lifelike. [Here’s a good visual with all the equations](http://gizma.com/easing/). Oh, and here are some [awesome free easing functions for GameMaker](https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/assets/2395/easing-and-tweening) in case you don’t want to write them all out. :) Feel free to let me know if you have any questions on how to use them! This is a small update because I’ve been doing some novel writing this week since we had writers group today. It went well! Good group of people and everyone had good critiques.

New camera transitions! 11 June 2017

NEW. JUST NEW. That’s because there is no old version of the captain. Or, rather, this IS the old version and the new version *at the same time!* It was a good opportunity to try out a new background color too. Anyway… Meet **Captain Strande**! He’s sailed the high seas for decades, claiming he was first mate by the time he was seven years old and captain by the time he was nine. His men and his hat have never abandoned him or even considered mutiny–not even during the Jewel War! Strande is filthy rich from his many voyages, and considers himself a collector of sorts (he is, in fact, an extremely greedy hoarder). Nonetheless, despite his boastful attitude and lust for shiny things, he claims he has decided to give up his life of adventure and settle down, carrying a shipload of refugees across the ocean to the far lands in the east. I drew this guy up because I was having some difficulty with another NPC and needed to blow off some steam. And obviously I also needed to draw a floofy hat. He was delightfully easy to draw. :) So we’ve got a lot of red- and blue-themed characters. Next time I’m gonna have an *all green* poll!

NEW. 8 June 2017

Had a couple moments walking around town. It’s an oddly emotional thing to see a world that previously existed only in my head. I think I was expecting to be much more detached, since I know where everything goes, and I know there’s still a lot of work to be done even in this particular scene.<br> Here’s the video version, in case the GIF above isn’t working for anyone else! Be sure to watch in 60fps… :)

Had a couple moments walking around town. 3 June 2017

I’m not an expert, but this seems… off. 27 May 2017

I fixed the accidental (or *was* it?) moonwalking. Except now… ***GRASS RUSTLING INTENSIFIES***

I fixed the accidental (or was it?) moonwalking. 26 May 2017

It’s fan art time! :D 25 May 2017

“Let’s try a new animation system,” I declared. “It will be easy and work the first time!” (I didn’t think it would work the first time. It never does.) Anywho, this is a crucial piece in getting the new combat up and running. Currently, giving different frame lengths to each individual frame is *possible* (I think?), but I haven’t been able to figure it out. This new system, once it’s working, gives me a lot of control over each individual piece!

“Let’s try a new animation system,” I declared. 25 May 2017

One of the many **guards of the castle**, this… er… totally non-generic guard absolutely does not look the same as every other guard. He has his own backstory and… uh… probably his own family. *Shuffles through papers* Which one was this again? I swear, I’m not having trouble telling them apart. It’s got to be the armor. My brother did a great job on this sprite already, so there wasn’t much to change. The biggest struggle was giving it some movement (especially the feet… I don’t know why I struggled so much with the feet… and now all I can do is stare at the feet). Poor guy had dinky armaments before, so I made them a little more menacing, and then took a page from the Oracle of Ages handbook and bobbed them up and down.

One of the many guards of the castle, this… er… totally non-generic guard absolutely does not look the same as every… 24 May 2017

Been working on ~combat feel~ this week! It’s hard stuff. I’ve been touching up the appearance of some of the frames here and tweaking the speed of each frame. Lots of behind-the-scenes code too. The plan is if you use the sword once, it will complete one swing (as you’d expect, lol). Use it again, and it will swing the other way. However, as the second half of the gif shows, if you press the key again *while still attacking*, it will skip the “wind down” frames after the swing and launch directly into the next attack. This should help it feel more responsive. Previously, you wouldn’t be able to get the “down” swing unless you hit the button again halfway through the “up” swing, but before the animation ended. It was complicated and didn’t feel particularly good. Now, it will just always switch swing direction regardless of the time in between. I have some changes planned for how hitting enemies works: - They won’t fly off if they’re not dead–they’ll just get a bump and come back. This way you won’t have to chase an enemy down to hit it again, which has proven to be annoying in testing. If a hit *does* kill an enemy, then we can fling them away!<br> - Touching most enemies won’t hurt you anymore (unless, say, they’re spiky or on fire or something). This will allow Tav some movement during combat without killing himself, as well as give me some room for variety in enemy design. I’ve wanted to get back to combat for a while. Still plenty of work to do, but I’m excited!

Been working on ~combat feel~ this week! 20 May 2017

Meet **Firula**! What to do when you have a love of dancing, but the only teacher in town rejects you as his student because you’re “too dramatic” (like he’s one to talk)? Well, if you’re Firula, the answer is to pine away in your bedroom, stare out your window, occasionally cry out in unbearable ennui, and munch on blazberry pie. All Firula wants is to measure up to her mother–the greatest dancer in island history! I have to say, other than Zhar’s Daughter (whom you haven’t seen yet), this has got to be the biggest change made to an NPC sprite. When we started, we tried to make sure our NPCs didn’t twitch around too much. But as it turns out, adding movement–especially weird or exaggerated movement–adds a lot of life to these little guys!

Meet Firula! 17 May 2017

The results are in. You voted… and chose… **??? the Shady Merchant** Who is he? What is he selling? What lies under that dark hood? How do you pronounce ”???”? A man of many mysteries, nobody remembers when ??? came into town, nor where his shop even came from. All they can vaguely remember is that there was a time before he and his shop existed, and that time is no longer. The old one kinda has an adorable “OHOHO, MAH BELLY!” charm to him, but that’s not really what we’re going for with this guy. I may still incorporate some aspects of the old sprite into the new, but this is where we’re at for now!<br>

The results are in. 10 May 2017

$**Town Tileset Mockup!** Look, I’m a wilderness guy. Put me in an old forest of ancient trees covered in moss, and I’m about as happy as it gets. My favorite moments even in games are spent wandering around in the spaces between civilization. So when I say that this mockup is the one I’m most excited about so far, it means something! It’s also the one that has possibly taken me the longest, and has been a huge struggle. (Fountains are freaking impossible!) But I couldn’t be more happy with this–it’s starting to feel like a *game*. A few towns are planned for The Waking Cloak, each with a different aesthetic, but this is a piece of the main one (as of yet unnamed). Between talking to townsfolk, shopping, getting amulets appraised, being summoned by the mayor/king, and exploring nooks and crannies, you’ll probably spend a fair bit of time here! Finally, here’s a gif of me flailing around and trying a bunch of different stuff as I developed the look and feel. I spent a horrifying amount of time working on that wall. {{PC_IMG:0}}$ Town Tileset Mockup! 6 May 2017

Mini-update 3 May 2017