Vilya's Workblog

Once again, thanks for all the feedback surrounding the desert patch! Now it's a new week with new adventures, and for now we'll focus more on upcoming stuff!

So while the actual room-by-room design of the upper floors of the ghost ship haven't been decided, we know what types of rooms we want, and one such room is the cabin. Or cabins, really. We'd like the player to battle their way through a set of cabins on the second or third floor, so naturally we need to make a bunch of items that can be seen in these cabins. As such, I made a random design of what one such room could look like, and made a bunch of random props to put in it.

I know I mentioned we'd continue on adding things for the desert's stable release, but I'll have plenty of time to do that while throwing in a ghost ship background or two... :)

Let's take a look:

Now that the patch has been out on Frontline for a while, we set our eyes on the next target: getting it ready for stable! Aside from the bug fixes and some of your suggested improvements (as always, we're very thankful for the feedback), there are a few things we'd like to add before feeling completely satisfied with the desert for now. There are two reasons for this, one being the obvious 'of course the area will be better with more quests', but the other is that it gives Fred (and to some extent, me) some time to get ahead with the Ghost Ship before we start prototyping that place for real.

You see, in order to get a good idea for what the Ghost Ship will entail design wise, we need to get some enemy prototypes up and running, and the best way of doing that is to have Fred make a bunch of animated sketches we can use against my placeholder backgrounds. This will help us get a feel for the dungeon and to make sure our enemy combinations work as intended.

Therefore, the things we'll add to the desert for stable mainly involves Teddy programming stuff, and me throwing together some minor graphics such as more item sprites for rewards and such. Once we're done with that, Fred should have made enough enemy sketches that Teddy can begin prototyping their behavior, and I can continue making backgrounds while he does that.

So, before the desert is released on stable, we intend to add the following:

Another (optional) challenge in the math cave.
A side quest involving a cat of Port Monnaie...
A side quest solving the troubles of the depressed drunkard in the Saloon (which also involves elite versions of the desert enemies, which haven't been added thus far)!
A questline with the photographer Cammy, who is working in Port Monnaie, using the mechanics from Arcadia where you take photographs of various places or things in the game.
Each shop in the marketplace, with new items to buy (lots of housing items)!
A bunch of memory orbs to show a few past events (I've already started working on that, as you have seen)...

and, finally:
More treasure maps, which will be given to you by Finder the Archaeologist, who wants your help in retrieving some ancient treasures.

Like the other areas, more stuff will be added before release, but we think this is a good way to start. It's also possible we'll add a bunch of those season orbs across the world, which will help you reach a few of those chests that have been taunting you... We'll see!

As mentioned a long while ago, we will add a bunch of flashback crystals/memory orbs where you'll get to see certain events from the past. A few of these will include Charlotte, the player character's mother, and because these events happen quite a few years ago, I got to make a younger version of her, which was super fun!

As with the grown up portrait in the game, this one will also change hair- and skincolor based on how you designed your own character :)

Since the first version had quite a long neck, I decided to shorten it slightly in the finished version: the old one is shown first below, with the final version shown last:

There are still some cards to make, so here we have the Cacute card! Quite simple in its design, it features a Cacute relaxing in the sun with a drink. Remember to drink a lot when it's hot outside (I recommend water, though)!

Finally the patch is up and running!

After months of hard work, this update includes the desert Dragonbone Dunes and desert town Port Monnaie in all its glory, with a ton of new NPCs (the most NPC heavy area yet!), the continuation of the main quest, a bunch of side quests and a couple of boss battles!

As you might guess, there's a lot of things that can go wrong when adding this amount of stuff at once, so be prepared to do some bug hunting and let us hear about all the wonky and broken things! As always, all feedback is highly encouraged and much appreciated, so let us hear what you think when you've finished this installment. You can leave a comment here, on our forums, or make a topic over at the Steam forums!

Most of all, we hope you enjoy this update!! Teddy will be monitoring bug reports closely during the coming week(s), while Fred and I continue working on the ghost ship, where the adventure will take you next.... :)

Hey guys! Did you have a nice weekend? It's Monday, still no patch, but we hope it will be ready tomorrow (fingers crossed)! Teddy's ironing out the last couple of bugs and adding a few items to chests, so it is coming!

In the meanwhile, work continues as usual for me, with the portrait of another character that will appear in Port Monnaie but won't make it into the patch: an boy, who will help the priest out in the church! His outfit, like the priest's, is inspired by real life priest robes.

It's Friday, and a couple weeks ago I estimated that by now the patch would arrive! However, as you've certainly noticed, no patch has been uploaded yet - so what has happened? Well the short version is that we wanted to make things more interesting (don't we always), so the added work has pushed the patch forward by a couple of days.

In other words, we hope to release the patch in the beginning of next week, instead! Serves me right for making estimates, they just never end up being correct...

Anyway, in the meanwhile, have some sneak peeks of what you'll see in the upcoming patch, starting with a couple of animations for the desert carpenter: