The best part about making a game over a long period of time is seeing the progress over the years and seeing your style change and grow. I didn’t even notice it has been a year of Doors of the Kings honestly. Time flies.
Which is kinda terrifying lol Come to think of it, SOL passed it 2nd anniversary of development in September. It’s strange to think about since I thought it was a much longer time with all the different versions I made (which I think is funny how you revisited the shopkeeper in your development, cause I’ve done that so many times now lol).
But I think the biggest take away is that there’s definitely passion shown for working on a project for so long. I don’t think there’s a day where I don’t get back to the dorm from classes and look through the SOL project to see how everything is working and making a checklist for future fixes and additions.
I’m rambling now lol Anyways, love the look of the shopkeeper (especially their snazzy attire), and hope you get well soon!
There has been a significantly low number of doors being made recently, so here, to fill the quota, here is dorr. (third fourth time spelling door, “dorr”, not gonna fix it)
Ah yes, adding more empty space to make it feel like it’s a huge post so that people don’t realize that I’ve been procrastinating for an entire day and a half… oh wai-
Expect more doors
← Carrot
Also, I’ve had this sprite of a carrot for a while now, I was really proud of it but never got around to showing anyone, so to keep with the theme of random images in this post, I thought why not post this? Is this a decision made on impulse for no reason? Am I doing something completely unrelated to the topic? Is this a side effect of not taking care of my health which leads to me still being sick? halp (•ˋ _ ˊ•)
First and foremost, I’d like to apologize for not posting this update in the middle of the night like usual, I know it’s startling and can throw off a person’s regular routine.
Anyway, more doors!
I tried to experiment with shape and door material.
A rectangular door with moving bars and a triangular door that slides down.
I might try to make a few opening animations or continue to just make more doors.
Decided to do some animation this time around.
I think the first one needs just a bit of adjusting of the colors since the pixels get really jumbled up.
For the second and third ones, I only focused on the motion and not too much on color or texture.
The bars need their texture to move up since right now they’re staying still, and the stone door also just needs shading done.
I think I spent waaay too much time on the stone one to make the panel in the middle look like it s tilting outward so that it can move in front of the doorframe
I also separated the animation into layers, so technically if I changed the inside to green and then used it as a green screen I could, and most likely would, have rickrolled you. But alas, I’m too stupid to figure out how to do that.
but I can do this
~ hi
If you’ve noticed that these posts are getting earlier, it’s because I’m only now trying to fix my sleep schedule for the first time since this whole thing started, yaaaaa- (/ 〒▽〒)\ .
Don’t worry about your skill level, I’d say you’re in a good spot right now. Of course, I don’t really know how progression works for traditional art since I started out with only pixel art. In my opinion, traditional artwork is a lot more difficult so don’t compare your own work to mine since the difference between pixel and traditional is really complex.
I started doing this stuff basically when I rejoined Flowlab, this was around the time I started.
If you want to see some of my earlier works then you can check em out here, or in Till We Have Faces.
I will say, I had been doing more theory than practice, I learned mostly from watching videos and guides about concepts like shading, color theory, and a bunch of other stuff before I actually went all in on pixel art.
Oh, and I totally forgot about this, my first game. I also did some traditional art here but it wasn’t alll that great either.
I promise this isn’t just the same thing from last week.
I just adjusted the color and shading transitions a bit, not too much really, just spent time flipping between frames.
This isn’t the only thing!
Since we only have the goblin kingdom, maybe it’s time to introduce something new.
Also, during a conversation, I had about DOTK I was asked about its story concept, which I don’t think I’ve said here before, so I’ll post it here. It’ll be a bit of context to what I’m talking about here. I blurred a bit of it so that I can get together a proper introduction with more concept artwork done for it, although you might have already guessed what it might be.
“Story-wise, there are basically different groups that appear as enemies throughout the game. The groups, or kingdoms, may be comprised of a specific creature or theme. For example, I have the goblin kingdom as a basic early-game enemy but there might also be a kingdom of sorcerers, a kingdom of machinery, or a kingdom of █████ people.
.
The gameplay and story mix so that the mini-bosses are royals or important figures in the kingdom, and the main boss is the king. After beating the king you go up in difficulty and move on to a different kingdom.”
And lastly, Happy 3 house before the day Halloween takes place! If you celebrate it. I’ll be inside drawing more funny pictures at 1 in the morning.
I screwed up my sleep schedule and now it’s worse than before, but so will everyone else’s from having kids banging on their door in the middle of the night, so I’ll pretend that I went outside in case I pass out halfway through the day.
Coming back over to baker island again, not too much to show today, so I’ll just talk about how I plan and do all this stuff.
With the way that Flowlab’s tile system works, I try to keep things within the tiles, so I usually keep a grid on top of all my art to make sure the sprite isn’t too big or too small.
I keep things on different layers, here I’ve labeled them into different colors.
Things like objects and doors are in front of the Wall layer but markings like indents or overhangs are in the Wall layer.
The screen is 9x16, although the actual play space is 5x16, I did that because the screen would feel a lot more squished, but if it’s too big then there’s just tons of needed empty space. But I also need space to fit UI, so I’ll add my own letterboxing and floor and ceiling layers to try and fix it. They can also be used for some pretty cool things later on.
I tried out a few other aspect ratios but this one seems to fit the best for now.
So I haven’t really talked about the behind-the-scenes development of DOTK lately, so here’s a little check-up.
As you can probably see in the quality of these updates, I don’t really have too much time to work on DOTK as of late. I’m focused on so many other things I don’t really have too much time to actually do these things now. I’m usually spending half a day on DOTK now, and it’s slowly being eaten away at as I progressively make my way into the school year.
Hopefully, if I give it a week I can get everything organized and actually take some of the things I have off the back burner, till then that’s all I got to say about the current situation I’m in for DOTK. ヾ(•ω•`)o
I’ll be making this in Flowlab, which might be a bit ambitious since it is a more limited engine than something like unity, but I want to make it here.
Congrats @glowbug, cool art designs. After my devlog Dragon Official and the lost of motivation I think I am now back together with a whole new story. Now I am still trying to make animations and pixel art. My pixel art skills and my animations are not like yours, glowbug. I have been reading this devlog for a long time and trying to figure out how to make cool animations like you. You have motivated me to come back on and finally, after a year, so start making my game again. Thank you
Hello I am here
~ hi
