dev log

10/29/2023

a gif of the walk cycle of a character that looks like a dandelion.

hello! it's been a little over a month since my last update.

some life updates: I started a full-time job about a month ago! I'm out of retail! yay!

unfortunately, this means I've had less time to work on FC. however, I've still been working on it in my free time.

updates aren't very exciting this time around--for the most part, I've just been working on redoing my old tilesets and character sheets.

currently, I'm working on the tilesets for the hotel and the outside of the town.

to give you an idea of what I've got to work with:

a screenshot of my old tiles for the hotel vs the new ones. the old hotel is very flat and crudely drawn with a bright yellow exterior and blue roof. the new one has a softer brown exterior and finer details, such as texture, shading, perspective, and additions such as plants to the windows.

the above screenshot is a side-by-side of the old hotel vs the new hotel. I drew the first iteration 2 years ago, and the newest one this week. I feel like I've made quite an improvement! you can see that it'll take a bit of time to get everything else to look consistent, lol.

since I'm working on the hotel, I'll share a bit about the locations in the game. there are 5 main locations in the game: the hotel (which I'll show more in a second), the convenience/grocery/everything store known as M Art (bit of a pun on "mart"), the restaurant, the post office, and the arcade. all of these locations lie on the right side of town, which is the shopping area.

here's a little snippet of what I've been doing:

a screenshot from within the RPG Maker editor that shows a bit of the town. on the right side, you can see a hotel, an unfinished restaurant, and a bus stop, all surrounded by trees. separated by a river, you can see some homes in the residential area on the lower left side.
this is what part of my map currently looks like from within the editor. maybe you can tell that the grass, hotel, paths, bench, and water tiles are new, while the rest still need to be updated. I've made so many different water tiles, but I'm not sure I like how this looks with the rest of the map, so I might still change it, lol. I don't think it looks crisp enough. also that restaurant is very much a placeholder, don't worry.

a screenshot of the hotel lobby. there is a receptionist desk at the center, with elevators to the left and right of it. on the lower portion of the screen, you can see tables with blue armchairs. on one of the armchairs, you can see one of the characters sitting on it--they look like a dollar bill with legs.
here is what the hotel lobby currently looks like. I'm still figuring out how I want the tiles to look, but I have the general idea down. redoing the receptionist's design (yes, that plant you see at the desk is the receptionist) is something I've been struggling to get right. for now, I'm focusing on the tilesets.

a screenshot of smiley in one of the hotel rooms. a text box is on screen, showing his face as he says: 'oh, hello! I didn't know you were there!' it looks like he's talking to the bed.
this is one of the hotel rooms. who's smiley talking to?

I don't have much else to share this time! I'm steadily working on improving my tilesets for the most part. it's not super exciting stuff, but I think once I get everything to look right, it'll look much more aligned with the vibe I'm going for with this game.

once I finish these tilesets, I'll make sure all the characters look how I want them to. I'll also share them on here of course!