If there was one thing that I would say could be harder than music, it would be getting the model right. There’s always some angle that I find myself not liking making me change around the face and the body and how the character is drawn in a seemingly never ending cycle. Such a pain…

The model is still incomplete but I think I have a good idea of what the final head will look like.The mouth may also turn out different depending on how well rigging the mouth fares.

Nothing is seamed together yet because I’m likely going to reuse those parts before moving on to other characters.

The process probably seems slow but much like music, once I’ve finished one, the rest just fall into place.

I’ll think I’ll post the complete model next update. I should be finished quite soon.

This year has started pretty well actually. I haven’t gotten as much as I’d like to have gotten done but I’ve been pretty busy.

For the past week now I’ve been giving a shot at music again. Combined, I’ve probably spent at least 3 weeks just trying new techniques to get something that works. Finally, I think I have a song that I can work off! It isn’t complete yet, I’ll probably do a bit more stage work  first. Kinda worries me I could be lost when I get back to it but my brain needs a rest.

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I started out really well working towards the release date, then I kinda got a bit lazy. Not as lazy but still lazy. The reason for that is, I went back to focus on two areas I don’t try to spend a lot of time on (design, and music). These areas are extremely important to me but they bring out my lazy side.

On a plus note the skeleton of the game, story and structure wise is finally set and I’m simply on the path of filling it in. I usually never do this, often opting to design a set of features and seeing how I can use them. Given a little breathing room, this way seems to work rather well. On a minus note, I ehh still have no music… I’ll get there though!

One thing I must reemphasize, is my focus towards adventure/puzzles. Samba of the Wolves captures the spirit of things in a few ways (firefly, logs) although don’t make much sense and the start of Tandem Tales just completely misses the point and is nothing more than a trade quest. While this game has a lot more platforming than the previous games, my top priority has been to put the Adventure back into the Adventures of Felix.

My next source of reveals will likely either be final models or the debut trailer. However, I’m not doing a debut trailer until I have some music to go with it. I have no clue how long that could take but early January sounds about right.

I’ve been experimenting with new combat by modifying the combat of the old game and to my amazement I learned a rather sad truth. Tale of the Night really was a button masher, a term I really really despise! Of course I knew it was true to some degree but I didn’t realize how bad things were.

To test it, I changed around my AI to just run at me attacking. I picked the fastest attacker (Karina) as my spammer. Using this bread dead strategy the computer managed to defeat me numerous times regardless of which character I used. The only effective strategy really (without playing dirty) was walking backwards while blocking  and then using a heavy attack when there was enough distance. Now I’m not the greatest player in the world, probably not even at a game I made, but I shouldn’t have to struggle with such  primitive tactics.

Sigh, I’m so mad at myself for not seeing the depth to this. You take a beat em’ up you like, and try to work it into your own without even thinking about the base issues. Luckily the internet has no problem shoving it your face…… eh luckily right?

There may be some people out there okay with the idea of being a button masher. Heck, I enjoy a good button masher!  However, the core of my system must be based on the player actually knowing what he or she is doing. I can’t put my finger on why, but random attacking doesn’t exactly mesh well with the theme I’m going for.

Sometimes I think I’m trying to make the player smarter ; D

Although World of Whimsy is 1-player, rest assured I will be paying an ample amount of attention to making the enemies spam proof.

I seem to have some need to update on interesting dates. I have no idea why. Naturally I’ll probably update the 11th also. Perhaps I suffer from a bit of Calendar Man syndrome.

There’s the adage of “Show, don’t tell” when it comes to describing a game, but because I haven’t been focused on graphics (and the game storm of course),  I think I’ll just tell.

Right now the game feels much like its predecessor in terms of movement which was actually pretty hard to do with the physics I’m using. There’s much more control over the jumping this time around (think Mega Man) giving a very fast pace feel to running and jumping.

Combat system still isn’t done. I scared to death even starting it because I have a feeling it’s going to murder me. I’ll likely be starting it very soon though.

Quite honestly it probably wouldn’t seem like much has changed since last time. But the game finally feels whole at this point. Much of this year has been fixing bugs and making tools easier to use. All I have to do is start adding on things. I’d say that’s a quick process but I don’t even trust myself with things like that at this point.

Now that the foundation is in place and I don’t have to worry about tweaking or refining the basics, things should get very interesting very fast… in theory anyway.