First six add-ons painted

I'm trying to pick up the pace with spell-created terrain add-ons. Here's the first six: Flowers, healing berries, thorns, icicles, ice, and spikes.

Stone Transitions

Basically the same as the grass transitions.

Before:

Painting:

After:

Grass Transitions

New grass transitions. Here's the before and after:

Fires GIF

Here's a GIF of the fires in motion. The low frame rate and color dithering are artifacts of the GIF-making process.

Fires in Glade Raid are quite complex. There's small fires, big fires, burnt greenery, ashes, smoke, and sparks. Sparks blow on the wind like smoke, and can start new fires. It took awhile to get all those in, and I ended up having to do a fair amount of tinkering with the programming to make it all work right.

In-game:

Raw paintings:

Pine trees

Pine trees are in, completing a draft of all 12 basic terrain types! Hooray! I've also adjusted the rock colors again, reverting the big impassable rocks walls to bare grey, and coloring the boulders halfway between grey and the beige I'd tried earlier. I think it looks pretty good while still being distinguishable.

New bushes and colored rocks

I've got some shadows! They're only cast on the ground layer, but it helps certain terrain types a lot. The shadows are painted, too, lol, but you can't really tell.

I took three different tries at making low brush sets, and combined them in a single tile. Now it works much better! Also, I've painted big/high bushes. Low brush slows movement and can be hidden in with the stealth skill. High bushes also block line of sight.

I tried coloring the different types of rocks. I have mixed feelings about the result. They certainly "pop" better, but they were IMO pretty distinguishable before. I don't really like the look as much. Might try a different set of colors. In gameplay, the low gravel slows movement, the medium boulders also can be hidden in with stealth skill, while the big ol' rocks are impassable and block line of sight.

Rocks and bushes

New rock (gravel, boulders, impassable rock walls) and bushes, in their painted and in-game forms. I'm still not happy with the bushes, but I really like how the rocks turned out. Still needs their shadow layer, though. Maybe I'll take all my failed attempts at low brush and merge them together into a single extra-bushy hex tile sprite.

Water, mud, brush

Adding terrain types, one by one. It's slow going between the painting, the scanning and processing (and then the re-painting and re-scanning and...). Here we've got water, mud, deep mud, and low brush. (The water is animated, though I plan on doing more with the animation.)

Grass and Dirt

Moved on to some environment work. Here's the dirt and grass of a trail. It's hex based; the grass is "over" the dirt, while terrain of the same type is drawn lower over higher. Each type has four paintings; this lets them be both randomized and follow a no-adjacency rule.

Painted Overmap, Version 2

The new overmap had some issues, so I tried again. The theory here is that by putting a frame around each one, I get a little more color freedom. Also, each image is more full and has a consistent "looking down the way" perspective. Other changes include redone and randomized X sprites, returning the background to its original color, and enlarging each site a bit.

Full version, shrunken:

Zoomed in a bit:

Overmap Paintings In-Game

The painted Overmap icons are now in game. Let me know what you think!

Watercolor Overmap

Working on trying out literally hand-painted watercolor sprites for the overmap:

Achievement Icons

26 achievements means I have to make 26 achievement icons; 52 when you count the locked ones. Kind of a pain just separating out and uploading them all.

Been working on this off-and-on for just over two years. And for the first time, I have an actual written plan to finish it.

Dragonfire!

Glade Raid forces me to think about things differently. I've got systems in place that handle wind and fires. Now I'm adding a dragon. Aaaand I need to decide exactly how much wind comes out of the dragon's mouth when it's breathing fire? Does the dragonfire just float on the wind, or does it have its own momentum? Consequently, how much is it affected by competing winds, ambient and magical? How well does the dragon adjust its aim to compensate? Does the dragonfire itself generate smoke, or just any resulting fires?

"Popping" selectable skills

Based on feedback from the skills screens, I've made a ton of adjustments, mostly to make the selectable skills pop out more:

Level Up screens - old versus new

Well, January has come and gone, but we're still pounding away at this. I just finished re-working the Level-Up screen to be more artistic and less "primary colors". Pictures after the break!