Game Dev Rule: Once you add a character portrait to your HUD, you are legally mandated to include Doom / Madou Monogatari style facial expressions to convey health status.
#screenshotsaturday #GoblinGirlGame #monstergirl #indiedev #gamemaker #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต
Finished the portrait damage feature last night for Screenshot Saturday, posted it and then immediately spotted a few things I wanted to tweak.
First improved the death skull bubble to be spookier and look nicer with the cream coloured portrait outline...
...Also added a fourth damage level so that she'll just have a couple cool scars when she's taken damage but isn't in any real danger yet. Saving the pristine face for when you have full health.
#GoblinGirlGame #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต #monstergirl #indiedev
Don't have time to do the variations and implement it right now, but had a good idea for the "just picked up a treasure" portrait animation. So I quickly threw this animation together while the idea was fresh.
#pixelart #ใใใ็ตต #GoblinGirlGame #monstergirl #indiedev
Improved last weekend's damage facial expressions, adding blinks, flinches and some tween animations.
Going to post some of the subtle art stuff I'm doing to convey both the mechanics and her character with these...
#screenshotsaturday #GoblinGirlGame #monstergirl #indiedev #gamemaker #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต
Because in bump combat you're simultaneously hitting the enemy and getting hit, I kept the attack mode flinch to just the eyes, keeping her mouth unchanged.
It's really important that players don't feel they're doing something wrong when they attack enemies even though it means taking damage.
If you aren't attacking the flinch is more expressive and involves the mouth. At first she takes her hits with a cheerful yelp, but eventually these get more pained looking.
She still reverts back to her smile no matter how beat up she gets though. She's small, but optimistic and scrappy!
I created blinks for every level of damage, for both the attack and defend modes. Hopefully that doesn't come back to bite me as I expand the portrait animations.
A subtle detail, but once she's really hurt, her left and right eye blinks are a little out of sync.
Promise something other than damage faces for next week's screenshot Saturday! I've been busy on the dialogue system, so maybe that!
Time for the obligatory fourth wall breaking dialogue test!
#GoblinGirlGame #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต #indiedev
#gamemaker #scribble #chatterbox
I haven't implemented choices yet but plan to do that in the future, which will really unlock the power of yarn/Chatterbox.
Having access to a rich narrative design tool like this has already sparked some great ideas for future features in this game.
For #screenshotsaturday this week, I have a mockup of a campsite area. If you discovered enough secrets on the floors before, you'll be able to bank your new items and use the camp as a shortcut/save spot. If not you can still continue on to later floors.
A thing I want to try to preserve from Druaga, or to use a more modern example, the chains of secrets in Spelunky, is the idea of an exploratory run. A session where the goal might not be to make permanent progress or win, but to poke at secrets you haven't solved yet and add to your knowledge.
Cozy little goblin camp. I wonder what's for dinner?
๐๐ณ๐ฉโ๐ณ
Didn't quite get this out in time for Screenshot Saturday, but still surprised that I managed to fully implement my mockup from last week in so little time!
Including a bunch of stuff I'd put in my "polish this later" list, which I promptly ignored and implemented.
Experimenting with using my script expression tags to give character mouth flap animations while dialogue is drawing.
Going to automate and improve this later by hooking directly into Scribble's typist object, so the mouth will also automatically close during delays mid dialogue.
Bonus thinky goblin girl.
Bluesky has started an important ship building project.
https://bsky.app/profile/spookysquid.bsky.social/post/3lxsmistgq22f
Really happy with these little action emote pop ups for examining and talking.
#GoblinGirlGame #indiedev #gamemaker #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต
Is she REALLY that forgetful?
Going to dive a bit into the code for this one ๐งต
I mentioned awhile back that I'd come up with an idea for a way to automate dialogue animation with basically no extra work. The above is the result!
My original plan was to just have a static open and closed version of each facial expression depending on who was talking.
Here's what the script for the new conversation looks like. A mix of native Chatterbox/Yarn and Scribble markup plus some of my own custom stuff. Details in alt text.
The real driver of all the portrait stuff is the markup:
[character_name,expression]
Which runs this GameMaker GML function.
Breaking that function down. It's designed for both flexibility and laziness.
First look for stage direction keywords. Right now that's just "exit" which lets me force a portrait to exit the screen before the conversation ends. I plan to add more.
if the typist isn't typing text this frame, it sets the mouth to the closed frame and pauses the animation, but lets the bob tween complete.
This means that the mouth flaps match up with the text typing and the result looks pretty close to hand keyed animated mouth flap without all the effort.
Obviously in a world in infinite art resources, fully animating these with proper phoneme shapes would look even better.
But realistically that's completely out of scope for a one artist game. I think this strikes a nice balance between that and just doing simple static images!
Bonus #screenshotsaturday!
After you talk to the elf you'll get this extra bit of text when examining the stone egg again.
Chatterbox makes it very easy to add little hidden bits of dialogue like this. Great library!
#goblingirlgame #gamemaker
Talkin' about something tasty!
#screenshotsaturday #monstergirl #GoblinGirlGame #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต
BUMP COMBAT!
#goblingirlgame #indiedev #gamemaker #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต #bumpcombat
Have enough game now in #goblingirlgame that I made a little demo with a tutorial so I can throw it in front of friends.
I do a regular library work session with
@matthammill once a week, and we've been referring to this state as our respective projects being "game shaped now"
New character for #GoblinGirlGame. Why are humans so tall!?
#screenshotsaturday #indiedev #gamemaker #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต
Late night #screenshotsaturday!
Getting back to some gameplay portrait fun, adding this quick toothy grin for picking up chests and other important items.
#indiedev #GoblinGirlGame #gamemaker #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต
If you're wondering, did I animate a version of this grin with all her portrait damage states, for both attacking and defending? Yes, yes I did.
#indiedev #GoblinGirlGame #gamemaker #pixelart #ใใใ็ตต
Haven't posted about it, but I was able to work full time on #GoblinGirlGame over the summer thanks to a grant from Ontario Creates.๐
I submitted my final report this week, so I'm back to balancing dev on #GoblinGirlGame with contract work. That means updates will be a little slower for awhile. Though I'm hoping to keep up the regular Screenshot Saturday posts if I can!
Been mostly doing behind the scenes work on #GoblinGirlGame this week. Stuff like refactoring most of the in game text to work with Chatterbox. So here is a set of cute cactus enemies from my "enemy ideas sketch file" for #screenshotsaturday.
@spookysquid In the interest of being maybe technically slightly more correct(?), I think the most appropriate way to shorted โlittleโ would be โliโlโ, as the apostrophe goes in the place of the letters that are removed (with the โeโ being silent anyway). Though in practice both spellings are used.
(Thanks for the cute updates. ๐)
@copygirl Thanks for the info!
I knew about the variation in spelling, since both are commonly used I just went with the one that felt like it had the right vibe.
@spookysquid Hahaha, yes!
I started following because the game looked great, only to find out I already loved your earlier work. Looking forward to this one and excited to keep seeing behind the scenes!
@MrAptronym Great to hear you enjoyed the previous games!
Definitely changing genres (again!) but I think you'll see a bit of a design throughline with those games when this finally releases!
Miguel ๐ฆ Sternberg
Kanok ๐๏ธ๐ฎ๐ง
copygirl
Ulik
MrAptronym
Farbs