We got textures, lighting, and a nice blurring effect in the game now! Things are progressing quite nicely. Boy do I love spring break!



Also I'd like to talk for a second about some of stuff that will be in this game. First off, I have decided, Maliea will not be the only playable character. I tend to like to do this with my stories, have both a heroine and a hero. So the mysterious letter writer that some of you may remember from the first playable demo will be a character! This character is a prince from a time well before Maliea's, he will focus on weapon combat whereas Maliea focus's on magic.

Second, the game will have somewhat of an MMO like skill system, with new skill points gained by both leveling and up finding them across the massive world. Maliea can unlock more powerful versions of different elemental spells, whereas the prince(not named yet) can unlock new weapon techniques that are based on the elements.

So that's what's up at the moment. Stay tuned for more status updates!

So we now have basic platform movement in Shadow of A Dream. Very basic, but I am pretty satisfied with the results so far. Nothing is textured yet, I actually kind of like the plain vertex colored look for this but I do think I want to use some basic textures on the backdrop stuff, some gradient mesh stuff from Adobe Illustrator perhaps. Things in the foreground will probably just be vertex painted to give that simplistic 2D vector look.



Check it out! Platform grabbing, for those platforms you can only barely reach! As you can see it's not perfect, this platform is going right through her, very painful I should say! D:

And um...HEY check it out another sexual innuendo. Yeah I caught it this time, but you know what? It's pretty funny!

I just checked out a game on Xbox Live Arcade called Shadow Complex, great game! I feel it has a lot of what I want this game to be. Things like an expansive world, hidden goodies, and a pretty basic experience point and leveling system.

Huge success! Animation in Blender! Using the Chicken plugin for Blender it's easy as pie to bring that Animation into Panda 3D. So now we can do away with 2D sprites in the foreground and go fully 3D!



Check it out, she's ducking! I don't have any suit that can record my animation, so I'm not expecting anything perfect here, but I'd say that pose is rather convincing. So yeah good stuff.

UPDATE: So...according to a friend, this so called ducking position is a known sex position. I didn't know HONEST!!! I swear it seems perfectly innocent to me, you people and your minds being in the gutter and whatnot.

Though I have been busy lately I have been steadily working on Shadow of a Dream. I knew the first order of business was to make a slightly more attractive Heroine... so here is my first draft...



I abandoned any attempt to make a realistic character to go with a more cartoon style. I think it has worked much better for me! I know it still needs some work, especially in the head area, and she doesn't actually have hands yet! I'd love to hear some comments on this one!

In other news, I've acquired a job with a web company. I don't know yet if it's going to work out completely but things seem very promising. I am excited to finally get paid a salary to do my work! Rest assured however, my true ambition is to make awesome video games! I won't be abandoning that.

I just want to say...



Yep, me and all of Chompy Creations is with you Coco! Check out the "I'm with Coco!" Facebook group while you're at it by clicking the picture above. Support Coco!