More ducks and a hub area!
More ducks!
I finally finished designing and drawing all of the ducks who appear in my new game's story! I experimented with lots of different accessories and outfits, and I basically ended up with just lots of different colors of ducks wearing different hats:
These ducks are so round and don't have any separation between their heads and their bodies, so I couldn't figure out a way to get them looking good with any items of clothing other than a hat. But I'm happy with the hats, so that's okay.
More background changes!
I made some more tweaks to the game's backgrounds too! The cave backgrounds no longer look like they were drawn freehand in MS Paint, and it's generally much easier to tell which objects you can bump into and which objects are in the background:
A hub area!
I finished the backgrounds and cutscene art before my ear was feeling better, so I had to find something other than music to work on. I've started experimenting with adding a hub area to the game, so you can see your office (your delivery center? your HQ? your post office? whatever you call the building you use to run your delivery business) grow over the course of the game. I really like the idea of actually being able to see your business grow and having customers come to visit you.
The way it currently works is that the hub area will have exits to each area (the beach, the caves etc), and flying out of one of those areas will open up that area's map screen. Here's how it works for the beach:
But this is still all very early in progress, and it's all subject to change. My next plan is to try replacing the map screens with some more hub areas like a beach hub and a cave hub, so you can fly straight to the entrance to each individual level like in Super Mario 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Kirby's Adventure or Dustforce.
If I find that this slows the pacing down too much, I'll try removing the hub areas and adding the player's office (delivery center? HQ? I really need to decide what the building is called...) to the world map instead.
So whatever I end up going with, hopefully the game will feel a bit more like a living world but without losing its speedy arcadey pacing. I'm going to keep working on this next week, and I'll keep you updated with my progress!
What's next?
I don't think I'll have finished the hub area by next Thursday, but I'll do my best. But if I somehow manage to finish it, I'll finally be able to work on some music for the game and start thinking about making an announcement trailer.
Anyway, it's the evening over here so I'm going to get back to playing Bobo The Cat. It's a free metroidvania with tons of interesting game design ideas and I'm having a blast so far. I highly recommend it if you're into those kinds of games. See you next week!