loren schmidt

you can /supply/ relatedness and even-grainedness in 3d, but it isn't actually natural to prop shop the way it is to lo res tile based art, which is interesting.

why yes there's an expensive 3d lamp and an expensive 3d armchair and an expensive 3d endtable and the wood in none of them has the same color or scale to the wood grain, and the quality of edges on all of them is mismatched and texel density is nonuniform. the grain doesn't naturally unify.

and when you're creating assets for sprite based 2d, you have known relationships between details, the placement of elements, etc. and everything is just a little bit shrouded in ambiguity. you /imagine/ they fit well and are physically coherent. prop shop is a dangerous setup for things-in-parallel

i always wanted to do this. reproducing creatures (giant lice) which reproduce freely, but which can only move diagonally, so they can rarely spread into other rooms and self-limit naturally.

the lens, i think, is "what sorts of decisions and reading would this create?". you can always tune drop rates, that's not an issue.

i /really/ like the key position as a mechanic. it's interesting. i think i worry about grinding for spells with the right position. maybe that's ok? they're not in short supply.

this has a simplification benefit. right now there's pick up / drop, and a notion of a held item.

but if you can't move spells, the pick up / learn verbs could be collapsed to one- a verb which swaps the thing in the world plane with the thing in the magical plane.

one potentially interesting thing you could do with this design is make it so spells have an unalterable position.

a spell in the upper left would always be in the upper left. keys could only ever be used to unlock doors with the same position as them.

wow, that's amazing.

#7drl the sideboard is nearly there. there's a lot more work to do, but it's getting close to done so i get to do things like make ghosts render over solid blocks of wall color when they're walking through walls.

the sideboard is coming along. i think i want some visual indicators for which bits are available.

this sounds weird because it really does make sense in terms of optimization, but there is a /huge/ difference in feeling of materiality and intentionality between tile based 2d and prop shop 3d.

We have a launch date!

ok we're getting close now! there are actual sideboard spells in the grid, and it's /mostly/ rendering correctly.

the crystals and the giants!

it's basically a silly patriotic fairy tale with some bits that haven't aged well but it /absolutely/ has magic in its bones.

Руслан и Людмила, 1 серия (4К, фильм-сказка, реж. Александр Птушко, 1972 г.) YouTube video by Киноконцерн "Мосфильм"

in case there is someone out there who needs this in their life:
mosfilm has both parts of Руслан и Людмила (ruslan and ludmila,1972) on their youtube channel at absurd quality. this has amazing art direction and some /truly/ magical scenes.

youtu.be/hXz4dKq0Cps?...
youtu.be/Cok-rzxbdiM?...

side note: i am using alchemical symbols for a few things, but they all are very closely based on the actual meanings.

🝋 is dust. in this game, a sort of blue magical dust is one of the two types of magical resource.

🝭 is a retort, which in this case holds healing potions or health reserve.

side note: i figured out a solution for stepping on sideboard spells when going in and out of rooms. hallways are a different type of cell, and they stomp spells. look in the upper right in the illustration- see how only the 3 spells under it are expressed?

starts most often put large resource exchanges, mobility, or information spells in these slots. but the grid is undifferentiated- you can put whatever you want here!

i'm doing sideboards. i feel good about this.

here is how sideboards work. you have an extra row of occasional use spells which are /outside/ most rooms.

if you're in a room with holes in the walls, you get access. so if you were in this room, you'd get the these colored x spells.

oh and figuring out a character for the player character is the hardest

i'm trying out having treasure items and keys both /not/ be abstracted resources. you have to "learn" them and put them in a slot you'd otherwise have a spell in.

you generally have a few empty slots (which /aren't/ useless), and you sometimes run out of space for treasure and have to do 2+ trips.

things that have taken a long time:

figuring out what offwhite color to use
figuring out what color to use for gold
the one item i decided to put in which is a container
entity alert + targeting behavior

things that went really quickly:
the entire magic system
level generation

pick up / learn verbs are working and bound to keys! and there is a slot under the spell grid which shows the currently held spell.

i already have like 2 different plans for how to use it for spell effects haha. if i have time, i want to do it.

thank you!

i'm being good and implementing important and fun core features, but i do feel the siren song of the forbidden sextile rendered high res mode

i'm adding verbs for learning spells. should be working momentarily!

Руслан и Людмила, 1 серия (4К, фильм-сказка, реж. Александр Птушко, 1972 г.) YouTube video by Киноконцерн "Мосфильм"

in case there is someone out there who needs this in their life:
mosfilm has both parts of Руслан и Людмила (ruslan and ludmila,1972) on their youtube channel at absurd quality. this has amazing art direction and some /truly/ magical scenes.

youtu.be/hXz4dKq0Cps?...
youtu.be/Cok-rzxbdiM?...