Bonus #screenshotsaturday, an animated gif of all the emotions I've drawn for the goblin girl portrait so far.

#GoblinGirlGame #monstergirl #indiedev #pixelart #ドット絵

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 #ドット絵

In Game Dev Court: "Your honor, please ignore the fact that we broke this rule in Subway Dogs. There were so many guest dog portraits. We HAD to break the law!"

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...

#GoblinGirlGame #pixelart #ドット絵

...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 #ドット絵 #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 #ドット絵 #GoblinGirlGame #monstergirl #indiedev

Huh looks like a bug in mastodon, there is supposed be a delay at the end of the gif before she does the sparkle eyes again. Weird!

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 #ドット絵

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.

#pixelart #gamedev #GoblinGirlGame

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!

#pixelart #gamedev #GoblinGirlGame

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!

#goblingirlgame #pixelart #gamedev

Time for the obligatory fourth wall breaking dialogue test!

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#gamemaker #scribble #chatterbox

This dialogue setup is built on @jujuadams 's fantastic Scribble (text rendering) and Chatterbox (narrative) GameMaker libraries, on top of my own pop-up window GUI library. That library is the same one driving the debugger menus I've shown before, earlier in this giant thread.

Here's what the script for that dialogue sequence looks like in the Yarn variant Chatterbox uses, this also has a bunch of Scribble formatting tags and a custom function for changing the character portraits mid-dialogue.

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.

#GoblinGirlGame #pixelart #ドット絵 #indiedev

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.

#GoblinGirlGame

Cozy little goblin camp. I wonder what's for dinner?

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She drool.

#GoblinGirlGame #pixelart #ドット絵 #monstergirl #indiedev

I did a few variations before I landed on that version. I kinda like all of them? It's a fun expression to draw!