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Introducing Morningstar Day 1
🕑 Added 2023-01-01 07:39:01 +0000 UTCAs Love of Magic gets closer to finishing, I've been toying around with concepts for what the *next* game will be. I mainly love SciFi & Fantasy, so that's where I've been looking for inspiration. After a bunch of sketches and several prototypes I think I'm finally where I'm happy with the direction, and so I put together the first day of the game.
Morningstar is an Urban fantasy RPG, set in a different universe than Love of Magic, but with many recurring personas. I started this process when Chloe somehow came along from Making Movies, and became on of the central characters in Love of Magic. This time... there's a whole cast of them (and a bunch of new characters).
An RPG needs combat, and for Morningstar I decided to implement a Match 3 combat system I originally wrote for Katie's act (back in Book 2). I loved the feel of the gameplay, but I knew it needed too much work to fit into Katie's act. This is a relatively straight forward gem-battle Match3; swap gems to fill up special abilities, use those abilities to destroy your opponent. The fun will come from making interesting abilities, a cool upgrade path and interesting opponents to fight.
You would think that reusing characters would cut down on the rendering work, but it doesn't really (it does simplify my life in other ways, since I already know and love the characters); one reason it doesn't is that I'm re-rendering all the characters anyway.
There's a couple of reasons for this. Some characters look slightly different (both Emily and MC's gotten their pointy ears removed, and MC's also lost the cat-eye iris), but the bigger issue is that my lighting style changed quite drastically from the beginning of LoM to the end. This time, before starting on the first character, I set up the camera rig, the light rig, and made sure that everyone is being rendered under similar circumstances.
I'm also making some changes to character layout; you'll notice that Bella here is larger than in Love of Magic, and that her in-scene portrait has the same kind of facial animation that the sidebar portrait has in love of Magic. All the characters also got a wardrobe update (even MC), so they need re-rendering in their new clothes.
I hope you all enjoy the story, and the characters (new and old). If you'd like a Steam key for Book 3, drop me a DM here or on Discord, and I'll pass you one: the vertical slice for Morningstar is on the Beta Branch called "Morningstar" on Book 3.
How does it look? Let me know in the comments.
And have an amazing New Year; here's hoping 2023 is a great year for all of us.
Comments
Bruce Mellish
That's the one, I usually just pressed the space button ..... Only even for the 'training' battles in this, story mode, they're taking a long time :D I'll try 0 in this one next time
Droid Productions
For Love of Magic you can always press 0 to null out the enemy's health (if they still have stuff to say they'll go to 1HP).
Bruce Mellish
Was there an instant win button before .....? Just I could do with that for the battles, being useless :P
Droid Productions
I suspect that's going to be the controversial part, but it's also a lot of fun revisiting the characters under different circumstances. All in all it'll be 6-7 characters of a cast of 70+, though they are of course some of the key characters.
wibble
I'm a little sceptical of having much of the same cast repeating, tbh. But very glad you managed to get roll back implemented. I'm hoping that you'll make the combat portion mostly optional like you did with poker in book2. For me, anything that takes me out of the story is a point of frustration.
Bruce Mellish
Ooh, I'll have to try that soon .... :P
Droid Productions
There's a lot of underlying things that's different; the magic system, power structures, the key movers and shakers are all different. It might be best to think of it as a multiverse :)
ButterB22
Loved Morningstar, and for me personally, I can think of a couple of different ways to connect LoM and Morningstar to be set in the same universe. Granted there are parts that kind of interconnect them in a way. Also just wondering if in LoM we stay in the new area for the whole book or just for the first couple of acts (I typed it in this way so people who haven't started book 3 yet don't have to go into it with spoilers)
Cheops Law Productions
Can relate.
Droid Productions
Yeah, I need to test first next time :) I hate listening to myself, though, so it's a step I often skip :)
Cheops Law Productions
Looks good, though the music was too loud for me to catch most of the narration. But it looks like it'll be a hoot.
Droid Productions
Hopefully it ends well; I want to end it fairly for the cast, and then walk away to let them enjoy their ever after. This was my way of trying to still bring the people I loved with me, without disturbing their happily ever after in the process :)
I agree with you Chesty it is kind of depressing. But with Morning Star in the works we have something to look forward to. And what I have seen so far it looks great. Plus to see how LoM is going to end is hard to wait on. But Droid is one of the best at this at least in my mind. So I have high hopes.
Chesty
Its kind of depressing to think that lom is coming to a close soon. I'm sure it would sound silly to some people but lom was the first avn I ever played. It really helped me during a difficult point in my life. I was 24 years old, 5 months pregnant and had just lost my husband. Looking back on it now, I am sure it was unhealthy. I was deeply depressed and I played book 1 over and over again. It was the escape I needed at time I suppose. Sorry I feel like I'm rambling now but thank you Droid. I will be sad to see it end but I can't wait to finally see the whole story play out.
Droid Productions
Yeah, I heard that from other people; I'll dial it down next time :)
Gary Hempel
for me , the music is too dang loud making it hard for me to understand what you are saying.
Pax
I watched the video and I like the story framework as well as combat system. Thanks for sharing this!
Pax
Happy 2023 and thanks for all the Love of Magic you gave us in 2022!
