SilverEarsEntertainment
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Devlog No.009
🕑 Added 2024-01-24 22:26:21 +0000 UTCAs of the last build, I've been mostly working on the sprite system rework for Aria, but I have a few new things otherwise.
One new thing I added was a trinket which causes Aria's phoenix dash to leave behind embers while dashing which float down inconsistently and can do some slight damage to enemies. A small nuanced trinket which you will be able to get by defeating the hyper charged gargoyle, then passing the challenge inside the temple behind the normally closed door.
As of right now, this trinket isn't exceptionally useful, but just adds a small amount of potential extra damage and mechanics to the dash. Enemies touching the embers can get stunned a moment too, but generally I don't think it's too useful on it's own. Each ember only does a half point of damage which is still not too bad. Later on I plan to have a dash upgrade which increases the damage of the dash and it's associated powerups and that will also affect the embers.
The second new thing is that I got the music for the gargoyle boss fight done and it's been added. I'll put it up on here after this devlog if you want to have a listen to it. It's done by the same musician who did the golem head music (And most of the other tracks in the game) Franco Trincavelli or 'Eclipse Audio'.
In regards to Aria's sprite system, that's been what's most on my mind and what I've spent a lot of the time on. To explain how it works currently...
Aria has individual sprites for all of her animations and forms. This means, for example, she has three sprites, each with different breast sizes. So for her charge shot animation, she has 8 individual sprites in that animation. But in that sprite, it just plays the animation as normal with some pauses for when she is charging, and a slight pause during her recoil. (I attached an example here to show as Ex 1 Blaster.gif)
Now this works well enough for simple linear sizes and baking the 'boob bounce' into animations, but starts to cause a problem with something like... running for example. In Aria's running animation, the first two boob sizes she runs as normal. However, the third size her breasts will 'deviate' a bit and appear as though they are bouncing up and down.
The problem here is that the run animation is eight frames long, but adding in this 'bounce deviation' adds 4 frames to it. (Every other frame gets one more added to create the illusion of bounce) Normally I could bake this into the animation and just halve the animation speed, but the problem is that it's now 12 frames long and that is not 'double' the length of the previous animation. This makes it appear like she's delayed running.
To fix this, I just added a few duplicate frames and then I sped up the animation speed as I said. (I uploaded an example of how it currently works as Ex 2 Running)
So what's the problem?
Well now there are extra duplicate frames in the running animation which will bloat texture page sizes.
Could I do it this way? Sure. Would it cause a problem later? Maybe. Probably.
So currently I am going back over this system to fix it. The way that I plan to do this is by giving Aria one 'core' animation and then a pasted on 'boob size'. By doing this, I will only need one running animation for Aria, but I will still need a 'running' animation for the boob sizes too. The difference is the size of the sprites. I will have one set of eight frames for her visual run, but then I can vary the frames of the boobs and the boobs themselves will actually have varied sizes to their sprites. This ends up taking up less sprite space overall on each texture page by quite a lot. (In Ex 3 Boob Size example you can see the middle boob sprite. That's the actual sprite that would be used combined with the core sprite on the far left. The core sprite will never change, but the boob sprite would. overall the boob sprite will always be smaller.)
BUT! More importantly! This opens up the potential sprite design and additions.
Currently I am only using this system for Aria's boob size, though changing it to individual sprites for her body allow me to add 'other' changes to her. In this case I could do everything from allow her to wear armor to transforming just parts of her body. Or I could make her butt or belly expand too.
This is important because I've been considering giving Aria a spell or two that affect her butt/belly while still keeping the normal animations. Under the old system, I would have needed one sprite per every change. So if Aria could make her boobs, belly, and butt all expand separately, then I would need about seven sprites for every single frame instead! And it would grow exponentially with every size I added!
Under this system though, each sprite is just layered on.
Now if I did add like armor or something to the game, I would still need to individually change the sprites of armor based on whatever additional sizes I had, but that's a different issue and I could still use this layering system to make it work without much problem.
There is only one problem with this system that I have run into and that's the 'Boob Milk' and 'Blueberry Pie' powerups. Those use a specific animation that transitions into a specific 'set' of animations. Now while I don't have to change any of the animations for when she is fully a blueberry and is rolling/jumping around, it does pose an issue with her 'turning into a blueberry' while her breasts are bigger than usual. I had a trick with both of these powerups where the first frame shown was always her boobs as 'big as possible' so you'd never notice the sudden jump.
With even bigger boobs though, it would be weird to see your breasts shrink, then suddenly inflate. For the blueberry inflation animation, this isn't too hard a fix. I just add in a couple extra variations to the inflation animation and it should still be difficult/impossible to really notice the difference. (Ex 4 Blueberry shows a potential 'max boob size' blueberrification next to the normal animation.)
Under the current system, I'd just layer the boobs on over it until the animation hits a certain frame, then turn them off. It's the same with her belly and butt, though the belly and butt would have to be done with more 'finesse' if I did them. (I'm not making any promises on doing anything belly or butt related, just want to show that there is potential for it)
Though the breast inflation powerup does pose a major issue since just her 'boobs' inflate. With the 'max breast' size though, I could easily just have a simple animation of her being lifted by her already huge boobs instead. The deflation animation for her boobs is the same as the inflation one.
But if I did belly and butt? Well then they would need their own set of animations to go with and that would take significantly longer.
I COULD make it so that you couldn't pick up the boob inflation powerup if you had any belly or butt to avoid it, but that would feel like a cop out. Except if it's a powerup vs a powerup. You may notice that you can't pick up the boob milk powerup AND the blueberry powerup. That's intentional due to conflicting animations.
Which leads into the last powerup I have planned and any potential future powerups. I do plan on having Aria having a poundcake form. That form has Aria gaining some height and her booty grows rather large. I have been fiddling with it conceptually, but with this change it's looking like I will have to add the additional boobs sizes to it too. (Which I am 100% on board with!) Though it does steer in a certain direction as to what kind of powerup it will be. Since it'll contain extra boob sizes, I think it would stand to reason that it could last quite a long time. And in this case, it would also prevent you from getting the blueberry or boob milk powerups. And, as such, it would be ideal to do the extra butt sizes for. But that's a big 'if'.
I still haven't solidified what that powerup will do yet, but it does have the potential for extra butt sizes. And with the new system it would work and still be efficient without having to export tons of sprites and fill up texture pages potentially slowing down the game. If you're curious about that, you can see in the EX 3 what the poundcake form's base will likely look like.
As a final note, you may be wondering to yourself just how many boob sizes I will add? Well, I have done some boob sprites to show what I think should be every possible size. I also added in a symbol counter to show how many you will need to reach that size. (Ex 5 Sizes and Symbols) Keep in mind that this change will not add additional 'power levels' to the weapons. You will still just have the three for the first three powerups and the color of Aria's Health meter will show you what your power level is.
I think it's a good time to mention that with this new system in place, I will likely add ways for it to get drained or ways for you to 'spend' it. A potential example might be a statue you can donate your 'excess power' to and once you've donated enough, you will get a trinket or special upgrade or unlock of some kind.
As well, you'll likely be able to find or purchase upgrades which prevent, or lower, the amount of 'power' you lose when passing out or some such thing. I'll keep improving on the system as we go.
Feel free to tell me how you feel about all of this! The game is still developing!
