sierralee
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February 14 Update
🕑 Added 2021-02-14 22:03:56 +0000 UTCTwo items of business, then a content post.
1) I'm participating in a big "Lusty Hearts Lewd Bundle" with a number of other devs. I joined these just as part of my obligatory marketing efforts, but they've proved surprisingly successful. Please take a look and see if any of the games interest you!
2) There's one new map along with all the faces, so don't miss it. As part of trying to do this game right, I'll make any revisions if there are errors in the mapping, or even just sections that feel bad. Please feel free to offer any feedback.
OEA Facesets
This week I finally get to share something that I've been working on for a while! As you know, Once Ever After uses a variety of different artists, and I've had a rough time getting reliable people on many fronts. One issue was getting faces for the random NPCs, which I hoped would really make the Tale variants feel distinct.
The first artist completed a number of sets before going AWOL on me, online but not responding to messages. Eventually I had to contact another artist. Rather than replicate the style exactly, they offered to try to replicate the art style of the main characters better. Compare the two, old first:
This is one of the few setbacks that was actually a plus overall. I did have to commission some pieces of art twice, but it actually wasn't horribly expensive, for what I think is an upgrade.
I've been working on this step for a while, so it's actually done, all these faces distributed around the game. Twenty four unique faces, over a hundred when you consider all the variants! It is my hope that these, as opposed to faceless NPCs, will make the game feel higher budget and be a richer experience overall.
For example, the main "roles" in the story can also have variants to increase the feel of diversity overall:
Those are just Little Red Riding Hoods from various dimensions, nobody important. We also have various unique faces and misc roles:
Or remember those villagers above? Every single Tale you visit, you get a new version of them reflecting that Tale:
I'm not entirely convinced this experiment will be successful, but I'm going to try to perform it as well as possible. Please look forward to future updates.
Comments
Sierra Lee
Glad to hear you like the new faces! Recommissioning stuff does suck, but thanks to the support of everyone here, I'm trying to make this one the best it can be.
Tim
Exciting! this definitely looks like an upgrade to me, though it does suck that you had to recommission some stuff.
Sierra Lee
I appreciate the report, and I'll try to look into this... but I'm afraid not immediately. It would take a bit of time to go back and figure out the exact situation here.
Pheebor
Not sure if this is the best place to post this, but the latest TLS has a minor, but game-stopping bug. If you are in the screen outside the Divine Claw base during the FL war (the one Wynn will eventually take you out of), and you walk down along the right edge of the screen onto the road from above, you get stuck, because your character wants to move left one space, but is blocked by an NPC who never moves. Great game though!
Sierra Lee
Yeah, I hope everyone agrees with you there. Glad you appreciated the shadowed eyes! I thought the idea was funny enough that I added new NPCs and dialogue pointing it out. Though I'm mostly focused on new content with this one, previous areas are getting some improvements as well.
Sierra Lee
Thanks! I plan to try harder on the promotion of this one, so maybe a way to show the shift via video too.
Trisk
These look good. I think seeing the visual variations on the same faces should really add to immersion. It reinforces the idea that you're visiting alternate versions of the same tale archetype. I love that one of the villagers in what I assume is the Bangville set has the weirdly obscured eyes of a male hentai character.
Zaq Reman
I'd call it successful, it certainly stands out in these pics (and I don't think it'd be too hard to come up with preview pics for the final game that have a similar effect). I can't speak for anyone else but that sort of alternate versions thing is certainly an attention-grabber for me.
