illustration

Background Banaza!

This July I had the pleasure of having Karl Dupéré-Richer spend a bit of time working on some artwork for the project. I gave him a handful of unfinished backgrounds and he set himself to working on some sketches based on the scratch pre-alpha “art” I had in the game.

Karl took these images with a small dose of direction and very quickly put together some sketches.

From these images I set myself to transposing them into EGA Vector graphics using SCI Companion.

Here are a few other backgrounds that were completed thanks to Karl’s help on the project. These 4 are parts of a log cabin area.

Karl is also responsible for about 2/3 of the updated Artwork in Book 1, so his work on Betrayed Alliance has been (and continues to be) inestimable! I’d recommend following his work and supporting him by checking out Amazing Fix, a game featuring his artwork.

Altogether, Karl has sketched out 11 backgrounds this July, and I’ve done my best to do them justice in the conversion process into vector EGA backgrounds.

After this most recent run of completing backgrounds, the total of completed backgrounds to use in the game is now around 130 or so. I estimate about 20 or so more backgrounds will be needed. To give a bit of scale, Book 1 has about 56 backgrounds.

What else is new?

You might recognize the following image from last update, where I was working on this puzzle:

The puzzle is now complete and the background has been redone.

I’ve also done some further work with a conversation between Leah and Jurgen, a character you run into in the demo who is on his own quest in Book 2. Here is the sketch and then the in-game conversion.

Bad News

Despite things getting done, not everything is going perfectly. This past month the Slattstudio discord server was deleted by its previous owner. I’ve put together a new one which you can join here. I am now the owner of the server, so that will not be happening again. I apologize for the inconvenience!

Also, the goal of this year was to get the game to alpha by year’s end. While this has been among the most productive years so far, each month’s goal is still falling behind schedule. That said, things are really starting to come together and it’s beginning to hit that transition point between feeling like a project and feeling like a game.

Until next update, thank you all for your support and patience, especially those who have continued supporting me on patreon. You make it possible for me to work on this game!

What’s new in the Verlorn forest since the March? Let’s find out!

First (and please forgive the simplistic nature of the artwork – it’s not in final form) is a puzzle room that Leah finds herself in. This puzzle, like the cosmic maze area shown last update, takes place in a “space” a bit outside of the forest. More to share on this as it progresses. Right now it’s kind of like looking at scaffolding as opposed to seeing the complete building.

Speaking of things not in their final form, I’ve also been putting together a few basic blueprints for a handful of locations that have not been made yet. All in all, I’d say there are about 30 or so backgrounds that still need to be made (That’s on top of the around 120 unique backgrounds already completed!). Here is a cabin area which will house a few rooms:

In this cabin, you will meet an important character for Book 2’s story, Leonard, one of the few other characters capable of living in the cursed forest:

You will also see him featured in the new artwork I’ve just recently put together for the Betrayed Alliance: Book 2 Player’s Guide and Game Manual. Here’s a quick side by side with the Book 1 artwork and the new Book 2 artwork – you can see I wanted to go with a consistent theme (As anyone who collects items in the same collection will tell you, it’s nice when they fit together!)

Here’s a look at the process I used for creating the image:

Step 1 – I sketched out the artwork concept.
Step 2 – I inked the sketch and erased the pencil. I then took a picture and inputted it into photoshop. (A lot of artists sketch and ink in photoshop itself, but I still prefer the tactile nature of paper.)
Step 3 – I use a comic book style approach to coloring called “flatting” where you put down a base color for each part. This allows you to use the magic wand tool to select one area at a time to color.

Back to the game

But artwork isn’t everything I’ve been busy with. There are a number of areas I’ve been programming that aren’t easy to show without revealing puzzle spoilers and such, but two areas I’ve been busy with lately are:

I don’t want to show too much about these, however, I will say the frozen river here, for example will not always remain frozen. As the game progresses, you help effect certain changes.

Final Thoughts

So how’s the goal of reaching alpha by end of year? I must be honest here, it’s not looking too great, unfortunately. My life has just become so busy with three children (ranging from 5-12 y/o). I’m not trying to assign blame or anything, just observing that hobbies like game creation take backseat to real life. That being said, this is a marathon and I’m feeling like we’re in the last few miles. Yes, I’m tired and running low on gas, but just one step at a time and before you know it, it’ll be in alpha, then beta, then tested and released. So thanks for hanging in there with me.

For those of you interested, I’ve also put out a new shirt on my fourthwall page – this one features the cartoon version of adventurer Graham that I use in my comic series on my patreon. I really liked how he looks in this style and I wanted him on a shirt for myself. Pick one up if you like it too!