So while Cyrus has been busy with 64Brawl animations, I've been keeping myself occupied waiting for him. He's doing a terribly hard job, but all I can do is sit on my thumbs while I wait. Or, you know, maybe do some work on the mechanics of the game itself, but my defense is that I need characters to work with, yeah?

There are a few things of note, but overall, while not a lot has been done to progress the story, the mechanics and some other parts have been modified, which in turn will make the game a little more fun and allow some bigger possibilities for me.

But before you see the screenshots, here is my latest bit of work. Over the course of a few hours, I sketched this, scanned it, inked it, and colored it. I think it turned out pretty well, maybe except for the face, but the image will be scaled down in-game.

As some of you may know, River was in serious need of a new wardrobe. Except without the robes. That was a shitty outfit I threw together at first and accidentally stuck with. This outfit will probably be more permanent, especially since I spent two hours going through and changing all of her sprites and animations. Good god.

If you think she looks pissed, she is. She's posed for me before and doesn't like it much.

With that out of the way, on to the screenshots.

So Cesque requested several times that I add shadows to trees and characters. And it wasn't hard to do or anything, but it did make the graphical aspect of the game somewhat better. I also put shadows on projectiles, to better help you aim and dodge, as you'll see in the next couple pics.

I got many complaints about how large the HUD is, and how much of the screen it covered. I've spent a significant amount of time cutting it down, and here is the result. The party goes across the top and the boss(es) go across the bottom. Upon taking damage, characters have a small HP bar floating over their heads, that disappears after a short time. I might add things on the sides, but overall I think visibility has improved drastically.

This isn't much. I just modified the attack to take advantage of the new shadows and be a little confusing. These shadows give the game a real sense of depth, and allow for a lot of possibilities, and depending on input, I may allow things such as character jumping for puzzles, boss moves, platforming, etc.

To really hinder your view, I've added a boss alert system (like DBM from WoW). Some people complained about how they had no idea what to do, and the alert is a way to make sure people get the message. You can turn this off and change a few things in the newly added options menu.

And here's the changelog for those who played the demo. It sucks not having spoiler tags.

And that covers my other, less important changes. You may have seen I've decided to finally use GM FMOD. I like it so far. It's not too hard to use, and easily loops/fades/etcs the game tracks. And the last thing I should note is that replaying the game puts you at max level, raises the bosses to your level, and has you fight them for achievements, which are used to unlock more.

So yeah, I've got a direction, and a lot of work.