Blog: Sprites 'n Streams

Hiya!

As promised last week, I'm going to talk a bit about the video game I've been making sprites for. It's got the working title "DID Quest" (which will definitely be changed), and it's sort of an action RPG/beat-em-up hybrid. I'm working on it with only a few other people, at least until we really get into the thick of things and maybe require a pinch hitter.

The sprite above is a revised version of one I showed before--it's the idle sprite for the heroine, who has been given the name Rain. Rain is going to face all sorts of villains and monsters on her quest to save eight maidens, and get into a lot of trouble on the way. There will obviously be DID--some of it will happen when Rain is defeated, while other scenes are part of the story.

This is one of Rain's basic attacks, a stab move. Obviously this animation isn't quite finished yet, with about half the frames being in a partial sketch state. It's always important to get the movement and timing of an animation right before you start cleaning it up, and I'm pretty pleased with how this one came out!

Rain will get all sorts of additional moves as the game progresses. Many of them are actually gained by being defeated by different enemies. DID games often have the problem of making the player lose on purpose so they can see the game over scenes, which can make for a tedious experience. But in our game, the player gets a tangible reward for finding each enemy and being defeated, which makes it feel like less of a chore and more of a collectathon. It's also fun to just play through the game naturally and go back to collect more defeats later on.

Apart from attacks and abilities, Rain also needs a number of animations for receiving damage, whether that's through a conventional attack or something more kinky, like being wrapped up. These animations need to be exaggerated so the player can really feel the impact of whatever is happening to Rain. In this WIP hurt animation, Rain is being hit from the front, so she doubles over and her eyes widen. This has been a really tricky one to make so far, but it's also really fun to draw such a dramatic pose.

Right now, I spend one day a week working on sprites while working on regular drawings five other days, so it's a pretty slow process. It's probably going to be a very long time before this game is finished, but I hope you'll join me on the journey!

Next week I'll talk in more detail about how I go about making an animation. Look forward to it!

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Before I go, I also want to talk a bit about streaming. I've been streaming on Saturday evenings (well, evenings for me, anyway) for a good while now and I don't intend to stop any time soon. It's a ton of fun.

I've also started streaming on weekdays, but I'm still figuring out the best time to do it. Since most people are working during the week and almost my entire audience is located in North America, I have to start really late. One of the many things that will be nice about moving to the States is being able to start earlier. :P

At any rate, it looks like this is going to be my streaming schedule for the time being unless something strange happens:

Wednesday 10:30 PM CET/4:30 PM ET/1:30 PT - Modern games (PC, PS4, Switch)
Saturday 8:00 PM CET/2:00 PM ET/11:00 AM PT - Drawing (Viewer's Choice sketch + whatever else I'm working on), followed by retro games

I've opened a stream discussion channel on my Discord server as well, where people can suggest games I should play, give general stream feedback and I can announce upcoming events.

Finally, I've been putting some money into doing better streams. I have a capture card now that allows me to play newer games, and I've got a better mic setup so the audio is much better. I've also got the hard drive space to record my streams, but I'm not yet sure how to release these given YouTube restrictions. I'm experimenting with releasing highlight clips, though, like this one where I repeatedly fall off the stairs in King's Quest IV. On top of all that, I'm working on getting a better Vtuber model made that looks closer to my design.

Whew, that was a lot to talk about! But I think I got everything. Rosie rollin' out!