
I’m not going to lie, animation is taking its toll on me. Sometimes the rough drawings come naturally but most times it gets so frustrating trying to get basic body positions that it mentally exhausts me. It’s pretty obvious to me that if I can find a way the next action RPG I make should be a 3D game just to spare my sanity, if I can only get 3D to look like 2D like some recent games do. I specifically call out action RPG (at least, this style of action RPG) because unlike most indie-developed games, I have to animate every last action smoothly in 4 directions. And I refuse to use mirror images when handedness comes in to play… most 2D games, even professionally done, to this day use mirroring so you’ll see someone who is right-handed suddenly using their left hand to swing their sword. It’s smart, saves time, but my main competition, Ys, does not use mirroring even when they used sprites.
Anyways, I picked one of the newer animation frames for the update screenshot – I’ve added more detail and expanded Arashi’s sprite size again from the last seen screenshots (all the previous screenshot sprite I’ve completely trashed, I’m much happier with how she looks in-game especially in motion). I’m really trying to push to finish the base 3-hit combo sequence (Short>Medium>Heavy) before worrying about anything else, but as I said, it’s tiring. The front and left angles are easier to draw than the back and right angles, that’s for sure.

One last addition to the game engine is alternate outfit colors for Arashi. Since this is the sole playable character (most likely, I simply can’t promise being able to take direct control of Ket or the other recruitable characters at this time), I really wanted to be able to allow the player to find or use alternate colors (referred to often as the 2nd player or 2P colors) I have 4 alternate outfit colors set up so far, this is just a sample test of the hair and coat color for the Black Tempest outfit (the coat lining and gloves change color too with outfit changes, I just didn’t implement that here in this sample)