Legend of Xenia 2

A sequel/prequel/remake (or something like that) of my lowrezjam 2016 game Legend of Xenia.

Quick jump to update: → Day 4 → Day 5 → Day 6 + 7 → Day 8 + 9 + 10

Day 1 + 2:

I, uhh, spent day1 finishing another game, Snowfriends. I then wanted to start lowrezjam on day 2, but was lazy and played PUBG instead, whoops 

Day 3:

I spent today doing art research and doing some mockups. I know that I want to make a game in the same universe as my last lowrezjam game, Legend of Xenia, which was (supposed to be) a small Zelda-like, so I replayed that game and took a look at the art in it. It hasn't aged well, to be honest. It was primarily inspired by the GameBoy Colour Zelda games, as well as some Pico-8 games, and the colour palette was Pico-8 as well (I'm not using that engine though). I want to have a similar look this time, but with higher quality art in general, and a much nicer palette, so I started researching other games and stuff, and started doing some mockups by basically enhancing the assets from last year. Here's what I've got so far:

Legend of Xenia, from 2016	Legend of Xenia 2 mockup	Comparison GIF! :D

As you might guess, the new colour palette (and style for things like the grass) is heavily inspired by The Minish Cap. So where last year had art inspired by Zelda games on the GameBoy Colour, now the palette is inspired by a Zelda game on the GameBoy Advance! Hehe, next year Nintendo DS?? 

That's it for now, see you again tomorrow where I'll start programming. 

→ Day 4

The art is so detailed in such a small space; it's beautiful, can't wait to play it :D

That's quite impressive. And the original game already looked quite promising, good luck! :)

Thanks guys!! ❤

Nice. I loved graphics of the original one and 2 adds some pleasant grass.

Your art is insanely good for the size. Looking forward to this. Need to go back and play last years!  

Uau! This is looking seriously good and I can hardly see the need for higher resolution!

← Day 4

Day 5:

Another slow one. Huh, not too much productivity lately. Doesn't help that there's a festival in town right now. Oh well, tomorrow I'll brew some extra strong coffee and put in some extra effort.

Today I pulled some more quick static objects into the game, and implemented "dynamic" shadows. Outline shaders, yay! I'm like, the worst ever at shaders, so this was a fun challenge to tackle. Then I decided to tackle another challenge, that of a textbox/dialogue engine. I looked through ready-made ones, including this one made by a friend (v4 of that engine was what I used in LoX1!), but ended up writing my own super simple one without any unnecessary bells and whistles. So that was god damn miserable, seriously, typewriter effect + good linebreaks suck fun.

Shadows (poopy gif, sorry!)	Dialogue engine test, as creepy as ever

I'm sure tomorrow will be great! Also, thank you all for the great comments so far ❤️

→ Day 6 + 7

This is looking awesome. I loved the first Xenia.

← Day 5

Day 6 + 7:

I took some time to really think about what I wanted to do with LoX 2 story-wise. Should this game be a retelling/remake of the first one except done better, should it be a prequel that [story spoilers from LoX1 in strikethrough] shows the events of the shipwreck, or maybe a sequel that explores what happens next with, for example, the missing king? I've decided on the latter - Legend of Xenia 2, as the name suggests, will be a sequel that takes place a few years after the first one! General story has been worked out, more specific story beats still to be defined though.

I've also finally started animating Xenia. Feels good man. All four run/walk (it looks like a bit of both, really...) animations are done. Confident stride, bouncy subpixelated hair, all in all they turned out pretty lovely.

Movement animations	In-game

Next I'll do her basic attack animations, but before I start doing that, she really needs something to attack, doesn't she? Say hello to the first enemy! ...wait, those are just bushes, aren't they? ..oh. oh nO THEY'RE NOT, NOPPPPE

And on that bombshell... see you tomorrow in a few days!

→ Day 8 + 9 + 10

Neato! Sideview looks especially smooth.

Character animations are looking great. LOVE the bush mobs! (please call them bush whackers)