I've been hard at work since last progress log, not as much as I want, but still hard at work regardless. Since then, I've completed all (or, at least 99%) of player animations, as well as concepts for the UI and menus.
My friend, as previously mentioned, has generously offered to compose for this project and help out with sound design. As of last night, they have completed level one's track, which I'll be posting about here too.
PROTAGONIST ANIMATIONS
Like previously mentioned, since last progress log I've been prioritizing protagonist, or as he's now called, Mr. Butch's animations above all else, those are some of the most important visuals after all. The base sprite (as well as some of the stills) were made in MS Paint, as I lack access to Aseprite in college, and some of the animations had to be made in Piskel, though a good portion of it did end up getting finished at home.
It's likely I'll make adjustments to this list later on, but for now, I'd say it's complete.
Surprisingly, for some of these, I was pretty dead on with the rough frame count I had in mind, especially with the idle. Walk cycles are getting pretty easy for me to make, too, I'm proud of how it came out.
HUD/MENU CONCEPTS
On my priority list following Mr. Butch's sprites were concepts and sprites for the HUD and the different menus in the game... well, actually, it was sprites for the rocketship, but I moved that aside as I didn't find it important enough to be up there...
These are fairly simple. I took inspiration from Wario Land 4 for the level UI and the main menu. The pause menu takes a lot from my previous project, REPAINTED, since it was a pretty good pause menu already and would allow me to just reuse the code I've already written for that. I was only planning on making a main menu, a pause menu, and an end screen, but I had realised that it would probably be wise to include a little controls menu in there too.
I wanted to make these relatively simple, not only to reduce the workload but also to avoid clutter and make things easier to understand. Last time I used GameMaker, menus were some of the easiest to program, so I hope that stays the case this time around.
LEVEL ONE TRACK
Last night, I had watched this friend of mine compose a track for the first level of the game over voice chat. Though I hardly understand half of what they're doing, it's a pretty fun process to observe, to watch as the song starts from just a simple melody concept and slowly evolves and becomes more developed over time. If I recall correctly, the first few seconds of this track had been made a few weeks back as a concept, but they quickly grew dissatisfied with the concept and dropped it, that is until now, when they ended up giving it another shot. After what felt like a surprisingly short amount of time, here's what they came up with. A nearly 3 minute long track. Take a listen!
I'm very happy with this track. I'm sort of thinking about slowing it down in-game, as I did imagine it being slightly calmer, but I think it'd fit regardless. My vision for this level's track has stayed fairly consistent, I had imagined, and even noted this down in my Trello, the track sounding like a sort of combination of Toby Fox's unused DELTARUNE Fountain track (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi2h38wyQ6Q) and Lava Reef Zone Act 2 from Sonic Mania (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW-td9uPBe0), starting off like the Fountain track, mystical, calm, and then kicking into something with more energy like 15 seconds into Lava Reef Act 2. The final product somewhat follows that, though it does stray a little bit from what I had in mind. Even so, it still ended up sounding great, and I'm very happy with it.
Right now, sound related tasks are at the bottom of the priority list as I'm focusing on just getting the game into a playable state. I'm letting the composer do their thing at their own pace, as of now they're going through a bit of a music block, so I wouldn't blame them for taking long, though I have confidence that they'll get these things done before the deadline. I've known them for a while, and know that even if they take a while to start composing, once they get going, they get things done scarily fast!
Outside of that, I feel it should be mentioned that I do have another friend who sort of pitched in with the sound design, providing some edited stock vocal sound effects for Mr. Butch (they were the one who came up with his name, too!) Though I'm still not 100% sure where they might fit, I do have some ideas.
And that's all I have. I think development's coming together well. Time is running dangerously low, no thanks to my weird habits, but I still have hope that I can get this done, even if it means cutting out some parts (which I have already considered doing as an emergency plan.) My priorities have sort of changed, I had originally planned to get most sprites done first, like tilesets and the rocketship and whatnot, but now, I'm planning on getting UI and menu art out of the way and then getting to work on the actual game itself.