Super Toaster X: Learn Japanese

Hey again! This week you'll be glad as I've got loads of gif's to share with you guys! New features this week include: Attacking upwards by toasting Pan, shooting with a nice little particle effect and working health and battery bars! Oh and bubbles but you guys have seen them before :P Next week I hope to show you a new grapple system and water physics!





-Greg



This past week I posted the Boss Fight music, and I'm interested to hear what you all think! I'm currently taking my time moving through the sound effects for STG. Arguably, they should be even better than the music! You'll be hearing the boss fight fairly often while playing, but you'll be hearing the sound of STG jumping and shooting even more!

-Trevor


You know what, I’ve come to the realization that I really need to sit down and draw from life, period. I’ve been trying to pixel stuff and to be honest I often find myself puzzled in front of my computer wondering how to pull it off. I mean, I always manage in the end but it takes way longer than it should as I often trial and error my way into things.

I’ve been trying to put this off as, to be honest, drawing from life is something I dread doing. But this has been a long time coming so it’s time to drop Graphics Gale for a while and stick to a pencil. I hope you guys will still be interested in this turn in the art part but this is something which needs to done. It’ll also be a good time to work more on concept before jumping into things and pixeling. I guess I was such in a rush to get the Kickstarter going to I thought I could skip on the more fundamental aspects of drawing, but I can’t. I always knew it deep down but it’s time to face the facts and get along with the program.

Now, the first question which comes to mind is: “Won’t this really slow down development”?

The short answer is: No, I don’t think it will. For one thing, we’ve still got a long way to into music. So this will continue as usual.

Programming is getting closer to where Sahand was when he left. Although the core elements are in place, there is still quite a lot of work to be done, mainly on the grappling system. So this will still be a while.

Goulven has the latest version of the engine. This means that his next task is building the actual level with what we have so far by using placeholders. Once this is done, I’ll need to pixel whatever is missing and we’ll be good to go for a playable demo.

More specifically, I am studying perspective. This is very important as with animation, I find myself having to change the perspective of certain shapes. In the case of Pan, the construction is simple enough. A rectangle for the body. But still, it’s hard to admit, but I found it difficult to modify the perspective of the said rectangle in certain animations.

There’s also the idea of having a background with a static perspective and no vanishing point, like so:

And yet with Pan, I decided to use one. You’ll notice in the red square, the perspective is wrong.


I took pictures of the exercises I’m currently doing. Most of them come from the book: “The American drawing-book” by John Gadsby Chapman, 1847. It’s a pretty old book but what I like is that it gives clear instructions as to what you’re supposed to practice. For the most part, I’m practicing to do straight lines without having them wobble along the way. Then, I’m practicing perspective with simple geometric shapes and trying to build Pan with those shapes.

Here's some pics. You'll notice some concept drawing of Cannibal Charcoal, the boss for the Garden stage. Nothing definite yet.
Perspective:



Enemies research:


More perspective:


Cannibal Charcoal Concept Research:

Pixel wise, I’ve mostly did a quick mock-up of what I’d like the dialogues to look like:

In other news, we got our first “fan art” by Sofreak:

It wasn't handed in, unfortunately.



This week I'd like to talk about one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time: Bastion! Supergiant's first released effort is an absolute masterpiece from top to bottom, and a big part of that success is how fantastically the score suits the world of the game. Darron Korb's mix of cowboy-esque guitar picking, ethnic instruments, and relentless electro beats is the perfect companion to the game's brightly colored, energetic wilds. Korb ended up dubbing the genre "acoustic frontier trip-hop," and the moniker is fitting. Supergiant's sophomore effort "Transistor" is equally fantastic, and the inclusion of even more vocals is a welcome change. Perhaps it was that I heard Bastion first, but it's the one that sticks in my head more. Other favorite scores of mine include Final Fantasy X, and Portal 2, both fantastic mixes of orchestral fantasy and electronics.

-Trevor

Aaaaaannnnnnddddd that’s it for today devlog.