You ever have one of those moments where a really obvious idea comes up, and you can't tell whether to be excited or question your basic cognitive skills that you didn't have that idea sooner? That's been my life for the past few weeks.

In the last blog, I posed a question, "Which story are you more interested in? Aeyr's or Mia's?" The response has been decidedly Mia's. NeverSilent pointed out that Aeyr has had enough spotlight, and it was time for Mia to step in and earn her place alongside Aeyr in carrying the story. This got me thinking, "Wait, the first part of Mia's campaign essentially sets up her goals and objectives. That's sorta of like a prologue, right? Maybe-ooooooooooooh."

"Hey, Prayer of the Faithless is an RPG with two protagonists. Right now, the prologue only follows one. How about you add in a prologue that follows the second MC? You know, actually take the time to set her up and treat her with the respect a main character deserves?"

So here's what gonna happen with the next release: Instead of releasing the first part of Aeyr's and Mia's campaign, I'm gonna slide Mia's first chapter back and set it next to the current build in order to deliver a complete prologue with both main characters. Seeing as the individual chapters for each campaign are shorter than the current prologue, Mia's introduction will take much less time to complete than Aeyr's.

I'm very busy with schoolwork so don't hold me to this (too tightly), but I'm gonna aim for Mia's prologue to be complete near the latter half of April.

The Arts:

While Mia's intro has been written (on paper) and most of the maps have been made, the focus of development right now has been primarily art. Remember in the last blog when I said I was redoing Aeyr's portrait and busts? Well, sorry, that was a typo. Let me correct that: I'm redrawing and redesigning everyone.

You've seen the concept art of Mia's new design, and I'm applying the same treatment to every playable protagonist in the game. I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts and feedback, so I'll put them up as media when I've gotten a few more concepts done that I'm happy with.

Between Housekeeping's latest blog and subsequent discussion on development processes, and the discussion/advice from the last blog here, I've learned that it's best not try to do everything at once. Switching between gameplay, story, and art every day or two can result in lots of inconsistencies with style and may require redoing prior work. To fight this, I'm gonna wait until I'm happy with the designs of every character, then do all the linework and coloring at once. Then the art will be done for good. No more making new arts on an "as needed," basis. This game is gonna take enough time as it is without redoing the same assets over and over again.


All that being said, I have a situation that I'd really like your input on:

I've been thinking about how I handle dialogue pictures. The more I think about it, the more I'm liking how unity handled them in Luxaren Allure. Focuing on the heads of the characters, but giving them a far wider range of expressions and poses. Since as PotF is, first and foremost, a character driven game, I think it's important that whatever decisions made for dialogue are made to bring forth the best characterization possible. However, making a range of expressions for busts would swamp me with far too much work for someone not proficient in art, frankly. I'd like to release this game within my lifetime, and making busts for everyone's individual expressions would add on too much dev time.

I mean, unless you like the idea of me working on games AFTER I die. It'd be kinda hard for me to hold a stylus when I'm a ghost. Not that I'd know.

So which format do you like better? Do you prefer the busts the way they are now? Or do you want to see those large, varied face sets in the same format as LA? Either way, the busts you see now are gonna be scrapped to account for the new designs of the characters, so I'd really appreciate your input on this.

Thanks!