I worked on the level and camera for Viola this week. The level is now complete, save for maybea little more background art to be added. The camera has been overhauled with a completely new system, and I worked with RPGTalk's developer to get animated portraits.

Read more about these new systems by clicking 'Read more'!

This week, equipment! Since Viola has a lot of characters to recruit, I wanted interchangeable equipment that allowed for a lot of customization. So I've created "Gems", stones any character can equip to raise and lower any stat, like Strength, or Magic. This way, every character can match the way you enjoy playing the game!

Read more about Gems by clicking the "Read more" button.

I've had a busy week, but the time I did have for Viola I spent on character animations. I made a timelapse to show how a single sprite for an animation gets made!

Click 'Read more' to see a few sprite sheets I've made.

Games often use enemies to keep the game filled with conflicts for the player to engage with. Obviously, Viola is the same. So, this week, I put some extra love into the enemies you see in the game, and I added a fight against one of Viola's antagonists: Justice.

Click 'Read more' to read more about Justice and the other enemies in Viola.

While I may have started making my own music, I also found that... I wasn't that good at it. It was gonna be a lengthy process, and while it might become a thing in a few years, I knew I needed a better soundtrack than I could make.

I combed through several websites and subreddits and eventually found a composer who I thought would be a great fit for Viola: Nom Tunes! He made a total of six tracks for the game, as well as a song to play on the violin in-game!

I'll embed one in the main headline: click 'Read more' to find the rest of the soundtrack!

I had to do more UI this week, since I didn't get to finish all of it last week. Turns out there was way more functionality left to do than I thought, so it took up the whole week. But, that makes the UI complete, other than some functionality for equipment, which will get its own sprint.

Click 'Read more' to see a few more screenshots and explanations!

I worked on the graphical end of Viola this week, specifically the user interface. I've got all the art, but not all of the interface is implemented yet, due to the nature of these interfaces. Most of them need to show off the party in some way, which means I need to grab data from other objects to link to health bars etc.

​Click 'Read more' to view a few more screenshots.

This video showcases the narrative design possibilities in Viola. By combining gameplay and linear storytelling, the player can feel directly involved with Viola's story.

Click 'Read more' to read a little more about this story!

This post is about the "Adaptive Conversations" in the game. The player could already examine certain objects, but now they can be joined by the characters in the game!

​Click 'Read more' to read more about this mechanic.

This week I worked on adding story content to Viola. I've added three methods of storytelling in the game, all of which deserve their own post!

In this post you can get a look at the introductory cutscene. The level I'm creating is the "vertical slice": a piece of finished game to showcase. The level itself is a little later into the game, so the player needs context before playing the game.

Click 'Read more' to read more about creating this cutscene.