⚔️ Hail, adventurers! ⚔️
We're back with yet another ToLLA devlog!😎👇
Just a quick update for y'all first - we're still in the process of getting the release build approved by Valve. They usually give extra scrutiny to adult games to ensure there's no problematic content in there. The recent payment processor situation and crackdown have probably made things even slower. As such, we've had to push back the release date by a little bit while we wait to get the game approved. ToLLA should be out around the start of September, give or take a few days...
As always, you can wishlist the game right here on Steam: 👇👇👇
Now on to the devlog...
We've recently been working on the huge Fort Ninevus area, which will probably be released as a free DLC post-launch. The Fort is a massive map - lots of structures, NPCs, and story content. There's a monstrous amount of work to chew through, but we're getting there! Today we'll talk about the art pipeline a bit, and how we go about creating the game visuals...
All art content in ToLLA is made by hand. Every building, character, lewd pic, miniature, interaction icon, down to the smallest blade of grass is painted by one of our two artists. it's a slow and painstaking process, but the end result looks great and gives the game a unique old-school 80s cartoon-y vibe...
Game areas start out as concept sketches where we block out the landmarks and other important locations. Once that's done, the art passes through multiple drafts, going from blocky and simple to full-rez and "baked" onto the underlying grass map. Shadows are painted on top, and the layers are all crunched and composited together, then exported into a format the game engine can read... On top of that we add some creative scripting and code magic to get dynamic effects like the day & night cycle, and things like transparency for sprites when they pass behind tress and other large obstacles like buildings. Final additions are the pathing map, and interaction icons... The comparison below shows how a game map goes from simple concept to final in-game asset; this is the Southern Wildlands zone, which is the second large area you'll visit with your party...
We use a similar pipeline for creating big and detailed objects like buildings. They all start as simple sketches that demonstrate a concept. The ones below are from the Fort Ninevus area...
Then one of our artists (usually our art lead) will develop the concept through a series of drafts...
And once she's finished, we get the final in-game asset that's added to the pathable map...
There's always been a trend in gamedev to choose 3D over 2D due to speed of production, but we're fans of old-school aesthetics and love the cartoony hand-painted look. The downside to that is how labor-intensive every piece is, and depending on complexity can take many hours to go from sketch to final asset. Blocking them out is the easy part; inking and coloring is what takes up most of the time, and even a "simple" watchtower is the end result of days of work...
Character art is done much the same way. All characters begin life as concept sketches where their features and proportions are rendered by hand from a rough idea pulled out of our design docs...
Then the chosen portrait goes through multiple passes...
Until the final version is polished to standard and is added to the game...
We currently have two artists on the team, but we're hoping to expand that in the future when funds allow... as well as producing free DLCs for the game once it's out. Currently art is our biggest bottleneck, so having more hands on deck would go a long way toward speeding up production. We'll continue working on the DLC in the meantime, and hope to have it out some time after launch...
Here's the changelog for this internal update:
fixed some typos and improved the general flow of Felicia's convos
added a unique tavern background to Felicia's convo in the Smoky Stag interior area
added dedicated exit-game icons (azure arrow icons, located by the save-game floppy disks in the game world)
added full VO to Felicia's talks and quest, clocking in at over 45min of spoken dialogue (Felicia, Meredith, Captain Hale)
added the 3 overworld secret merchant cards to the world... currently placeholders for item shops that'll be added later (orcess, drow, siren)
repainted image #12's holdover background in Sabrine's lewd scene from old beige to new green (thanks MacroMike172 for pointing this out to us!)
recolored the compass icons in Ninevus South & Southern Wildlands areas from sepia to azure, to differentiate them from the surrounding icons
fixed a small but annoying pathfinding bug that was affecting some players (thanks to everyone who sent us saved games for debugging!)
finally located and fixed the VO overlap bug on Hale's lines at the Main Gate event... hopefully that's the last of it!
added two single-image lewd memories featuring Meredith... full scenes will unlock once inside Fort Ninevus!
That's it for this devlog, we hope you enjoyed it! We'll be back when we have more news... might do a post about our asset library next. In the meantime, don't forget to follow us directly here on Steam if you'd like to keep up with our work: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/CrimsonDelightGames
Much love,
~ the CDG team ❤️