[quote="soopakoopa"]Well, here she is again. I simplified her design, got rid of the random tufts of fur all over her body, shrunk her eyes again (still not as small as Vimimin would probably like, but I feel like it's a decent compromise), gave her a softer and rounder look, generally did a little bit of everything. [img]http://img00.deviantart.net/5bde/i/2016/308/c/2/kiku_design_overhaul__2_by_soopaderpcat-dan9u91.png[/img] Instead of removing the bug tail, I just gave her a slightly more insectoid look all around, with a consistent caterpillar-esque pattern that extends from neck to tail and proper(ish) moth wings. I even gave her wings eyespots that form a "face" when folded down next to her tail. On the topic of a new swallowing animation, I decided to go with a more cartoony "bottomless stomach" approach. She stretches upwards a bit, "drops" whatever she was holding in her mouth down her torso, and the bulge just kind of falls through her waistline and disappears.[/quote] Yes, this design is a marked improvement! Kiku has a much more distinctive silhouette now. Instead of being vaguely humanoid, she has a very distinct triangle-shaped body. That helped distill the kiddy look while retaining the clumsiness you were going for. The white insect ridges and flat coloring also help clarify her design. I don't really think you even needed shading in the first place. The wings are still hard to make out, but that might just be the white background.

Well, the beginning of a new page would probably be as good a time as any to release Test Room Demo 2! Her sprites haven't been updated to match her new design; that won't be for a while, and/or after I settled upon a finalized design. http://www.mediafire.com/file/tbxejzytb6nlcyy/kiku_testroom_v2.exe All of the controls are the same, but I'd like to once again remind everybody that you don't HAVE to charge her pounce attack; charging it just increases its range, mostly when used from a standstill. The main focus of this version is momentum and flow; Kiku is a bit faster, isn't slowed down as easily, and can string some actions together better, although other slight changes have also been made. Changes: - Walking and running speed was increased by a bit. - Forward momentum now carries over into her pounce attack; if you merely tap Z while running at full speed, you'll go about the same distance as you would had you charged it fully without a running start. - Her pounce attack now charges twice as fast. - Kiku can now jump significantly higher while running at full speed. - Catching an enemy in your mouth doesn't slow you down quite as much as before. - Kiku can now run with her mouth full, even if the enemy in her mouth is of the "large" variety. Currently shares the "walking with mouth full" animation. - Swallowing animations and sound effects have been altered to be less...yucky. - Nova Stinger doesn't absolutely murder your momentum when used on the ground. - Nova Bomb has slightly less startup lag and shoots a bit farther horizontally.

Well, I'm kinda getting to "that point" in developing the game itself where there's not going to be anything particularly interesting or exciting to talk about for a while. Y'know, just mundane technical stuff, like health systems, doors, room transitions, checkpoints and the like, so I guess now is as good a time as any to start showing off more concept art. This one here has already been up on my DA for a few days now. [img]http://orig13.deviantart.net/4b4a/f/2016/308/b/5/kotms__the_surly_lord_laggrid_by_soopaderpcat-dan0lmw.png[/img] This guy is Lord Laggrid, the game's minor/secondary antagonist. Though not actively "evil," he's a grumpy and miserly old king who likes to hoard things and tends to treat his subjects with apathy. He openly dislikes Kiku for her huge appetite and bubbly personality, and harbors a personal grudge against her for publically embarrassing him when she was just a baby. What he's a bit less open about, however, is that he's actually very afraid of her as well. He unwittingly sets the events of the game in motion when he seeks help from a rather shady force to expand his domain and, shall we say, "swat" Kiku.

Here's another little bit of concept art, I guess. Pictured here is Kiku with her adoptive "parents," the elderly astronaut couple of Edgar and Lydia. They're the main supporting characters, and fellow exiles from Laggrid's city. [img]http://pre14.deviantart.net/f6f2/th/pre/i/2016/309/4/2/kiku_s___parents___by_soopaderpcat-dang1p2.png[/img] Kiku was a mere infant when the Miracle Star was destroyed. Shortly after landing on Fyondoria, she was taken into Lord Laggrid's court as an object of curiosity, but as soon as she started eating more food than was expected and making a mess of the place, she was thrown out into the woods to fend for herself. As if by fate, though, Edgar and Lydia, a now-elderly astronaut couple happened to crash-land on the same world ten years prior to her arrival; they, too, had been exiled by the miserly king. Mistaking the falling Kiku for a meteor, they had snuck near the gate of the castle town that night to try and get a glimpse. Though they had no idea what she was, they were moved to pity by the sight of the little crying abandoned creature, and reluctantly decided to bring her home with them. Although raising her was a bit difficult at first, the couple grew very attached to their little space bug daughter, and once she started flying around, shooting plasma balls out of her tail and gobbling up monsters, it turned out to be a very worthwhile investment. The three currently live in a small cabin made from the remnants of the shuttle that Edgar and Lydia arrived in, situated on a hill in the woodlands outside Laggrid's city.

soopakoopa. i don't kno whether to b mad at you or lmao [quote="soopakoopa"]Eating is the means by which you refill your fuel and collect DNA; it is not the end or point of the game.[/quote] it isnt the end or point of my game either btw

Sloshy, please don't go beating a dead horse. Soopa listened to our advice, tweaked the design and is expanding the discussion to other things. Move on. Kiku's backstory sounds pretty interesting. Very Superman-esque with a twist to it. Are her parents going to play into the game's main events? Maybe their kidnapping or something becomes the story's call to action? Or is that a bit cliche? :think:

[quote="Sloshy"]soopakoopa. i don't kno whether to b mad at you or lmao [quote="soopakoopa"]Eating is the means by which you refill your fuel and collect DNA; it is not the end or point of the game.[/quote] it isnt the end or point of my game either btw[/quote] I'm not trying to bash on your project here or anything; everything that I have to say about it, I've already said on its respective topic. All that I'm saying is that I don't want my game to end up looking like a fetish game, because it...isn't supposed to be a fetish game. Simple as that. [quote="DragonDePlatino"]Kiku's backstory sounds pretty interesting. Very Superman-esque with a twist to it. Are her parents going to play into the game's main events? Maybe their kidnapping or something becomes the story's call to action? Or is that a bit cliche? :think:[/quote] Yeah, that's actually pretty much what I plan on doing. She wanders off without permission one night, feels a bit guilty and wonders if they're worried about her, and returns home only to find that [i]they[/i] went missing. It's a bit cliché from a general standpoint, but when it comes to video games it's pretty underused compared to motivations like saving the princess, seeking revenge, or fighting evil "because video game."

[quote="DragonDePlatino"]Sloshy, please don't go beating a dead horse. Soopa listened to our advice, tweaked the design and is expanding the discussion to other things. Move on.[/quote] wat does /any/ of my post have to do with him listening to advice? [quote="soopakoopa"]I'm not trying to bash on your project here or anything; everything that I have to say about it, I've already said on its respective topic. All that I'm saying is that I don't want my game to end up looking like a fetish game, because it...isn't supposed to be a fetish game. Simple as that.[/quote] i kno ur not, it just seems like you have the impression that i only care to put effort into the vore part of my game without actually making a good game. ive been wanting to clarify to you for a while that it's most defs not the case by any means and i intend the gameplay experience to be memorable on its own. and yes it will have yoshi mario vibe and Rach will not be interchanable with a furry anthrodragon. iwasn't sure when else i was going to have a chance to clarify it so i'm doing so now as for your project i'm really likingyour aArt even from the beginning before the changes. Kiku is extremely cute and lovable. i also like how you stood your ground on some of the feedback and the result of the compromise you made. iTs not always bad to disagree with feedback and it doesn't make it pointless for you to show things just because you disagree with some feedback. to a point it defeats the purpose of being an artist if you have to sway to every opinion. i will be keeping an eye on this. its just too cute. yEs with or without the vore

That wasn't really what I was trying to imply, sorry if that's how it came off sounding. Anyway, Platino asked if I had any environmental concept art a while back, so I decided to finally get about to making some. Here's a bit of art depicting [i]Nocturne Grove,[/i] one of the game's early areas. [img]http://pre06.deviantart.net/aea8/th/pre/i/2016/310/9/b/kotms__nocturne_grove_by_soopaderpcat-dank58c.png[/img]

Hey, that looks pretty great! The blue-orange color scheme was well-chosen and the hand-painted look reminds me of platformers like Dust or Rayman Origins. I'm not sure how that'll look in-game, though. I love pixel art but I can imagine you having trouble transcribing that scene into pixel art. Have you considered other mediums for your game like Flash animation? It seems like it would be a much better fit for your art style.

If you can make the game look as atmospheric as that picture then I'd say you're onto a good thing! In a way, it's a shame you're spriting and not doing the graphics in a drawn style like this because you're going to lose a lot of the details when it's in sprite form.

Making the game's graphics with a method similar to what I did with my old Yoshi fangame might not necessarily be a bad idea; drawing is a lot more fun that spriting anyway, in my opinion. The biggest problem would probably be filesize; doing all of Kiku's base animations in all of her different possible forms, plus all of the animations for all of the form-specific abilities...needless to say, that'd make for a ton of very large sprites. When it comes to backgrounds and very large enemies and bosses, I might also end up running into that problem where GM:Studio shrinks down images that exceed a certain size.

You should try it for fun and see how you feel about it.

You could try a Paper Mario-esque approach and piece together individual pieces.

[quote="DJ Coco"]You could try a Paper Mario-esque approach and piece together individual pieces.[/quote] That's definitely the kind of thing I'd do, although I'd still have to piece them together as individual images. As much as I'd love to do skeletal animations, I simply can't afford GMS: Professional Edition's price tag of $150 + the [i]ridiculous[/i] $300 Windows export module + $70 for Spine + $100 for Steam Greenlight access. Given my current financial situation, that's simply too much money to shell out on a game that [i]might[/i] sell.

I was imagining something like Wario Land: Shake It, with its hand drawn frames of animation and backgrounds.

[quote="soopakoopa"][quote="DJ Coco"]You could try a Paper Mario-esque approach and piece together individual pieces.[/quote] That's definitely the kind of thing I'd do, although I'd still have to piece them together as individual images. As much as I'd love to do skeletal animations, I simply can't afford GMS: Professional Edition's price tag of $150 + the [i]ridiculous[/i] $300 Windows export module + $70 for Spine + $100 for Steam Greenlight access. Given my current financial situation, that's simply too much money to shell out on a game that [i]might[/i] sell.[/quote]Hm? Does GMS Pro come with skeletal animations? I wouldn't even know, lol. You could just program your own animation system.

[quote="Kritter"]I was imagining something like Wario Land: Shake It, with its hand drawn frames of animation and backgrounds.[/quote] That's not a bad idea, either. I'd have no idea how to go about coding my own skeletal animation system, and true hand-drawn graphics almost always look and age better than graphics that attempt to "fake" a hand-drawn animation style using skeletons anyway. As for filesize, I can just shrink the sprites and use anti-alias; [i]Shake It's[/i] in-game sprites aren't actually that large in the grand scheme of things, and I want the sprites to be fairly small in comparison to the view size so that players can see what's ahead of them while flying.

If you want to keep the same sprites while reducing file size, just split them down the middle and combine them onto the same image at runtime. Almost all old Nintendo sprites were built out of 8x8 minitiles so it's not too unorthodox of a idea. Alternatively, I'd recommend picking up the free version of [url=https://brashmonkey.com/]Spriter Pro[/url] and seeing if there is any way to get Spriter files into Game Maker. A lot of the examples look lame, I know, but Don't Starve was animated entirely in Spriter so I trust in it as a good animation tool.

[quote="soopakoopa"][quote="Kritter"]I was imagining something like Wario Land: Shake It, with its hand drawn frames of animation and backgrounds.[/quote] That's not a bad idea, either. I'd have no idea how to go about coding my own skeletal animation system, and true hand-drawn graphics almost always look and age better than graphics that attempt to "fake" a hand-drawn animation style using skeletons anyway. As for filesize, I can just shrink the sprites and use anti-alias; [i]Shake It's[/i] in-game sprites aren't actually that large in the grand scheme of things, and I want the sprites to be fairly small in comparison to the view size so that players can see what's ahead of them while flying.[/quote] [img]http://i.imgur.com/QlGNlvy.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/Dbf8QYU.png[/img] At that size, it's really not much bigger than the old sprite, but infinitely more readable and nicer looking in my opinion.