And we're back!

Don't worry. I've been working quite a bit on the game since the last time I checked-in here. Kinda crazy to think more than year has passed since then. And here I thought I'd have this game ready for a game-jam in February of 2023. XD How insanely wrong I was.

Anyway. I thought I'd start off this brand new batch of overdue Dev Logs by sharing what I ended up doing with the many sprites that will be featured in "Maximus and the 7 Course Meals." For this game's artwork, all of the Wall Textures are entirely original. This was important due to the exact 64 x 64 texture sizes needed, and because every single wall and floor texture needed to tile infinitely. But for the free-floating, bill-boarded decorative sprites, I think about half either are, or started out as a purchased asset. 

If I haven't described the concept of the game before now, here's the basic rundown:

You are a hapless 20-something who, like Pajama Sam, stumbled into an alternate universe one day when you dared to take a piss in your upstairs bathroom one random day. After falling into a dark void, you are greeted by Maximus, the Lord of Doorways. He says he could torture you, and do unspeakable things to you, but he feels generous today. So he'll put you to a series of challenges. Travel to 5 of his realms, find him the favorite foods he's craving, and feed them to him. If you succeed, the you will be sent back home.

Naturally, in a game built around food, I had to populate the game with several foods: both the ones that Maximus actually wants, and about 4 times as many false foods that he doesn't want.

Since even now, I'm still relatively unskilled in pixel art, I wanted to incorporate really well-designed 16x16 food sprites, so I downloaded several food packs that were both colorful and very visually clear in what each food represented. Here are some examples of the foods I picked from ~RunningBlood's "Vibrant Food Pack"

For these foods, the only modification I made was to add some micro-text above each food to make it extra clear what each sprite was a picture of.

But then, there were some foods or drinks that did not exist in these sprite packs that I really wanted to include. So in each of those cases, I designed my own foods that would match the aesthetic of the other sprite art. These 3 sprites below are my original designs.

I also made use of some free fruit assets for the ammo that you shoot from a straw shaped weapon. We'll talk all about the Fruit Shooter in a later Dev Log. The only other area where I made use of purchased assets are the foliage sprites, primarily featured in the Fruit Garden. The key difference between the original sprites and my versions, though, are that they have been heavily modified both in color and shape.

Below are some of the un-modded tree and shrub sprites, next to my modified versions. The original assets came from the "Omega Modern Graphics Pack" from ~FinalBossBlues, through a Humble Bundle I purchased in early 2023.

For the Apple Tree, I eventually realized that the first version was kinda small-ish. This is because when you use sprites inside the Raycasting Game Maker, they slightly reduce in size so that they don't overlap or intersect with the ceiling or floor. So I expanded the design just enough to almost fill the whole texture. And then the original Apple Tree became the Orange Tree.

Another tree that I had trouble with was the Lemon tree. The first version just looks too chaotic and scary. So I made the 2nd version even skinnier, and had all the lemons droop down from the under-canopy instead.  

There are also quite a few sprites I designed myself. Some are seen in the Fruit Gardens, and several in the Roman Gardens. I think the most successful sprites ended up being the symmetrical flower pots and other Roman Gardens decoration.

But my absolute favorites are the ones I made for the Haunted Candy Gardens.

Tune in next time where I'll share even more about the Haunted Candy Gardens.