So many things.

I like to do things in spurts. So here's some things that have been done lately:

Animations and particle effects! Also notice that little location marker the pony walks to? It's a small thing that needs a bit more work, but... razzle-dazzle.

And transparency when going behind large objects. And some regular trees! And an iron fence. And Stella' cottage!

I figured transparency would be pretty important with a game with a perspective like this. Everything being flat, and with some objects being tall and big, it would be pretty annoying to have your character hidden behind these things. It'd also result in wider level-design, as without transparency you wouldn't be able to see anything behind large objects, so there'd be no use placing objects behind one another.

Some things I'd like to progress on:

•  Interiors, specifically Stella's, since she has story and character, which would make it more interesting to work on. However, with multiple scenes I would need to work on...
• Scene/game managers. Currently I just have this once messy scene that I test everything in. In order to make new scenes right now, I'd need to copy and paste the player and camera into each scene. I should probably make a script that spawns my character automatically in every scene where I want characters to spawn.
• The town of Merryville, where Stella lives. Town name's semi-undecided. Laying out a whole map of what the town looks like would be a good idea, to properly gauge size and playability. This game isn't going to be fast-paced, it's meant to be a chill, fun, pony-filled land. A Ponyland, you could say. But because the ponies move at a rather leisurely pace, I want to make sure the maps are condensed and interesting no matter where you are. I'd rather avoid vast, empty maps. 
• Inventory system would be a great first piece of interface work. But alas, with inventories come XML files and thinking about how things are going to communicate with servers and bleh. Maybe a cute saddlebag inventory icon could be enough to work on for now.

Stella Portabella's Cottage

Done for now. :)

Gotta put it in the game, but I want to design some modular iron fencing to go with it first.

Messing with particles, clovers, and characters.

Alright, so I know I said the shader wasn't made (I'm currently borrowing one my friend made) and I didn't want to show the pony yet, but I made my first particle effect - some falling leaves when you knock on a tree! Seriously, the tree shakes look better in game than in these GIFs.

Check out that clover. :) There's pink clovers, white clovers, three-leafed clovers, and four-leafed clovers.

Some work needs to be done to the particle effect - mainly I need to figure out how to apply them to each individual tree in a nice matter. Right now it's just on this tree, and messes up otherwise.

Here's an upcoming work-in-progress house for a special character, Stella Portabella. She's a bewitchingly sweet pony who is always happy to help those in need:

And while you're here, it might be interesting to see some of the old pony concepts:

My very original plan was to have sprites for walking forwards, sideways, and diagonally. Then I realized that would be a lot of work, coding and art-wise... So I decided that three-quarters view looks the best and I'll just use that for all movements. 

I tried to make a pony that's sweet and chubby, but doesn't stray too far from a real pony. Turns out that's a bit hard to do. Cute things don't usually have long, big noses.

I was heavily inspired by Nicole Gauss's original character designs for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Her art is whimsical. 

The next things I feel like working on are finishing up Stella Portabella's cottage, and maybe adding some pathways and more trees. After that, I think I should get an inventory interface up and running - one where you can see item icons and descriptions, and items can be dropped from the inventory.

A cottage appears!

A cottage has appeared! With a white picket fence! And a grass texture!

Here are some sketches of cottage concepts:

This one I have now might go through a few more modifications.

Since last time, the following has happened:

• I made a repository! Which is a very good thing. It keeps a history of all my changes.
• The pony doesn't move if you're pressing on a trigger.
• You'll get a message if you try clicking on something that's too far away.
• The camera is locked to the pony! Now we can move around and explore the land instead of testing everything in one tiny area.

Some things I hope to work on next:

• A rudimentary inventory system. Still very important.
• Interiors! That'd be fun. And an excuse to not work on the inventory system.
• There's a bug with interacting with triggers and moving. If you drag to move and drag onto a trigger, it'll interact with the trigger and stop your movement at the trigger hit location.
• More cottages, better cottages. Something doesn't feel right about this cottage.