Trees!

Hehehe, trees!

Inspired by maples, downy birch, and silver birch.

Future tree types: oak, elm, magnolia, and dogwood

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.

Updated fruit drops and a mouse cursor.

Lookie here!

Do you see it? The fruits now bounce! I think it's so fun.

The tree also jiggles when you hit it. It's better in the game than in the GIF.

Also see the fancy new mouse cursor? Yes, it turns golden when you can interact with something, and is otherwise purple. The mouse draws a bit of inspiration from "My Little Pony: Friendship Gardens," which was a game I spent much of my childhood playing.

The 3D model is hidden in this GIF, it isn't ready to show just yet.

I'm also in the process of adding clover patches. :-)

To do list:

• Work on the inventory.
  I actually made a bit of progress with this. The inventory has a certain amount of slots, and now it doesn't let you pick up more items than your inventory can hold. And items don't get destroyed even if you don't have the space, hahahaha. Yeah, that was a thing...
• Work on adding the walk animation.
  I do have a walk animation, I just need to put it in and make it work. That'd be very nice to see. Animation is life. But I'd need to fix some things about the pony model, namely the eyes and adding some blink controllers. 
• Shader, seriously.
  Seriously, shader. But that's very hard to me, so I'm scared of it.
• More art. If all else fails, art is my backup. I'm thinking of adding more trees - birch, oak, maple. And also some pathways, like dirt and cobblestone.