Thief's Roulette

Quick Update - New Art
over 3 years ago – Sat, Nov 07, 2020 at 09:45:04 PM

By quick I mean really quick. I'll show off the new art, run through what I plan to do next, then wrap it up.

Li is done. It took me long enough but I finally feel good about him. I imagine I will touch up some colors here and there, but for the most part I'd say he's done. Now I need to get expressions for this new look completed. 

Working on a big update to Viktoria now. I've redrawn her and updated the design a bit. She still needs some work but I'll get all that done very soon. 

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I've been doing a lot of work on the Challenge Rooms beyond 1 and 2 that I haven't shown much of. At this point I think the best time to reveal them will be in the next big Trailer I make. I might show small glimpses of them in the next Update but I'm not sure yet.

On the systems side of thing I'm working on an expanded Options menu for some additional settings. I've made good progress on getting controller support working as well. The only thing holding that back is it's really annoying to do! I need to get the controller to act as a replacement mouse for many of the game's puzzles and getting it to work right has been more work than I expected. I'll just need to put a little more work in to get that finished. 

Lastly, I added an ITEM button alongside Talk and Help.

There's a little gap after TALK/HELP/ITEM because I wanna put some icons but I haven't designed them yet. But more importantly, ITEM will simply have the character you're talking to say a couple words about the Item you're currently holding. This is an additional help function in case you need it, but will never be a specific statement on what you should do. In certain cases where a tool's use may not be obvious, you can ask a character to speak about it. 

That's all for this Update. See ya.

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Some New Screenshots, Li Art Status, Demo Status
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 24, 2020 at 06:11:32 PM

I'll start right away with the status of the elusive Final Demo; It's not done. Now, the reason for that is a couple things. First is the obvious point that I've still been working on Character Art till this day, but that can be worked around. Second is I've been talking with my Publisher about what to do with that Demo and when. And last, I've got a schedule of my own that I want to stick to when it comes to development. This means that everything that is not "the completion of Thief's Roulette," will sometimes get sidelined when I need to make progress on the full game. This would be Demos, and Trailers. This whole month I've dedicated my time to running through all the final Challenge Rooms and trying to get them all playable. Because of that, the Demo prep gets put to the side for most of these days. 

I can assure that this Demo will come out, and that progress on Thief's Roulette as a whole is not being hurt by these delays. Honestly, it's better for progress on the game that I don't focus on a Demo but I want to put out something better than the previous Demo that better represents it currently. So, I will make the Demo, but I can't pin down an exact date. I'll keep working on it and release it when it's ready.

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For something else that's not done, Li Art:

I could get this done in a couple hours I bet, but I would definitely end up late for this Update. So rather than be late again, here it is currently. 

Not much character art left to go. When he's done, I'll really just be doing small improvements to the rest of the characters and this will finally be finished. 

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Now onto some new screenshots. I'm trying to hide the details of the challenge rooms for the most part (spoilers and all that), but I'll still show what I can. 

I've totally redone this Challenge Room. I've shown it before, it's this golden one with the stairs: 

Just gotta add the stair's steps back in lol. But besides that, this Challenge Room is totally revamped. I don't want to spoil it too much, but the closest thing I can think to compare it to is a Zelda Temple. Hopefully that's more exciting than stressful to hear. 

Challenge Room 2. You'll be doing some snooping to solve puzzles in this one. Visuals are not final, but it works. I'm hiding all of the messages, but there's a lot to look through. This puzzle (on the first floor of CRoom 2) will be in the Demo I'm putting together. 

Some Facility Screenshots:

I said I wanted to make this place look like more of a warm hotel in the living quarters, but I couldn't help but use more blue. Maybe I'll just have these lights change at different times in the game. That could look nice. 

Getting the "Living" areas of the Facility just right has been a little tricky. I want to make this place look like both a prison and a futurist hotel. That's a lot of visuals to work with so It's taking a while to really get exactly what I want out of it. 

Really, many of these screenshots show pretty blank walls and textures. I'm just trying to get all of the game's physical locations built and in place so that I can get the game fully playable. After that, I will go in one by one and make everything pretty. Of course when I get a good idea I will put it in right away, but for the most part I'm fine with putting off texture details till later. 

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One last thing I have is two feature additions:

I've turned the Crosshair into a DOT. Now, when you approach an object of interest or character, the Crosshair will animate and reveal one of the usual symbols. This makes the game feel really good to play. Additionally, it's much more noticeable when you can interact with something this way. 

The next feature shown in the video happens at the end when I click on the "LOCKED" text on a Card Reader in Challenge Room 1. I now setup a system to run dialogue from interacting with the environment. The specific text displayed is something I quickly wrote up to test if this works, so ignore how silly sounds. This feature has been needed for a long time but I kept putting it off. Now that it's in, the game feels a lot more engaging. The "TALK" and "HINT" buttons are still on the screen when you do this, however, and that will change. But that being said, those 2 dialogue features are still not in! I need to get that included as soon as possible.

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All things considered, this Update wasn't that bad after all. I wish I didn't have to delay the Demo again, but progress on the game has still been going very well. When the demo is finally done, you can see firsthand how much the game has improved. After all that I'll go into full on development mode. I have ideas for 3 more trailers: one focused on the 15 Thieves, one more as a shorter teaser trailer, then the eventual "Release Trailer" where I'll bring out the big guns and a release date. Other than that, the end is in sight so it's all about making steady progress each day. Till next time.

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Character Updates (Adhira, Alise, Lillian) - Short One
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 11:32:17 PM

It's 1:11am right now so technically I'm late... but if I don't go to sleep it's pretty much still Saturday, right?

I'm gonna make this really quick because I don't want to fall off schedule again, and I'm tired. Pardon the typos please, I'm going fast. I'll just post all of the new art with a comment for each one, then discuss what else I've done and what needs to be done. 

I made some changes to Lillian. They're minor changes but I think it's a lot closer to what I want her to look like. I should say now, that each of these characters (especially Alise), could use a couple more hours of attention to get them just right. I'm trying to finally put an "Official" stamp on these guys, but I want them to look as good as I'm capable of making them.

Okay, Alise was pretty rushed. I will definitely be finishing this when I wake up. The lines are thick and the colors aren't all finished. I also wanted to refine other parts of her look but I knew that would take me till very late at night. I didn't want to leave her out of the Update though, because I did spend a good deal of time on her. 

Finally, I fully redrew Adhira. I think this fits her much more. Like the others I could totally put an hour or two into the art and bring her closer to what I want. This is Adhira's 2nd full remake and I think I got it right this time. She just needs the finishing touches and then I can be happy about this.

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That's it for the Characters. I wanted to include the Li redraw in this Update, but he's just so bad. Honestly, I'm a little stumped on what to do with him, but since these girls are nearly done, I can focus more of my time on getting Li complete. 

Besides the Characters I made much more progress on environments and did some puzzle improvements in Challenge Room 1 and 2. The upcoming Demo will have a small snippet of Challenge Room 2 as an optional bit of gameplay. I made that part much more interesting I think. You'll see...

Finally, regarding the Demo; this Character work has definitely slowed down the progress that I wanted to make on it. In the coming days, if I wind up finishing this thing I will make an special Update on that day. If that doesn't happen, then it will likely land on the 24th, the day of the next Update. We just gotta get over this Character Art hump! After that's all done, things are going to get moving.

That's all for now, good night.

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Quick Update: Character Stuff
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 26, 2020 at 02:00:42 PM

This Update will be pretty quick because most of what I've done has been Character art. I've also updated some environments but not as much as I had wanted to. I made a bunch of Character Sprites (60 like I said), and along the way I got sidetracked and wound up remaking the art for Adhira, Li, Lillian and Alise. Those will all be done for the next Update, but unfortunately means I got less non-character work done than I planned to. 

Either way, let's start with some sprite examples:

Just a random selection of characters (dropping all of them would be silly). Some I chose twice to show  the differences.

I think this is a good start, but for the majority of the sprites, I'm simply changing their faces and not their body. For Ruby and M, I had already made 2 poses when I drew them up. For everyone else, I want to start making new poses to go along with the different expressions I've added. Dialogue will start becoming a lot more engaging when both new poses and new expressions are worked in. 

It is totally not ideal for me to still be working on Character Art so far into development, but I have to choose what to focus on and what not to to be as efficient as I can. The majority of the work I do is on Challenge Rooms because they're a big deal and very fun to make. So while CRooms are far along, things like Character Art and some of the more common locations are still being worked on. Everything will come together nicely in due time. Also, making trailers is much easier when I have many Challenge Rooms to pull footage from, so that worked out well.

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To wrap this up, here's 3 work in progress screenshots:

A shot from inside the "Dining Room" I'm working on. It will be within Lady Luck's facility and will be a lounge area for the Thieves after a Challenge Room is complete. Not finished at all.

Still populating the MC's apartment with clutter and various objects. You won't be here long considering the whole kidnapping thing, but I want you to get an idea of what the world is like outside of the Thief's Roulette game you're forced to play.

I put some document textures onto the papers in this room (in CRoom 2). On the screen is what I'm calling an Email Puzzle and I want to keep the details a surprise. This room still needs polish as well. 

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And that's all for now. Next Update I will show the updated art for Adhira, Li, Lillian and Alise. Also some more environment updates. The demo Update will either come out on October 7th, or October 15th. I've got some more ideas that I want to include in the Demo that might take additional time to build. If I decide to scrap it, the demo comes on the 7th, otherwise its the 15th. We shall see...

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Some New Environments and Features
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 11:37:49 PM

Some good progress has been made since the last Update but again it doesn't all make for the most exciting content to put in here. I'll start with the visual stuff, then go over the boring things after. Starting with Lady Luck's Facility that is totally still work in progress:

It kinda looks like a Quake arena right now, but the goal is to get an interesting fusion of a cozy hotel with the high tech structure of the rest of Lady Luck's creations. In this last shot where you see a hallway of doors; that is where the Thieves' dorms will be. With 2 additional rooms up the stairs. 8 Dorms on each side (which is 16... 1 more than the 15 thieves). This was a long time ago from the first day of the Kickstarter, but it is based on this shot:

I'll slowly recreate this feel for the Dorm Hallways. It won't be 1 to 1, but I want to capture that cozy look and blend it nicely with the technology all around the rest of the Facility. I think it can turn into something really nice to look at.

Getting the look down will require a bit more time. I have to lay in all the right pieces, get the colors and textures in place, that sort of stuff. The Living Quarters of the Facility will be the one thing that doesn't change throughout the game, and you will be in it for long periods of time. It needs to look good so I will give it as much time as possible. 

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Next is a little shot of Challenge Room 1. It is done... but I am slowly populating the entire Challenge Room with additional details to make it look really nice. 

 The hard part about doing this in this sort of game is making sure the Player recognizes this detail as simply detail and not important items. I'll figure it out. I've made cans, cups, papers, posters, all sorts of boxes and crates and have begun placing throughout the game's locations (not just CRoom 1). The game has the potential to look better than it does and it's small things like this that will bring it out. 

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This is probably not as interesting for anyone else as it is for me, but I've added this little feature:

 Some simple camera movement when your cursor is on the edges of the screen. Something that I like a lot. Also, it's this room again. This is the main character's Apartment and I've finally returned to fixing it up. I'll continue adding details and points of interest around it that you can interact with. This is not the Dorm in Lady Luck's Facility, it is really your apartment in the outside world. You'll get to see this place as well in the Demo.

Now along with all that, I've been redoing a lot of code and making small changes to character art. The Pause Menu has also been updated:

 It sucks! 

First of all, the black screen was dumb from the start, but I never got around to fixing it. At least I updated the buttons to align with the rest of the UI, but that's clearly not enough. When I drop that black screen I want to fully redo this thing. I'm leaning towards something subtle and sleek, and very light weight. Along with that I'll be revamping the Settings screen and making it look more official. Hopefully I can get those things into the next Update but I can't say for sure. 

For these next 2 weeks coming up, I'm going to do an exhausting dive into making Character Expressions and Poses. I'm trying to pump out about 60 different ones (at least 4 per character) by the time of the next Kickstarter Update. This is something I keep bringing up but have repeatedly put off till later. With the big Demo coming up, I want people to latch onto at least one of these Characters (or all 15 who knows), and a big part of that is letting them speak and be expressive. August and September have been all about having Thief's Roulette evolve in all things visual. I will keep this going and I know at the end the game will be very pleasing to the eye. 

Does anyone remember when I said I would make more Youtube videos and do Twitch streams? I hope not, because I have done no such thing. Maybe that will change, we'll see. 

And that's it for this Update. Later.

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