Bruoche

The full album video for Ruby Dungeon's OST is out!

It's been a ton of fun to work on that project the past few weeks, and I'm really proud of the result.

I have made a large devlog going over the past year's progress on Ruby Dungeon since I last updated it's demo on the game's page.

In short, there's still months of dev needed before Act 1 is done, but I should be able to finish it before the end of the year.

You can find the full post for it right there:

Cute, small, cartoony. Demure some might say.

Initial sketches I made to pitch Tracking Rubies' protagnist and her final reference.

Though taking heavy inspiration from Indiana Jones for our game, I wanted to have a protagonist that'd contrast with the titular character by being a more timid historian archetype then the intrepid adventurer, which would also thematically fit the idea of meticulously debusking hidden deadly traps.

For my very first sketch to pitch that idea to my friend I collabed with during that Jam, I was initially mostly inspired by character like Tintin.

My usual ""policy"" when designing character is to go with the opposite gender to what first come to mind, unless that character say something interesting about that initial gender.

That timid historian not falling under that second category (and "timid historian dude that go in adventure in spite of fear" beig already a pretty well explored archetype anyway, much more so then for women), I genderswapped her to make that second better design.

The initial concept art I made for Tracking Rubies during this years's GMTK game jam.

I ended up sticking pretty closely to it and used this drawing as reference for the color palette used in all the assets made for that game.

I'll post the concept art I made for it in the following days, if anyone's interested in seeing that :)

I hadn't originally planned to post during this period, but I felt compelled to share after finding this.

I personally like to work with a non-destructive and edits-friendly process, and so even if I have a good way to make shading for scenes with a single light source, managing multiple light sources in a clean way has proven very tough (especially since I start from fully lit and add the shadows after).

But, that will be no more! Because here I've got a simple solution :

1 - Make a version of the drawing for each lightsource

here I even took the liberty of making two very different types of lightsource, with a white hard light akin to a spotlight and another warmer one looking like the light of the sunset through a window.

In this exemple I'm just making a very simple sphere. I also kind of winged the drop shadow so they won't really match together but it's just an example for the processing tech so whatev'

Each version must be in it's own separated folder for it to work.

2 - Add a layer filled with black beneath the folders

3 - Make each folder in "lighten" blending mode

(mines in french but "Eclircir" is named "Ligten" for english speakers)

And you're done ! Now you can remove or add as many light source as you want and it'll just work as if you were turning on and off lights!

Some caveat :

Firstly, very obviously this is a purely digital art focused process, and it wouldn't fit all styles either, as a more painterly style might not work as well with this process (and it might not be usefull if you go from dark to light).

But, also, another more general issue with this technique (and my process as a whole) is that it does take a heck of a lot more time then doing both lightings at the same time. But to me that's a small price to pay for modulability and accuracy, so I'm happy with it and some of y'all may like it too!

In case anyone here follows me for Ruby Dungeon's related content (I don't think many do, the updates got little attention so far, but just in case), I just wanted to pop by to say that the game's not dead, I'm still actively working on it and great progress is being made.

I don't want to make content-related devlogs publically so to not spoil the game, nor release the content as it's being made because of the exploratory and open nature of the game, as slowly releasing stuff would force people into a single linear path, which isn't the intended experience.

What I can say though, is that 2 areas, a new ennemy type, more noticeable stat variety on existing ennemies, a new healing item and two special events have been added to the game so far in the past three weeks.

As for quality of life, I've just made a little rework of the inventory system to make it a lot more ligible:

I'm now working on a new higher level shopping area for the game, which isn't my favorite part to work on honestly. The progress to work ratio there is much smaller due to the amount of assets and texts that need to be made for the content, wheras a new area only take a few parameters, a few paragraphs, a single picture and a song, and bosses don't take much more then that either.

Therefore, it's probably gonna be a few days, if not weeks, before I'm done with the new shops. Once that's done though, progress should be much faster again, and the first half of the game should be quick work.

Thank you to anyone staying tuned for the game, and hoping to continue making progress fast.

If you haven't already, don't hesitate to check out the demo for Ruby Dungeon on my itch.io page:

How I feel when making a lot of code so I can do a small amount of code later

The new Ruby Dungeon update is here, and you can now talk with the merchant!

Really proud of how that system work, and now offering over 50 different dialogs for y'all to find while doing your errands!

Train Ride.