Devlog: March Report (2021)

Hey everyone! I hope you guys are doing swell!

In today’s devlog I have two topics to cover - first is an important notice for the patrons, the second is something cool related to the game visuals. Here we go!

Progress report:

Slowly, but surely we're getting to the end of March. Unfortunately, because I was mainly focused on drawing in my free time, I won't be able to provide any new demo (or even a w.i.p release of the game) this month. I absolutely hate rushing things and having too much on my head, so I decided to take it easy, and give myself a larger window to work on this new part of the story. For these reasons, I won't be charging this month, and I'm very sorry for the delay. The next patreon demo should arrive by the end of April, while the current one will go public by the end of March.

Assets update:

In my last entry I mentioned making a side-by-side comparison of the character portraits, to give you guys a better look at what you can expect from the future updates. Here's a preview of the three phases that should slowly occur in the upcoming months:

Variant 1, is the current iteration of the sprites, which is actually a high-resolution pixel art:

As much as I love working with pixel art, this style doesn't translate well when the game is displayed below its native 1080p resolution (the lower the resolution/window size, the more jaggy the edges become). There is however a solution for this problem and it’s a...

Variant 2, pixelart improved via "FXAA" anti-aliasing technique:

For those who are unfamiliar with this term, FXAA (Fast approximate anti-aliasing) is actually a Graphics Card setting that analyses and smoothes undesirable jagged edges. While this technique normally applies to 3D models, in certain conditions it can work wonders in the 2D image, such as my hard-pixel style assets. There is a bit of a hassle in regard to re-rendering and editing the outer edges of the character sprites (the one that’s supposed to be semi-transparent), but seeing the improved quality, I think it’s totally worth doing it, before we finally enter the third phase, which is...

Variant 3, CG-style character portraits:

This is my 'default' artstyle in which I draw CG illustrations in the game, and the ultimate destination, where I can take the visuals on my own. However, as nice as it might look, it’s an absolute pain to draw multi-layered sprites of various body/clothing options in this technique (basically, it takes much more time and effort to keep everything cohesive and editable). Is it really worth it? That's a question for you guys - let me know what you think!

Just like in this preview example, I will be trying to stay close to the original sprites to keep their original charm, but some parts of the portraits might get slightly altered/improved (pose, body build). I plan to slowly work on these in breaks between writing and coding, but it's hard to estimate how long it will take me to finish them (especially since I still have a few CGs to draw). The variant 2 should be introduced in update v.0.13.0 though (fingers crossed).

And that’s all for now~! I hope you guys like where I'm heading with these changes. Also, I’m still thinking of yet another option, which is, of course, hiring another artist to do the sprites from the ground. At this moment, however, I don’t have anyone like that in mind yet, so please let me know in the comments if there’s an artist you would like to recommend/ see working on After Years.

Thank you for reading! And see you soon.