Tomorrow we finally talk about something that I’ve been wanting to share since the beginning of the Corral Countdown. But since it encompasses so many things that I had to talk about first, it had to put it off until now…
Boot Hill Heroes
Corral Countdown 29: Another Hat for Kid
Tomorrow we finally talk about something that I’ve been wanting to share since the beginning of the Corral Countdown. But since it encompasses so many things that I had to talk about first, it had to put it off until now…
Corral Countdown 30: Finding Treasure
Earning cash in Boot Hill Bounties isn’t as straight-forward as other RPGs. Enemies don’t just drop money, you’ll have to find other ways to earn big bucks. One of those ways is acquiring treasure.
While enemies don’t drop money, they do often drop various treasures. Treasures are a kind of material that is only good for one thing - selling for money! (Or hanging on to if you like collecting things). Each boss encounter drops a unique treasure and treasures can be found in the world.
A treasure is anything valuable, whether it’s a natural object, like a gold nugget, or a man-made resource like a Music Box. There are about 60 treasures to find in all! Like every item in Boot Hill Bounties, each treasure has a little icon and a description that adds a bit of flavor to the game. Some other treasures you can expect to find include: Maraca, Monkey Paw, Incense, Cursed Mask, Arrowhead, Vase, Chalice, Daguerreotype.
Treasures are labeled as such so they are distinguished from other materials that may have other purposes - such as ingredients which can be used to make food. This makes it easier when deciding what to sell!
Tomorrow is Hat Day! If you haven’t noticed by now, every Tuesday I reveal a new hat. It’s Kid’s turn again. What hat will he get now?
Corral Countdown 31: Natural Dungeon Design (Devblog Friday)
This particular dungeon is a forest, a natural dungeon. Since forests aren’t constructed by humans, how could I - a human - design it? I needed an influence outside of myself to help shape it.
Randomness can be a very useful source for ideas. Enforcing randomness and contending with it can spring forth ideas that would not otherwise come from within our rigidly logical minds.
Here’s how I used randomness to help shape this forest:
This isn’t the only way you can use randomness to think outside the box. You could even come up with your own game idea. Imagine two six-sided dice. On one die are your six favorite games from the last ten years and on the other die are your six favorite games from the 1980s. Roll both and see what you get!
I hope this was kind of interesting at least! Next week we ride to the halfway point of this Countdown. And I will tease this by saying it will contain my favorite Countdown post of them all.
Corral Countdown 32: Cooking by the Campfire
Watch the video on YouTube
1. Grow crops on the farm for ingredients or buy them from the general store.
2. Buy food so Rosy can learn new recipes
3. Cook food at the campfire using the recipes and ingredients you've gathered.
4. Gain Chef Ranks so your food turns out better and its effects last longer
5. Give your party battle perks or sell the food back to a store for a profit.
Corral Countdown 33: Battle Grades
Now you get a battle grade based on your performance. So it’s important to do your best, even if you’re fighting an easy enemy that you couldn’t possibly lose against.
The Battle Grade actually multiplies your Vantage Points earned from the battle, so the better the grade, the faster you’ll level up your hats and learn new Vantages.
Grade D = 1x multiplier
Grade C = 1.25x multiplier
Grade B = 1.5x multiplier
Grade A = 2x multiplier
Grade S (NO DAMAGE): = 3x multiplier
Tomorrow, I have another video planned to show you one of the bigger mechanics. It’s one I’ve been building up towards for a while with these updates. This is gonna be big.
Corral Countdown 35: Stealth and Surprise Attacks
Most people already know that Boot Hill Bounties is one of those RPGs without random battles. You can see your enemies on the map, and, if you can avoid them, you can avoid many battles. But there’s now a little more to it than that.
Check out the video on YouTube
Enemies will wander around independently on a move pattern, but they have their own vision cone that can spot you. Once they do, they’ll take off and try to engage a battle!
If you have your back turned. The enemy will get a surprise attack on your party and start with half power.
But if you avoid the enemy’s vision and sneak up on them, you can surprise them and your party will begin with 50% power!
Additionally, any encounter you defeat will remember you. Instead of chasing after you, it will instead run away! So once you dominate an area, you can move pretty freely without having to worry about battles. But if you want to fight older enemies, it’s easy to get the jump on them because they’ll be running away!
Tomorrow, it’s finally Moon’s turn to get a new hat. What will it be?
Corral Countdown 36: Body-Kun Helps You Draw! (Friday Devblog)
Artwork for this series has come a long way. Even though I’m not a great artist, I wanted to try to create all the art for Boot Hill Bounties myself. And that meant learning a few tricks along the way. On today’s DevBlog Friday, I will share one of them with you.
Boot Hill Heroes had about eight human enemy sprites in the game. These took a very long time to make look halfway decent. Humans are much more difficult to render into sprite art than animals. Most of the trouble comes from finding the right pose without the use of a model.
For Boot HIll Bounties, I knew I would need to make a lot of humanoid enemies, so I needed to find a way to improve the art workflow. I experimented with software like Poser but it still wasn’t working out. I was shopping online for one of those wooden posable dolls when I found this:
This is a “S.H. Figuarts S.H. Figuarts Male Body Set 5.5" Action Figure”, aka “Body-Kun.” Much more articulate than other figures. Just take a look at these poses:
This was a while ago and “Body Kun” wasn’t even available yet. I wonder how common it is these days among aspiring artists.
I had a plan that I thought was pretty ingenious. First, pose the doll. Then, take a picture of the posed doll. Finally, simply trace the picture and follow its shading to make great sprite art.
But this method didn’t quite work out. By tracing the doll, the characters came out looking too thin. That’s what I get for trying to take shortcuts. Instead, I had to add a step. After posing the doll, I needed to draw the character by hand and scan it. Then I could use it as the basis for the sprite character.
Here’s the same character made using each method. I think you’ll agree that the one on the bottom looks much better.
Here’s the workflow again.
Step 1: Pose the sprite and draw the character on a sketchpad. Sorry I don’t have the original Body-Kun photographs, but here’s the sketches I made using it as a model.
Step 2: Scan the drawings and resize them in photoshop. Shrinking these sketches to the size of the sprites makes them extremely blurry since the resolution is down to pixels. So the sketches are more of a “jumping off point”
Step 3: Trace the outline of the sketches the best you can and color the parts. Pixel art is really tricky and there are much better pixel artists writing about it than me so I’ll spare the details here.
This new workflow was so successful I ended up making a lot more humanoid enemies than I intended to. There are now about 50 human enemies in Boot Hill Bounties. I promise I’m not shilling for whoever makes these Body-Kun figurines, I just wanted to share how I turned my art from bad to much improved.
Okay, that’s a wrap for week three. I’m glad people are noticing that I’m living up to the promise when this Corral Countdown thing started. I really have something interesting to share about Boot Hill Bounties every day. And with 35 days left, you can only guess what’s in store.
Corral Countdown 37: Harvesting and Growing Your Farm
Well, now that there's some money coming in, Kid can use it to invest in the farm to grow more crops - like onions, potatoes, corn and wheat - or livestock - like pigs, cows, goats and chickens. Harvesting these things yields ingredient items that we'll talk more about later.
Watch Video on Youtube
He also gains Farming Experience and can eventually level up to gain a rank in farming. Kid starts out a lowly "Greenhorn" rank but can ascend to become a "Sod Buster" or even a "Weed Reaper". There are 10 Farm Ranks to obtain in all. The more farm ranks you obtain, the more upgrades you can buy for your farm. And the more upgrades you can buy for your farm, the more you can harvest and get more Farming Experience to gain another Farm Rank.
Not all Farm Upgrades are unlocked through Farm Ranks, you can also hire farm hands like Josie Trotter and Leon Barker as seen in the video. But first you have to find them during your journey and offer them a job. Who else will end up working at the farm?
Tomorrow, it's once again DevBlog Friday and I'll demonstrate a technique I used to help improve my sprite art.
Corral Countdown 38: Rusty Challenges
Rusty Challenges are game tutorials cloaked as side quests given to you by your dog, Rusty. Rusty already follows the player around and saves your game, but now he constantly gives you tiny challenges through the game. If you complete a challenge, you Rusty rewards you with an item he’s dug up while on your quest.
And the quality and usefulness of these items varies wildly! You never know if Rusty will give you gold or garbage. He is, afterall, just a dog and cannot very well appraise the value of things he finds!
Rusty’s challenges are usually simple things, like sell an item at a shop or use the inquire button to learn what Vantages an enemy is capable of. Rusty will explain how to do these things and then reward the player for doing them.
Here are some other Challenges you can expect:
Pause the Battle Clock
Change the Text Speed
See What a Bonus Does
Set a Deluxe Vantage
Have a Second Player Join
Change Keyboard Controls
Switch Party Leader
Toggle the Town Map
Use the Inquire Button on an Enemy
Change the Battle Speed
As you can see, Rusty is not the most epic of quest-givers. But, again, he is just a dog.
Tomorrow, we're going to talk about the Howl family farm.
Corral Countdown 39: A New Hat for Rosy
Tomorrow we’re going to talk about a kind of side quest or achievement that is also a tutorial system.