Faire Hollow Dev Log #5 - Clothing and Colors

Happy Holidays to everyone! To kick off Christmas break I've been busy at work this morning giving my player some clothes 😊.

When I started work on this project I knew that I'd be implementing a "paper doll" system to layer on the player's clothes, hair style, etc. This is a pretty typical approach to 2D pixel art-based game development. The idea is that you introduce layers onto the player sprite, each containing another layer of clothes in a png, with a transparent background. By adding all these layers one by one, you are able to control each element individually.

I had begun this process a few days ago, but I quickly realized that if I were to try to add each layer of clothing in the four directions, with the four active and four idle states, that the animation player timeline would quickly become unmanageable. The breakthrough this morning was that I removed all the individual sprite references in my animation node, and replaced them with actual function calls to the player script. In that script is where I then cycle through the different sprite frames, depending on the orientation, and flip the horizontal axis as-needed. For good measure I also timed the footstep sound with the corresponding frame. (I love Godot's animation node!)

And that was all fine and well, and I managed to get the player clothed this morning (hurray!), but there was one other thing I wanted to accomplish, and that was swapping out the color palette using a shader. The artwork that I'm using, by Seliel the Shaper, is absolutely incredible. The Farmer Sprite system that they have built comes with a "color ramp", containing various color spectrum choices that I can use to decorate each piece of clothing, hair style, item, etc.

The end result is this video! Take a look!

Separately, I've begun the process of creating a "Coming Soon" page on Steam. There is a $100 fee, which I've paid, and a pretty vast checklist of items to complete in order to get my game page submitted for review. The most difficult part of the process, in my opinion, are the Steam "capsules", which are essentially little ads that show off some game art and display the logo of the game. This is what I'm working on next!