[Challenge/Scenic/Epic Length - KS+] Dragon Myth

If you're still looking for music after all that, I found this collection of piano music, which may be a good fit for a laid-back scene.

It's been a good week for 'Dragon Myth'.

It began when I finally came up with some ideas for a couple of screens that have been holding me back for a long time and, having completed those screens, I have gone on to...

• Puzzle out and implement my most complex piece of flag-work ever! And it works - even more surprising! My solution may horrify some of the super-flag-workers here on the forums like Ego and Plural but it does the job I need it to.
• Create some of my most challenging COs for some ingame cutscenes - really excited by what I produced!
• Best of all, I've gone on to (barring the production of a small cutscene) finish the area I've been working on in drips and drabs for about a year. And it's looking great, if I may say so. It has lotsa OCO enemies, some nice challenges, and great bit of story. Hopefully people will love it as much as I do!
• Plus various other bits and pieces, adding characters and dialogue to various areas and prettying up the world.
• Oh, and in between listening to Ben Howard songs on Youtube, I found a violin-track that I like for my finale.

Completing this section effectively finishes Act Two of the level, which feels like a huge step. In fact, precisely what remains to be done before I can call for testers are two bonus levels and the two sections leading to the Proper Ending. Plus some cutscenes.

Of course, at least one of those cutscenes should feature images of a raging dragon which I still don't have...

Oh, and while I have a mystery for the bonus end, I don't actually have a resolution for it (2010-Talps never wrote down his ideas, apparently), so I have to work out what it's all about...

But looking on the bright side, I'm feeling rather triumphant with the last few days' work. I've done a lot of work, and hopefully I'll be motivated to keep it up for a while. I don't want to post screenshots as I don't want to ruin the surprise for the exciting bits of the story, but here's a spritesheet for you to admire. (This is a small section of her complete animation which I isolated for use in specific sequences.)

Haha, nice!

Re: the dragon: Have you considered commissioning someone to draw it for you? It'll probably cost you about 20-40 bucks, times however many cutscenes the dragon is in. (20 dollars is the average going rate I've seen for a black-and-white drawing, 40 for color.)

It's something I've thought about but it would definitely be a last resort when all other possibilities had been exhausted.

When everything else is more or less complete, I'm happy to look at the level and see if dragon-drawing is within my abilities.

That would be awesome Sergio, thanks. Judging by rate of progress, it might be a long wait, however.

I'll get there!

It is now possible to play through 'Dragon Myth' and reach an ending!

Not the proper ending, or even the Super Awesome Bonus Ending^TM ...but the other ending. The third ending. I suppose you could call it the ending for people with terminal curiosity.

Ok, so there's a big cutscene missing en route, and the ending technically doesn't exist yet since the exit shifts aren't programmed and there's no cutscene (note I said you can reach it, not necessarily experience it) but I hope you can appreciate what a milestone this is to me. After five years it's finally possible to reach an ending screen!

I need to put a lot of knytts in the final iteration of Knytt Castle and give them things to say pertaining to dragons and heroes and witches, and there are three two areas I need to create for the main and secret endings,one two one of which will require me to manufacture another tileset. And there are... three four five three four three is one cutscenes I need to make, one being the infamous one I keep going on about.

But exciting times!

Here's a suitably celebratory screenshot (sibilance! )

EDIT: Got a lot of jobs done today. Two cutscenes, lotsa dialogue and a lovely (if very sad) CO, as well as a fair number of odd jobs and corrections I've had hanging around for a while. Today has been a good day.

EDIT2: I fear this post is getting increasingly illegible. Still, if you can follow it you'll at least get a fairly accurate record of my progress.

EDIT3: Ok, that's the last time I'm going to edit this post!

You can count me in for beta testing.

Today I have... completed the penultimate area, made an OCO I've had sitting around not being done since I first started making OCOs for this level, and added the last secret collectible to the game.

I need to make two more areas (the final area for the main ending and the bonus level for those who find all the secrets), a tileset (which might prove a nasty one to design; I shall have to search for references and start trying things out) and a handful of cutscenes.

Exciting times!

No more screenshots; don't want to give away too much of the final areas.

So, you finally have a dragon in your Dragon Myth?

Thanks for the update, can't wait to play this!

Um, well what I'll probably have when I release the level for testing is a cutscene where every panel contains the description of the picture of a dragon that it ought to contain.
Beyond that I'll wing it.

Today my train was cancelled, which was annoying as it made me miss half an hour of work and, consequently, half an hour of income. But on a lighter note, that extra half an hour gave me time to work out an idea I really like for the ending, which I then scripted on the bus. So not all bad.


EDIT:
Hey hey, as the minutely observant among you may have noticed, I've been struggling with ideas for my Secret Collectors' Reward Bonus Level Ending. Well, I'm happy to report that I have come up with an idea to end the secret path and look forward to writing it. I'm also planning to put in a very shiny bonus for those who complete the secret level, but I'll keep the details to myself for now.

Some people say a secret ending is its own reward. I say not so!

Could you change the worldmap to being an imgur link and not an imageshack link.

imageshack is completely unusable in this era.

Sorry I've not replied sooner; I wanted to have some progress to report before I did.

My drive has slackened off a bit since my last post. After the last time I played through I set myself the task of bringing all of the cutscenes up to a standard I'm happy with; I've got some very clunky writing in the level at the moment: 2010-Talps didn't believe in second drafts.

So of the twelve cutscenes currently in the game, eight are in need of changes; with some it's simply a case of fixing a few small punctuation or grammatical errors, or rewording the odd paragraph. With others it's a case of scrap the lot and remake every panel with new text and images.

Tedious, but important, especially as some of what I wrote in 2010 contradicts the ending of the game I've written in 2015.


In other news, I also made a really awesome OCO of a certain monster. Its only needed in one screen but I've contrived to find a second home for it, too, because I love it and I want to hug it (only it's covered in big horrible spikes and shoots fire out of its head).
So, happy days. I think that clears my backlog of OCOs that needed to be made to make the game beautiful.

As for the map, I noticed it was down a while ago but didn't feel motivated to reupload it. Since you've asked, however, sure. I've updated the link in the opening post.

Keep at it!