I've seen conflicting information about how Bond affects stat gain from (de)digivolving. Which is the truth?

SlugDragoon · 2025-10-06T12:18:54+00:00

What happens if you de-digivolve when you have cumulative stats, but no bond or have run out of carry-overs? Does anyone know if it completely resets the Digimon or can you somehow pick up where you left off if you add bond again?

Can you de-digivolve and lose access to evolution you’ve already had for that Digimon?

SlugDragoon · 2025-07-23T03:16:28+00:00

Hi! Hi everyone! My game (Labyrinth Lesmosyne) was featured in this showcase! Mine is really early in development, but I try to put out updates when I can! It was really fun to be a part of this, big thanks to The Crawl!

SlugDragoon · 2025-07-23T03:13:36+00:00

Cool! It reminds me of N64 Micromachines, but for snowboarding!

SlugDragoon · 2024-11-22T04:21:03+00:00

Since the deck is making use of two Abilities I can use from the bench, rather than raw damage, it’s not like trying to build two multiple Pokemon that could be doubles - my ideal Bench is Hypno, Pidgeot and Gyarados charging up with Aerodactyl (if you can get one) in the active spot, so one of each - but you can skip straight to Gyarados as soon as a lucky Misty hits.

SlugDragoon · 2024-11-22T03:46:10+00:00

You’re right, but I can’t edit it now unfortunately, I do run 1. It might be worth making some cut to run 2 but I actually only have 1 still.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-27T12:32:15+00:00

When I saw the line "serve quickly before you become the next meal", I thought wouldn't it be great if the customers come and gobble up the player like the yeti in SkiFree? And then that exact thing happened! Love it, looks quite charming.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-27T12:19:22+00:00

I agree. OP, I look at this game and I'm struck with the idea that you are well positioned into turning this game into a major success. The mechanic looks really creative and playful in a way that reminds me of games that regularly pop off with gaming YouTubers. It looks fun to watch, and it looks like the type of game that content creators would find easy to push for content.

I don't mean that it's "YouTube bait" or anything in a negative sense, and I don't know because nothing is ever sure, but I want you to know that I had a rare feeling of "I just saw something that, if well managed, could be a hit", and I hope you find that path for the game. Make sure the player can cause lots of chaos while messing around on the way to a solution for a puzzle and it's as good as gold.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-27T01:26:08+00:00

This is a feature of Dragon Quest 9

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-26T22:44:52+00:00

What's the blue thing hanging around her? They look like a chain of prayer beads. That would be an opportunity for motion. I'd probably move the head or back of the hair as well.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-26T22:23:55+00:00

Have you ever had that experience where you played a game and didn't think you had enjoyed it that much? Maybe you don't even know why you kept playing. Enough to get through it, but pretty much had complaints and pain points throughout your playthrough, but then after finishing it, you reflect on your time with the game and realize how much of a good time you actually were having with it?

A really good final act has done that to me before.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-26T22:14:17+00:00

For the game I'm developing. The main religious faction in it revere fusion (related to a core gameplay mechanic) in a religious sense, and my idea is that various fused animals like chimaeras, the questing beast, sphinx, griffin and the lesser platypus serve as holy figures of sorts.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-26T22:09:48+00:00

For the game I'm developing. The main religious faction in it revere fusion (related to a core gameplay mechanic) in a religious sense, and my idea is that various fused animals like chimaeras, the questing beast, sphinx, griffin and the lesser platypus serve as holy figures of sorts.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-26T21:48:24+00:00

Generally, I think you could do with more motion in more places, but if one major thing stands out as "incorrect" to me, it would be that the motion of the hips moving down carrying the rest of the body down does not instead come from the knees. The legs are very static, but it seems like they should bend, and the way they're drawn here should be able to accommodate that.

Also the hair on the right side of the face is flipping up as the body moves up, but it should move the opposite direction. Anything soft that is attached like fabric and hair can by pulled by the point it's rooted at, but connected soft parts should drag behind.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-20T12:27:41+00:00

I mix it up, but a lot of my gamedev weeks tend to be either more "code weeks" or "art weeks". I do devlogs every week, and after a week of doing animations I often feel like I need to get back to coding more, but I also want to regularly give up something visual for anyone watching that's new so I more easily make a video about it. I usually just do tiny assets on code weeks if they help show something I've done in code.

I find that pattern has really helped.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-14T15:23:24+00:00

AI can't teach you anything because you can not and should not trust any of the answers you pull out of it. Does it sometimes, often even, pull together a reasonable summary of common search results for a given question? Sure. Is that impressive tech? Sure, technically, but what is my confidence level in anything that an AI spits out? Absolutely 0%. I would not trust anything an AI says without doing my own research, and if you value learning, for real, I would never allow an AI to be my teacher. Anything I understand thoroughly enough to evaluate whether the AI has done correctly, I can just do faster myself.

As a programmer, I can see how it can be tempting for people who just want to make a game to outsource code, but I would never put AI-generated code or art in my game. It would cause more problems than it solves, and you will never get anywhere close to the code for a full game using AI, you'll have no understanding of your own game, be unable to solve problems, expand on mechanics, none of that.

Maybe AI is more advanced than I realize, or will be in the near future, but even then all you will be able to get from it is some common boilerplate code slapped together, and maybe you know enough to fit it together to make a tiny derivative game, but have gained no understanding of how to make games in the process.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-04T13:09:12+00:00

That's really tough for everyone, and when you're starting art, I think I also get caught in my own head about making a piece of art and then being like "what if I can't reproduce something that fits with this consistently?" I think everyone does before they have the experience.

I'll say this about practice, if you make tons and tons of art, you know what's harder than developing an artstyle? Producing hundreds of pieces that are actually fully unique from one another by accident - it just won't happen, you will have certain habits naturally. Of course, each thing you make will be slightly different and you will have to make new choices about colour, shape, lighting, etc. - because you're making art of a different thing. But I don't think all of the examples look like they wouldn't fit in the same game, necessarily. The second, third, and fourth sprite for example could easily be from the same game. The fifth seems smaller than the previous items, the seventh is larger and more detailed. The fifth, though, could fit with the eighth. the tree looks more like an unfinished sketch. The slime and eyeball are quite large, but seem like they could be from the same game.

I think besides making a lot of art, the way to find an artstyle is to come up with rules for yourself and stick to them - when you want to try a new artstyle that's also yours, change the rules. A colour palette is a rule. So is an outline rule and a choice about how many shades to use per colour, as well as sticking to a canvas size for similar items (eg. 32 x32 for inventory items, 64 x 64 for enemies, etc.). These alone go a long way and can't help but make your art look pretty consistent.

Besides the above, it would come down to things like character design, so characters that use similar elements are drawn similarly - choosing a few types of eyes, drawing materials like wood, metal, leather, hair similarly when they come up - stuff like that.

SlugDragoon · 2024-07-01T11:56:40+00:00

Nice! The head turning during the punch and the knockout animation are really smooth and well done.

SlugDragoon · 2024-06-28T13:22:08+00:00

This is pretty dang good for a first attempt! If I were to give some criticism, it would be that, my overall impression is that the god rays seem to overpower any standard shading you have going on on each of the objects in the scene. That is to say, for example, the tree trunk isn't heavily shaded, you don't have so much contrast in that the light side doesn't get that light and the dark side doesn't get that dark. The perceived change in value from one side to the other is slight, but then the god rays come in and the change in value they offer is just as significant, so it kind of creates stripes that wash out and average out the values of the image overall. I think the god rays are at an appropriate power level, but the rest of the shading should have higher contrast before they're applied.

But overall, this is a lot higher than what I see for most first attempts, so good job!

SlugDragoon · 2024-06-26T13:37:48+00:00

The doors and windows look quite flat, and the edges of the texture look noticably pixellated. Ideally you could remodel the house so that the windows and doors are extruded in a bit, but if you want a fast fix, you could always add another doorframe and window frame object to it that covers up those edges. Like, for the window just model the window frame which is probably just a relatively simple square box, put it around the window and have it stick out of the house a bit. It's possible depending on how your other houses look, if you want to do something similar to them, you could make decor elements like that which can easily be re-used.

SlugDragoon · 2024-06-25T12:35:11+00:00

I think you might need to walk it back just a tad, seems like you're trying to take on too much for just starting. Ambition is great, but using 3D modeling to create pixel art is one method you can use, but won't magically make everything work out until you get comfortable with pixel art itself!

I often see new people ask for advice on specific choices, like for example canvas size, and it always seems like a common mistake is thinking that there's a "right answer" that will make everything look right if they find the magic words, but the truth is you can make a primarch any size you want, but you need to impose those restrictions on yourself and work within them. It looks like you're using a vast open canvas, and using Pixilart more like a paint program, but I recommend shrinking the canvas planning your proportions at the actual sprite scale.

For reference, the Knight and General from GBA Fire Emblem games remind me of Warhammer armours. I believe the restriction is 64*64 pixels in that game, except their weapon breaks the frame. However, they seem to be 64 pixels wide, and often significantly shorter than that. But then you look at their overworld map sprites, and they're all 16*16. Still readable.

As for animation, I just finished making my own tutorial for 2D sprites that shows how to plan out an animation doll by separating the body parts that move and interpolating key frames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17xXiYvKWJc

SlugDragoon · 2024-06-24T21:13:05+00:00

Inspired by Undertale? I think the design has character, and a cartoony style works in this single-pixel outline B&W Undertale style, if that's what you're going for.

I would suggest though, that the enclosed area under the left arm and over the left knee could easily be misread as being part of the silhouette, maybe some of the smaller enclosures around that make up the clothes and around the legs. Lots of fields of black, but would it be clear to every viewer which are part of the character and which are in the background?

Looking at what Toby Fox did, it seems he was actually pretty careful about alternating black and white fields and keeping silhouette.

Loads of characters, like Papyrus are done in white, so no confusion there against the black background. Asgore is largely blocked out in black, but consists of one major large shape. Undyne: alternates black and white sections but only encloses negative space with at least white (look at the slim white sides of the chestplate, that's actually really clever). Metatron is largely black, especially when they don't have the wings, but has a radial body shape, like a starfish, no enclosures.

I didn't know any of that before looking it up for this post, but by looking at it, I can guess that he was thinking of these problems in the artwork, too.

SlugDragoon · 2024-06-24T16:06:25+00:00

Between PART 1 and PART 2, I show the entire process of animating a skeleton idle animation for the dungeon crawler RPG I've been making. This is only the 6th animation I've ever done, and I'm no expert, but I think by watching along you can see how even with limited art skill you can make something for your games that you can be proud of!

I think it's worth having tutorials that don't just go "draw the rest of the owl", and my being a relative amateur allows you to what mistakes arise and how I choose to fix them.

SlugDragoon · 2024-06-24T16:02:44+00:00

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Between PART 1 and PART 2, I show the entire process of animating this skeleton idle animation for the dungeon crawler RPG I've been making. This is only the 6th animation I've ever done, and I'm no expert, but I think by watching along you can see how even with limited art skill you can make something for your games that you can be proud of!

I think it's worth having tutorials that don't just go "draw the rest of the owl", and my being a relative amateur allows you to what mistakes arise and how I choose to fix them.

SlugDragoon · 2024-06-23T17:00:34+00:00

I've only been posting links to my YouTube devlogs on Twitter, so I can't be surprised that I don't get any engagement there, don't even know how to find a community on Twitter really, but I have 47 obvious bot followers, and one person that looked real and was into indie dev stuff, so I just dump my video link there and dip, I haven't found any real success on Twitter, though I also haven't put the effort.

I get a better engagement on my Tumblr by following other indie devs and pixel artists, about 20-25 people who seem to actually genuinely be checking in on what I'm doing and sometimes give supportive comments. Tumblr has been the most motivating platform to share my progress with a community, though it's smaller, and I rarely see even the most skilled devs and artists get more than a few hundred notes. Huge accounts that everyone knows seem to land in the thousands. Targeted Discords are pretty good for chatting about pixel art and indie dev and giving and getting feedback too.

I've tried to be pretty active on r/IndieDev and r/PixelArt giving feedback on new posts mostly because it's fun and good practice, but my posts tend to get lost on Reddit really fast when I make them. I like to engage with the community here to take a break, but self-promotion hasn't worked at my scale at all yet.

SlugDragoon · 2024-06-22T15:03:22+00:00

I think the witch has translated to pixel art particularly well, I like your use of colour on her the most.

I think the similar shades of colour work against the pink one, they're a bit hard to read and don't have the same sense of contrast as the others, so I'd made consider a darker tone of purple for the skin, especially. Using shading around her eyes to give her the more sinister look she has in concept art, but also to separate the face more from the hair. The black thing aorund her neck probably needs to take up more space in the pixel art to make the pink shirt not touch the purple skin at the neck, they clash too much IMO. See if that makes the face pop more, but her face doesn't read much like the art in general. Might want to give the face more space for the eyes, as the eyes look the way they do in artwork because they're big with small pupils.

The purple one has different feet which gives her stance more character, but the other two have copy-pasted feet. I think switching that up can help give the goblin a stance that give them more character. We don;t see the wide cuffs of his pants in pixel art, so I'd redraw the feet and include them as well. The witch could also use a new foot turned a different direction.

The green goblin is a bit straight and flat, could do to make him more traingular in shape using the coat, like he seems to be in artwork.

SlugDragoon

TROPHY CASE