I'm looking deeper into this guy's company. I don't want to add too much information pertinent to his company here, for the sake of SEO. But it looks like he has been running a media production company for a while. He has an Instagram account that has a link to his website. There have been several Rockwell Studios before--a photography studio, a recording studio, and this guy's media production company--but until now I've had the only Rockwell Studios in the game development world. And I registered my LLC years ago. I would have been cool with us doing our own things... me developing video games and him making videos or whatever. But if he's branching out into video game development suddenly, that has me concerned.
You need to trademark your business' name if you haven't.
DBA generally confers less protection than a registered trademark, and at a local level.
Thanks for the advice. Definitely going to work on that trademark.
In other news, I'm working on a new top-tier helmet for rangers. In my notes it was called the Dragonslayer Helm. I imagined a helmet made from a dragon skull. I thought that would be a popular fantasy trope with lots of examples I could use for inspiration, but it turns out to be less common than you might think. Anyway, I started drawing and this is what I came up with.
[Edit: I just now tried it without the bottom jaw. I like that version more.]
It's OK I guess, but I don't think it looks very much like a dragon or very much like what a ranger would wear. (The armor is an older sprite, and I'm satisfied with it. I'm just talking about the helmet here.) Any thoughts on what I could improve?
I've been working on some other hats too. I thought helms were probably the easiest way to add variety to the sprites, and I really didn't have enough helmets in the base game. So I've been making some other new hats and stuff. Here's a tellerbarret, a graduation cap, and a cultist hood.
I borrowed the gloves from ranger armor and added those to a different armor sprite to make the adventurer tier-2 armor. Maybe I need to recolor the gloves a little to match the other leather parts. The tellerbarret looks really good with the scholar armor too, I noticed. But shown there we have a scholar wearing an academic cap. It's the first hat you'll unlock for caster classes. It was the easiest sprite I drew this week. And we have the cultist hood, which is a bit of a remix of some other sprites. Once you have a big library of sprites, it becomes easier to make new sprites.
I just now realized why these guys look so sickly and pale. I had the skin layer's opacity turned down. I do that when I'm working on another layer. Also, I didn't give them a hair layer so they kind of look like chemo patients.
I've also been making some new shields. Shields are another relatively easy way to add more variety to the game. Here are the Black Knight Shield, Starlight Shield, and Sun Crest Shield.
In the base game, the shield progression was very linear. There was no reason to keep an old shield when the next tier became available. I'm making these shields (and most equipment in the expansion) sidegrades rather than upgrades, or possibly upgrades in an intended role. Most equipment in the game comes with a speed penalty. The Black Knight Shield offers protection similar to a tower shield, but with a lower speed penalty. The Starlight Shield offers bonuses useful to mages, and the Sun Crest Shield offers bonuses useful to clerics and paladins.
If there is one thing I spent a lot of time on, that no one ever complained about, it was equipment variety. And here I am adding more equipment. Like the Crescent Moon Staff.
Staffs in the base game also had very linear progression. I'm adding a lot more options to the expansion, with some staffs that are better for one class or another, and that scale with different stats, so what's best for one character might not be best for another. The Crescent Moon Staff is designed with druids in mind. And then we also have cups, scriptures and spellbooks, and talismans, which are one-handed alternatives for clerics and other casters to use instead of staffs or wands.
And there is still more equipment that I want to add to the game. So far, I'm up to about 280 pieces of equipment in the game, most of them with unique sprite sheets. I think I need to say that's enough, and get back to making the rest of the game now.
