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Week 7

Keys, knights and portraits

Locked doors and the keys that open them, spear-carrying bear knights, real portraits in every conversation, new animated doors and a three-layer parallax sky.

Leggi in italiano

Another quiet week by commit count (17), but a very visible one: the world gained guards, locks, faces and depth.

Locked doors and keys

A door or chest can now be locked. The padlock shows which key it needs: iron for doors (the Door Key), brass for chests (the Chest Key). Without the key, pressing Up rattles the padlock and tells you what’s missing. With it, the key pops out over Ash, flies into the lock, the padlock springs open and the door swings in one smooth move. Keys can also lie around in the world, bobbing gently until you walk over them.

The test world has a small chain to try it all: a brass key on a high island opens the chest next to the Keeper’s House, which holds the iron key for the house door, and inside there’s an extra heart.

The Keeper's House in the test world, a stone house with a padlocked door and a chest beside it
The Keeper's House: the start of the key chain.

Bear knights

A new NPC: the bear knights, spear-carrying bear guards who will stand at the entrance of King Barkwood’s castle. They never walk: they stand still, blink every now and then and can be talked to. NPCs now pick their sprite with a look property in Tiled, and a pair of guards can face each other across a doorway.

Two bear knights with spears guarding the tower door in the test village
The bear knights on guard at the tower door.

Faces in every conversation

The green placeholder faces in dialogues are gone. Ash has a real portrait with three expressions (normal, happy, angry) chosen line by line in Tiled, and so do the bear knights and the forest villagers. Portraits lost their white frame: they’re drawn bigger, resting on the bottom edge of the box, and mirrored when the speaker is on the right so they always face the text.

A conversation with the Wizard, whose blond portrait rests on the bottom edge of the dialogue box
Frameless portraits in dialogues.

A sky with depth

Outdoor maps now have a three-layer parallax background, set up in Tiled: a gradient sky, drifting clouds and two rows of tree silhouettes, in soft, cool tones so the platforms in front stand out.

Ash on a wooden platform over water, with clouds and forest silhouettes in the background
The new parallax: sky, clouds and forest.

And also

  • New doors: arched stone and wood, with a six-frame opening animation taken straight from the Aseprite file.
  • A softer jump descent: Ash comes down a little slower after the peak.
  • Hits now use dedicated hurtboxes, and the sword hits exactly where the blade is drawn in each frame.
  • The background no longer jumps forward after closing a dialogue or a menu.
  • The money bag was redrawn as a burlap sack.

By the numbers

  • 17 commits.
  • No new version: these changes shipped in 0.20.0.