A mighty fine beginning of May, and boy is it already a hot month! This is a small update for my OviVixen Revision project as discussed in my previous news post. Basically, I’m restarting from scratch, this time using a better engine which is Godot, and trying to rebuild OviVixen Arcade into a standalone browser-capable game before August ends. After this, the browser game is going to replace the “OviVixen Emulator” on its itch.io page: the “OviVixen Emulator” is going to be rebuilt and planned to be released with four games out the box and more!

Arcade - Graphics Compression 🕹️

One of the objectives to make a better OviVixen Arcade is to keep the game as a whole from an embarrassing 66 Megabytes into a file size down to the Kilobytes. Optimization, baby! OviVixen Arcade is too simple of a game to require so much bloat! The first thing I have done for this Revision Project was compressing ALL the graphics into one sprite sheet: no duplicates and no excess spacing. This one Sprite Sheet, fully compressed, became nothing more than FIFTEEN KILOBYTES!

Now I’m going to finally open Godot and put this ONE FILE to work; although, there is one concern I have before delving into the game engine. Can Godot rip all graphics exactly like a tilemap node? As in, can Godot build every graphic in the game from only one file comprised of scattered 8x8 tiles? Not just background assets, animated sprites too. If I can get Godot to pull this off successfully, I might even make this game into a size that can even fit it into an NES cartridge!

That’s my first goal: make a fully animated Fox Sprite built out of 8x8 tiles in-engine!

Speaking of Fox Sprite…

Fox Sprite Color Revisions! 🌈

So I have to finally confess something crucial regarding OviVixen Arcade as well as future games coming forward. If you have played the game whether from here or the better running executable from the “emulator”, you’ve seen Fox Sprite in all her pixel glory. However, you may have noticed in your gameplay, Fox Sprite doesn’t have that seafoam green hair and fur as shown in all promotional material, art pieces, and even commissioned pieces done by other artists that has her in it. That’s intentional and has been since 2019! Based on certain user input, Fox Sprite actually appears with a different color: in rare cases, she has that seafoam green hair color except when you’re playing the Newgrounds version as a guest, but she may be blue, white, red, dark green, teal, a set selection of twenty-seven possible styles. She’s a whole rainbow in that shortstack physique!

This is one of the few reasons why I wanted most OviVixen games to be housed in one program! I want the style chosen by the emulator to carry over to other game, like OviVixen Master for example. Giving it a more “personalized” touch to the player experience. This feature is going to stay most definitely: though it may not appear on Itch’s browser version, it will be present in the upcoming Revamped Newgrounds Version in a similar fashion as the previous version still in the portal. As for the upcoming Revised Emulator, not only the four sub-games are going the implement this feature but it may be more crucial for the emulator as a whole!

Now saying all of that, there may be some changes to some of the styles for the Revision Project. I’m thinking Majesty and Tropical should be replaced with a style like FireCracker and Citrus respectively because their palettes are significantly too close to major character in the series: Majesty more specifically. Maybe Sky High should have a darker green for her limbs and eyes? I dunno, I’m open to suggestions!

So that’s everything for now!

Like I said, it’s a small update. So what are your opinions on what I just brought to the Frontpage table? Any questions, suggestions? If you have played Arcade, what do you think of the color that was given to you? I’m legit all ears! Next time I blog post, I will already be putting everything graphics-related into practice in Godot, hopefully without having to duplicate the same sprites over and over again! Hope you all have a magnificent May!