The Fishers Have Arrived

It started at the end of July and finished on August 22nd. This milestone ran longer than the others — because there was far more hands-on work inside it.

7 Characters

Fisherman, Fisher Girl, Fisher Kid, Veteran Captain, Tourist Fisherman, Pirate — each one a distinct personality.

GPT generates each character separately. But the generated image doesn't go straight into the game. Alpha cleanup, sprite rect adjustment, compositing calibration — a separate process for each character.

Rodless v2

In the first versions, characters held a rod in their hands. Then we realized: the rod belongs to the boat, not the character. The rod is rendered separately in the game scene.

We moved every character to v2 — the rodless version. This wasn't a feature, it was a correction. But without the correction, compositing would never look right.

16 Avatar Designs

16 avatars for the profile panel. Some resemble the playable characters, some are completely different. Players pick whichever one represents them best.

Compositing Calibration

Every character must work with every boat. 7 characters × 13 boats — we checked combinations one by one.

Anchor points, hull line, depth order. Sometimes pixel-by-pixel adjustment. Sometimes the character's scale was reduced, sometimes the boat's upper boundary came down.

Why It Took This Long

Architectural work finishes fast. Visual work takes time. This milestone taught us that.

But the result was worth it: 7 different fishers, on 13 different boats, now look like a real scene.