Before I get into this week’s progress report, I want to take a moment and go over what to expect when it comes to seeing Turnover on Steam.
Turnover is in active development.
If you have never heard of Turnover, please, take a moment to go back through the development posts on this devblog.
Turnover started from a 2D engine project I began back around March 2013 and was officially announced October 2013. Turnover has had steady progress since its inception and is well on its way to being released.
I am aiming for a Late Spring / Early Summer 2015 launch and I’m trying my damnedest to hit that date.
Turnover has been a DIY effort, aimed at giving good value to the player.
Turnover has been a DIY creative effort from the beginning. I am a one man team that has dedicated myself to Turnover. I’ve kept development costs cut to the bone and I’ve done what I could to avoid pawning any risk on anyone else. I never felt comfortable asking for 10s of thousands of dollar in crowd funding pledges, turning to something like Patreon, or running preorders.
Ultimately, I did launch a successful(!), low goal KickStarter campaign to cover the bare necessities needed to send Turnover out into the world. Money is hard to come by nowadays, so the faith that the backers have shown is something that I will never forget.
In the end, a low goal campaign was something I felt comfortable doing. It ensured that I was able to retain the freedom I desired, and to create the game I wanted to create: a stealth game that is challenging, has an enjoyable length, and is hopefully a ton of fun — all at a fair price.
Turnover will be a fully playable Early Access title.
My goal is have a fully playable game for Early Access release on Steam. For all intents and purposes, it will be a beta build. From there, I’ll address feedback and continue putting out builds.
I have some long term goals planned for Turnover that I would like an opportunity to work towards. So, as long as people are interested in the game, I’ll continue working on it!
In closing —
Whether or not you vote for Turnover on Greenlight, I hope the game interests you enough to want to follow its progress!
Now, onto the progress report —
More Sprite Improvements
Here’s an updated window sprite. The stock window sprite has always bothered me. The new one is a little better, I think.
Here’s a perspective tweak on the couches. It needed a little depth.
And an updated grenade cache sprite. Added a lid and some better perspective.
It was pointed out to me by someone over at IndieDB that Clea’s neck looked a little long in the cut scenes shots. So, I ended up shortening it and I liked the result. So, thanks for the feedback!
Before:
After:
Turnover - Then & Now
Here’s a neat little comparison of an October 2013 Turnover prototype against the Turnover of today. As you can see, some of the base style ideas were retained throughout development.
Prototype Turnover
vs. Today
In the prototype shot, you can see frame rate in the upper left corner, the stamina represented as a number in the upper right. Also, the view between the two versions are different and the sprite perspective is vastly improved as well.
Also, you can see that Clea was nothing more than a number 1, which was actually a sprite sheet with multi-numbered frames used so I could accurately time animation frames.
Optimization Work
While I was putting together the Greenlight campaign, I fell into a bit of a creative ebb, so I decided to do some optimization work.
Previously, when a level was loaded, I would pull the sprite info and create sprite instances to build the level. Lately, I’ve been taking thematic sprites (seating, desks, wall deco) that more less share a palette, and converting them over to Vertex Arrays.
A few months ago, I began doing this to the wall and floor sprites, so now I’m beginning to extend that idea to all the others. The levels aren’t fully decorated at the moment, so it only eliminates a few dozen draw calls / objects to iterate through per level. But, it could potential eliminate 100+ objects per level when all is said and done.
