Post news Report RSS DEVBLOG #6 - Moving Parts

This week I've been working on presentation - Sound, Music, Graphics and lighting!

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This week i've been busy on presentation - music, lighting, sound and graphics!

Behold the new fangled look!



Notice the redone lighting effects, I wanted the outline of the shelter to be far more clear and sharp, without distracting flickering when survivors are wandering around.

I also added a slightly "gamey", but very clear, effect when rooms are inactive (notice the big red room). I think this is WAY clearer than the last look.

Next - I refreshed the survivor sprites. First I had a little chubby guy with wide blinking eyes, he was super easy to animate (yay!) but he's just too cute.


Next I went to a thinner, more pixel-art style of character. This guy actually looked great in screenshots. But this kind of pixel-by-pixel animation is far to labor intensive for my one-man-band operation.


So... following some helpful advice from the tigsource forums I took the FIRST cutesy-looking guy and:
- Made him thinner
- Desaturated the color pallet
- Removed the eyes
- Made him bald(!)


... now i'm not saying bald == evil. But there is no doubt he's looking alot more sinister and grown up! :)

What do you guys think?

I also FINALLY added an autosave feature. This has 2 advantages this early in development
- when testing, I can re-load shelters, rather than having to build another shelter from scratch each time. yay!

- When you are testi.. I mean PLAYING ;) then you can build bigger more complicated shelters and hopefully expose more lovely bugs for me to squash. :)

Lastly I've been working closely with PIXEL NOISE, a 3 man outfit based in the states. They've been excellent and really seem to "get" the vibe i'm going for.

Hear the latest title track below. MP3 Link

I really want to get a proper alpha trailer or even just a bit of game play up for you guys to see in the coming weeks.

All the best!

R.

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Xylker
Xylker

I do like the model, but I'm not sure about the no face thing, I'm not sure if you're tryin to give a personality to each one of them, so the player can relate to them and care about them, or if they are just expendable henchmen.

Any way, I supose it's just a temporary thing. I'm just to eager to play this :P

Good job man!

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HighlandGaming Author
HighlandGaming

Thanks for the comments Xylker.

I'm expecting your people to die regularly and in numbers :)

In fact, people dying is like a "canary" for problems with your shelter - so for these reasons I dont want people getting too attached to individuals.

The aim is to grow your society rather than care particularly for one or two survivors.. although that being said I expect to add personal details as hover-overs to survivors just for a bit of flavor.

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Xylker
Xylker

Thanks for the reply!

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