We're afraid there's not a new build this week, but that doesn't mean we've not been hard at work. Sadly most of what we've done will be invisible for now, so you'll have to hold on a bit before you see any of it coming to fruition. It'll be worth it though, promise...
Most of Ashley's time has been taken up refactoring a ton of code, fixing-up everything to accommodate our future plans. The biggest aspect of this has been in ripping apart game modes and moving it all into a modular system. I won't go into too much detail at this point, but if we get it working as we would like then expect to have a LOT of customisation at your fingertips. From our point of view it will also provide a framework for us to prototype new features and ideas very quickly.
Alongside that, Sophie and I have started work on redesigning the user-interface (with plenty of help and input from the others). We're having to try to establish a consistent and expandable system that absorbs new features and options as we add them to the game. We've got some big ideas here too, with our intention to do something a little more exciting and on-theme than the traditional menu systems you see in most games, whilst not sacrificing usability in the process. If you think this sounds like a tall order and the sort of thing that results in a lot of swearing and gnashing of teeth then you'd be entirely correct. At one point Sophie took a bit of a break and drew some interpretations of Young Man Ricketts. It looks a little like a certain Hollywood actor don't you think? Which is interesting because she had no idea who he was until I showed her some pictures!
There's not been much audio work from my point of view over the past few weeks due to a virus taking down my home computer (I know right...), where I'm working on most of the soundtrack stuff. Evenings were spent reinstalling music software and figuring out a better workflow for the large number of samples I'm putting together for the game. From now on I will be keeping a folder of install files for all of my software - having to dig out old emails for downloads and serial numbers is DULL.
Unfortunately Tom has had to do a bunch of 3rd party motion graphics work over the past couple of weeks, so hasn't had much to contribute. However, he did put together this rather awesome animation that ties in with the character and team select system we've been playing with.
Idle and run animations.
Right, that just about sums it up. Hopefully we'll have something to actually show for all of this soon!
Take care everyone!
- Nick
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Looks awesome, tracking!