What's Up

New terrain, that's what's up. 

This new terrain can be pieced together to easily create a variety of
different looking areas.

The green here is the grass texture that spreads over a piece
as the player walks on it and grass grows.

Besides that, it's been more of the same here, generally though. Dev dev dev. Time's been a little constrained lately, but that's about to change. Next Tuesday will be my last day at my "dayjob" (I'll be getting another). So for one month, I'll be free to devote virtually all of my time to Sprout's Tale.

Right now, we're working on the enemy and fire enemy. Mihai's come up with some really incredible logic systems for defining enemy patrol paths, and they're going to work really nicely with the Z Axis control we've added. Basically adding nodes to define a path and setting them before obstacles so the enemy can know exactly how to climb over them. It sounds perfect.

Also, I had a weird idea in the shower this morning! Perhaps adding some kind of plant or flower or something that shoots poison and causes the controller to start going wonky so that all the directional controls are randomly rearranged. Seems like something that could make for some very tense situations.

I don't know though. I'm pretty worried about feature creep. Anyway, it wouldn't go in before the trailers ready, since it would be impossible to convey that kind of feature in a video.

What else, what else. Story?

Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.

I've got the story well figured. LaconicLelex gave me some really really nice framing tips a while back that I've put to good work. He used Land Before Time as the example and explained how the beginning of a visual story needs to be bright and wonderful and wowing. Then the darkness (and poor Little Foot's mom needs to bite it) so that the player/viewer feels they are working to get something back. Then brighten it up little by little as the player makes progress and - boom, explosions of color.

Sounds like something I would like to play.

One thing I've struggled with from the get go is making sure the player is getting a real sense of accomplishment out of the different aspects of the game. Growing a tree and covering a landscape in grass might look pretty, but I need the player to feel like it is something he/she has personally accomplished.

I'm actually still having trouble there. I think I need more sparkle on the grass and some little tinkly chime sounds. Anyway, I'll get there.

This was an unusually long entry. If you actually made it to the very bottom here then you are a true hero and I promote you to Blog Reader Rank 7, Regal Dragon Knight Reader.