Sep 28, 2009

Blog Started

Yeah, just like millions of others. Right now, this blog is to keep track of my progress, no matter how slow, on various projects of mine. Each is in their own state of disarray right now, but I hope to have some real work complete on each shortly. So far, I have the following:

Eyes of the Earth:
I have laid out the entire groundwork for this game in the past couple of days. There is currently basic combat, a level-up system, bullet time, advanced camera movements, upgrade menus and events, save/loading, and a rough outline of the story. There is really nothing more to do to the engine as of right now. I'll be sculpting the first few levels, designed to show players various basic movements and abilities throughout the game. My next major task is to include a full dialogue scene between two characters, complete with varying portraits, camera movement, and character movement in-game, as well. After I figure out a way to optimize these events, everything from cutscenes to levels will be churned out at a much faster rate. I plan on finalizing character designs and starting the artwork that is actually in-game shortly thereafter.

Movement [WIP name]:
This game is a bit of an oldie, so it's not getting quite the same amount of attention as EotE. However, I have destroyed every part of the engine bugs that have plagued me during the first drafting of it. The biggest problem right now is to figure out an interesting way to use the gameplay for puzzles. The game is essentially a 2D platformer with a limited movement. However, by jumping into glowing nodes, you can pause time and rotate the screen, gravity, the whole level, 90 degrees in either direction. One drastic bug that is left is the lack of changing which way you started to rotate until completing a circle. Basically, you can only spin to the left until you've gone 360 degrees, or to the right until then, before making a change in direction. This adds an interesting limitation in puzzles, but really is just an embarrassing bug I can't understand yet. I'll be working on this more closely in my spare moments of lackluster inspiration.

There are about three more games to report on, but I'll have to tuck them in at a later time. Look for them in a little while.