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First steps into the darkness

  • VicWhite
  • 09/18/2016 11:11 AM
  • 1759 views
Being a solo developer it's a slow process, you already know that, my indiedev fellas.

At this point, it's been some months of work. I take hours from my free time, and summer was bad to develop due to job obligations. Then I had my week free and I feel I did giant steps. I focused a lot, it was a bit stressful. But some results came by :)





Still working on character spritesheets. From left to right let me introduce you Henry, cyberdoctor, Fedra, survivalist, and Jake, technician.

Jake spritesheet is finished and able to move in the space station, yet it's still subject to change due to better shadowing.

Also, StarSkipp noticed the crash between the character sprites and the background. That was I am still working on the Tilesets. His comment motivated me to don't setting aside this feature. I pushed some pixels hard. This is a small sample, yet more is still to come.





Also fixed main events on the game. Gameplay depends on them and they have been a real pain in the ass, so it's a big satisfaction to realise you mastered them.

At this point, I am working on mapping, eventing, and completing the first demo, which will include Chapter 1 + 2


I will tell you more in the future.

Vic White


Posts

Pages: 1
Aw no worries, tilesets are the bane of my existence. What you could do after releasing chapter 1+2 is the blitzkrieg approach. I'll give a quick example with pictures.



Instead of designing area by area, you could in theory map out the whole game in matter of weeks depending on your work output. Design all the map layouts, connect them together, add gameplay mechanics/events and finally do the graphic crunch at the end. It prevents development burnout and gives a sense of progression if you grind away on a dairy basis and it's not even frustrating. Gives you a little sandbox to play in.

Before and after.



Oh man, it sounds like I'm advertising some sort of moisturiser haha.
Thanks for the advice Mr "mosturiser advertiser"! Hahah that would be a cool nickname.

Now I have the basic tileset and can work like you referred, yes.

Big hug.
Well give it a try once you're finished with the demo and see if it's your cup of tea. If you have multiple tilesets it might be a good idea to use the color scheme in all of them to prevent losing the layout once you switch over to different one... Or alternatively make one massive tileset instead.

There's always the risk of quantity over quality though, so if you have a game plan make sure to stick with it and not end up going off track. Also might be a good idea to contact the feedbackers on this thread for a wide range of opinions and then make a judgement call on what needs changing or fixing. Then you can use that as a base on where to go next \o/
Thanks again for the advice. That thread looks pretty awesome! Will call on feedback when the demo it's released. I am sure there will be a lot of points to improve.
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