STATUS

I just realized I spent two hours polishing a town, making the map nice and pretty(ish), placed NPCs in smart locations and thought up of fun dialogue for them all to say... and then remembered that players will be there for about ten minutes. Out of the entire game.

Misaligned sights? Dedication to immersion? OCD? Or all of the above?

Maybe I'm just impatient to get to the big, story-changing moments that I start to feel dragged down by the monotony of working on areas that players won't be at for too long. How do you all break up the work? Do you just go from start to finish? Or do you work on the areas you feel like working on whenever?

author=Zeigfried_McBacon
I guess you didnt properly estimate the scope and value of the place at the time. Well, you can always slip some interesting stuff like easter eggs and or stuff worth making a second playthrough of the game. *shrugs*

It's less about underestimating the scope and more overestimating my ability to get it done. Once again, the dreaded mapping struggle brings me down. Liberty, in her tutorial maps, made a more detailed example map in half the time it took me to make mine, and hers looks better. I'm learning and getting better, but I still wish I didn't struggle as much as I do.

author=Pizza
You've done well. It doesn't matter if the player is only gonna be there for 10 minutes- you've assured yourself that those 10 minutes will be as worthwhile as possible.

Thanks! That's what I'm hoping for, too.

author=turkeyDawg
Now imagine how the environment artists for Sonic games (especially the newer Boost games) must feel...

It also reminds me of a developer interview I read of one of the background artists for CAVE, who seemed to feel pretty silly obsessing over small details like chairs and such in an autoscrolling shooter where, even if you didn't just blow by a place in a few seconds, you wouldn't be able to see much of his work past all the bullets anyways. Poor guy...

Ugh. I really feel sorry for the environment designers for modern Sonic games. Well, the one good thing about the boost to win games is that they force you to look at the pretty images while you're boosting.

author=Liberty
I'd rather spend 10 minutes in an interesting town with interesting characters and the like, than 5 minutes in a town into which no thought was made. But then, I like the interactive parts of games when you go in to towns.

True. Sometimes I forget that many RPG players like to take some time to explore the world. It's easy to guide them along and make them see what you want them to, but then you'd just be watching cutscenes, and that's no fun.

author=charblar
I agree with the rest I ended up when I was working on hanging on completely redoing the entire main town and I felt it was really stupid when starting it but it really made it not boring and more interesting.

Wow, you completely scrapped and redid maps? I've done that very rarely, and certainly never for a major town. That's awesome! I could benefit from getting less attached to my maps and just remap things that need to be remapped.

author=unity
I'm all about creating a memorable experience through polish, even if the time the player spends there is minimal. It's a ton of work, but it'll create a big impact ^_^

Still, I know the feeling. I spent over an hour yesterday making a new physical damage animation so that a boss's big attack could look special. :P

Yeah, I definitely agree with that statement. As long as the areas are fun to play, I shouldn't worry about how much time I spend on them.