~Kitasia
Anti
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Posts by Anti
Environments, Equipment, and Epics
Jun 16th
I’m drained from the massive amount of E3 content I’ve watched. That combined with all this design work I’ve been doing makes me exhausted to say the least. E3 is typically my glimpse into the future to see the direction gaming is going. I always feel small after watching it, like I’m never going far enough to make it to that stage. I didn’t feel that way this year. I feel so strangely ambitious about this that I partly question whether I’m delusional.
Everyone is probably still gawking over the E3 media right now, but still, I’d like to talk about 3 different Es which are a detriment to direction my game is going in. To do that, I’d really like to go into the source of my inspiration for these elements, Zelda.
Retrogression
Jun 11th
Almost every game there comes a stage where I take my base model and update it to more accurately depict the character. I probably did this about 5 times in the Tandem Tales-Tale of the Night era. This minutia really makes me feel like I’m getting nowhere but as I stated, I’m attempting to get as close as I can to perfection this time.
I’m trying to achieve the look of a sprite I modified a month or so ago. It seems to be the perfect representation of the character, but of course that won’t seem to stop changing! But I’ll take wanting him to look more cartoonish this time around as a sign that I’ve found a happy medium.
On a last note, I’ll try and start posting real news at some point. I have the habit of using the site as a journal.
Coloring
Jun 5th
Why am I still working on graphics? It’s not the texturing I can’t get right, it’s the coloring. It’s pretty clear to me why there are people hired just to work with the lighting alone. To help me find out the exact kind of shading I’m looking for I made this concept art using the current model. I haven’t forgotten about gameplay if anyone’s wondering. If I don’t do graphics now I’ll be too lazy to do it later.
There are no ice stages in the game, this actually came to mind when I was thinking of some sort of ice fortress. I don’t know when or why I was thinking of it but the image stuck with me.
UPDATE: June 6 2010
Perhaps concept art is more useful than I thought. Attempting to recreate a concept rather than blindly doing things really helped. Although I had to go back to square one with coloring, I think I finally got the lighting down. Should be easy to move forward from here!
Really liking the results.
Texturing
Jun 3rd
Without being too verbose, I thought I may just post how a little screenshot of how things are going. I really ought to do that more. I still have work to do with character texturing and level texturing was simply a rush job just to see how it would turn out so take it with a grain of salt. I hope to get out of this graphics bubble soon.
5 Reason I’m Looking Forward to Lithodora
May 31st
I’m feeling really optimistic about the project! I made a list of a few reasons why!
- No PC Version
I was constantly concerned about keeping my graphics to a minimum so that the game would be more accessible. Now that I’m doing 360 development I know what my graphical limits and I have a lot more power to wield. It’s also nice to know there will be a controller that everyone will be using. - Feedback
When Tale of the Night released I got kicked in the face pretty hard a few times. What little feedback I got with previous games was all good, so I wasn’t used to any really negative feedback. Welcome to the real world I suppose. It was a rude awakening but with my faults revealed I can transcend into a new realm of work. Of course there was also positive feedback so I also have an idea of the areas I’m doing well in. - A Finished Work
Every single game beforehand was always a demo of something. I believe that’s the real story behind me never using the same engine twice. I’m taking this game extremely seriously because I know it’s not some free game I’m just throwing out on the internet or something just to be patched up later. Having the opportunity to be in a true marketplace changes everything. Tale of the Night showed me a whole new world possibilities. - Finally 3D
Need I say more? I’ve been yapping about it for months. I’m looking forward to gaining more control of the camera for dynamic views, having complete representation of the characters, and finally having that open world feeling. Mostly perhaps, I’m looking forward to not dealing with all those programming problems I had. - A Real Story
I like writing , and anyone’s that’s explored the web page can likely tell Felix stories are much more detailed than I’m letting on. I won’t promise that the story will shock you or be filled with twist and turns, what I’m really striving for is detail. Aside from my very very first one, this will be my only game that uses a recurring character as the antagonist and that always makes me want to apply special attention to the story.
There are other things I’m excited but these 5 say enough for me. I think it will all begin to show when I start work with the prelude chapter.
In the Shadows
May 29th
I
truly have been ubiquitous on my schedule as of late and oh this has been such a strange week! It started out with me thinking early on how I would do shadows, to researching shadows to attempting to apply shadows. It’s the usual way I get thrown off track. This week has been murder because I’ve been extremely picky about how I want shadows done and there are dozens of concerns I have as with anything I haven’t tried. I may have to remove what I’ve done and start from scratch but let’s hope I don’t have to do that. I’d put this in my top 3 most stressful experiences of the development so, far but hopefully it’ll be worth it in the end.
I’ll keep shadows around for now, but if my framerate dips I will be opting for a cheaper solution. But while it’s here, I do think it looks pretty nice.
Texturing Continued
May 24th
I don’t usually update so soon but I couldn’t resist.
Texturing seems t
o be a relatively quick process, much quicker than I thought. Because the camera is pretty far away and I”m not exactly shooting for star quality texturing, I can be pretty sloppy and still get good results. What the picture entails is a uncolored Felix because, I haven’t figured out how I”m going to color the characters. I should probably do a bit more brainstorming before moving on but I like how things are going so far.
On a side note, the other Felix’s head is stuck on the box because of the change in collision code. I’m going to have to finalize that later on too. Sigh, so much work.
Texture Experiments
May 23rd
A while 
back I drew some concept art that roughly adds up to how the model looks currently. Well I thought I might modify that picture, or at least enough to get the point, to get an idea of how things may look after texturing is finished. I’ve never attempted to use real fur textures in anything I’ve made so I was sure the result wouldn’t be the same.
I think I’m finally going to be able to show that hairy look off in a game for once.
Working with Music
May 21st
I’ve temporarily stepped away from the collision of the game to begin texturing the model but I’ve temporarily stepped away from that to address something that even I had a problem with, the music. I don’t think my music was bad but there could be times where it wouldn’t fit with the rhythm of the game and I repeated it so much that it could become, well… annoying. I’m being very careful to make a complete soundtrack that has no recycled songs, and fits with the game pacing. At the same time, I’m attempting to improve on my composition.
Sadly I haven’t been able to make a single song yet due to a new standard, but I”m getting there : )
In too Deep
May 18th
I can’t believe May is almost gone. Still feels like so much more needs to be done. That’s probably because there’s so much more to be done but hey, I’m getting there. : )
I’m making sure I live up to the hype.
In regard to last update I was talking about how deep I would go with physics, after a few days of work I can say I can go a lot deeper than I thought. Thanks to one “olii” at gamedev.net I’ve managed to see that the separating axis theorem is much more powerful than I had first thought. Thusly, the collision can get a bit more wily and be more stable than ever. The physics aren’t in place to manipulate objects more realistically but instead to add more dynamic objects and platforms and such without error. Ohh the possibilities of objects in a dynamic world!