Hype in this case consists of me rambling on this page about how good this game will turn out.  I suppose what has me excited about this project, is that it will be my first full game and the “I’ll add that later” mentality is out of the window. What I will be presenting is my interpretation of a final product on a marketplace.

That’s all well and good, yay for me and etcetera, but big words from one guy with a relatively weak record don’t mean much. What I’ll probably do is make 1 video showing a few features of the engine and near the end of the project release some type of trailer. I’ve never made a trailer or took anything like a trailer seriously but I think this one may call for it. My fist video will be presented this month. I’m fairly certain of that. Still, many features will be missing and the game won’t be fully polished.

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I’m expecting the game to play in basic form in about a week or so. What I should have at this time, is a general platformer with a few sleek tweaks. After that I’ll probably go over it all to see how it might look in finished form. From there I should pick up with the more advanced stuff and other gameplay elements. But so far everything is going superbly, hopefully a little detail on the test stage shown can convey that.

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Enough concept art, the picture to the left is the design you’ll be seeing in game. The amount of changes the character has went through has been ridiculous.  I’ve probably been through at least five versions this year alone. I think modeling really put me through some sort of purity test, requiring me to assess the character from every angle which I”m really to lazy to do on paper. Animates well, looks furry, has a classic Felix feel to it, and (although I was somewhat giving up on the idea) looks more like a fox to help distinguish the species. I’m completely content, it actually feels final.

It seems everything is coming to place to deliver a game I can truly call, the series debut.

Not that long ago I was talking about how the controls had changed, well after a bit of testing I think it’s fair to confirm one of my major control changes, latching. On the previous game, latching to things was done automatically by bumping up against things but after playing Little Big Planet many moons ago, I’ve always been feeling latching to things could be much much more interesting. One of the things I liked about the game’s latching was the feeling of doom if your hand slipped, that your life was hanging by a single button however when latching occurs automatically you could stop go to the bathroom comeback, and you’d still be there stuck on the wall, there’s really no suspense. Aside from that, there’s lots of hidden potential with manually latching to objects. Most of this potential doesn’t really enhance the game any but it can easily allow the player to feel the game more and feel more in control of Felix’s swift actions as if the player is the one doing it. Whether the controls “stick” (pun intended) will probably depend on XNA peer review.

Projection

It’s official, I have no clue when I could finish this.  It probably seems like never, seeing as I’m not showing much, but honestly, right now all I have is a really basic platformer with no automated camera or uv mapping. Once this part is completely refined, I’ll move on. I may start to capture video when tree climbing is reimplemented.

Lithodora?

Aside from playing in 2D, one may wonder what separates this title from what I was attempting to achieve. Lithodora of Despair was loaded with events and theatrics that I feel would weight heavy on the project. As much as I enjoyed that, I didn’t want it to overshadow a gameplay system that I haven’t familiarized myself with. Needless to say, it all would be very time consuming for one person (a picky one at that). In addition to all that, 2D stages are simply easier to build than 3D ones also which is very beneficial to someone as impatient as myself. ; D

The First Stage

The first stage will be the whimsical forest.  An bizarre and colorful forest that’s really feels alive. The goal of the game was to make the stages more dynamic and I think the first stage should show a lot of that. I have a pattern of using mostly making forests, and castles as stages.  This game however, will foster some very new environments and I plan to apply the same attention to aesthetics as I had planned for Lithodora.

Because the story has changed, I decided to try some Wiley concept art. Wiley’s character design is one of the reasons I’m having trouble figuring the legs out. The “bell bottom” style just really made him seem like a saggy wolf, so I decided to try something new yet old at the same time. I like how everything looks updated but I still seem to be reverting back to my earlier style at the same time.

On a side note I’ve decided against in-game support inside the level editor. It’s much simpler to reload the level inside the game. I guess I just wanted to hop around things as I was making them. It’s really not worth the time.

I know what I wanted to do this week but seeing as I”m scared to death of doing it I went to something else which I was also rather scared to do but I must say it went quite smoothly. I added support for multi-texturing within my tool, which is becoming pretty impressive might I add. It’s much like the last tool but flows so much quicker. You may be thinking, so, you had that last time ya slouch. This time however, multi-texturing integrates much, much better, which means I’ll likely use it much more. The video I made may have made it seem simple but the core creation was so time consuming it seemed to become a hassle. I ended up barely using it at all.

Everything is in place now, if this game doesn’t look good it’s simply because I was careless, I can finally say my tools work too well for me to blame them anymore.  It doesn’t have to look jaw dropping (or rather frame dropping) but something that looks great without special effects like bump mapping.

This week seemed to be the opposite of last week. I didn’t get much done at all. Whenever I fiddle around with the model it seems I’m doomed to go crazy editing. I can’t seem to get the legs exactly right. You’d think I’d  just scribble something down and say hey that works and be done with it, but I have a series of updating sprites comparing with old designs and replaying old games with new designs over and over just to see how well things fit. Needless to say, it’s time consuming.

The head however has  pretty much remained consistent. I’ve broken the model into several pieces to make tweaking things easier (which oddly reminds me of a old post when I was thinking of problems with 3D). I’ll stick it back together once things are settled but it really doesn’t look all that bad.

Next week I plan to integrate gameplay inside my world editor to improve and speed up level creation. This should give me a better idea of scale, the ability to seamlessly place objects in conjunction of one another, weed out most errors as they appear, and highlight areas which the player will mostly be around so more detail can be applied. In short, better levels overall.

I’ve spent the pass week focusing on my work habits and it’s paid off. I expect the game to progress much much faster from this point without feeling forced.

That said, next week I believe I’ll have the game in a playable form.. There will still be a bunch of addition features to add, but basic platforming should be in place and I’ll have established a sense of pacing. I’m wondering when to start showing video. because I’m likely not to really get into aesthetics until the end phase.

If I can keep up at this speed, I think I can finish in October but there are still a lot of unknown variables to deal with such as music.