This week i've been busy on presentation - music, lighting, sound and graphics!
Behold the new fangled look!
Notice the redone lighting effects, I wanted the outline of the shelter to be far more clear and sharp, without distracting flickering when survivors are wandering around.
I also added a slightly "gamey", but very clear, effect when rooms are inactive (notice the big red room). I think this is WAY clearer than the last look.
Next - I refreshed the survivor sprites. First I had a little chubby guy with wide blinking eyes, he was super easy to animate (yay!) but he's just too cute.
Next I went to a thinner, more pixel-art style of character. This guy actually looked great in screenshots. But this kind of pixel-by-pixel animation is far to labor intensive for my one-man-band operation.
So... following some helpful advice from the tigsource forums I took the FIRST cutesy-looking guy and:
- Made him thinner
- Desaturated the color pallet
- Removed the eyes
- Made him bald(!)
... now i'm not saying bald == evil. But there is no doubt he's looking alot more sinister and grown up! :)
What do you guys think?
I also FINALLY added an autosave feature. This has 2 advantages this early in development
- when testing, I can re-load shelters, rather than having to build another shelter from scratch each time. yay!
- When you are testi.. I mean PLAYING ;) then you can build bigger more complicated shelters and hopefully expose more lovely bugs for me to squash. :)
Lastly I've been working closely with PIXEL NOISE, a 3 man outfit based in the states. They've been excellent and really seem to "get" the vibe i'm going for.
Hear the latest title track below. MP3 Link
I really want to get a proper alpha trailer or even just a bit of game play up for you guys to see in the coming weeks.
All the best!
R.
I do like the model, but I'm not sure about the no face thing, I'm not sure if you're tryin to give a personality to each one of them, so the player can relate to them and care about them, or if they are just expendable henchmen.
Any way, I supose it's just a temporary thing. I'm just to eager to play this :P
Good job man!
Thanks for the comments Xylker.
I'm expecting your people to die regularly and in numbers :)
In fact, people dying is like a "canary" for problems with your shelter - so for these reasons I dont want people getting too attached to individuals.
The aim is to grow your society rather than care particularly for one or two survivors.. although that being said I expect to add personal details as hover-overs to survivors just for a bit of flavor.
Thanks for the reply!