April 6th, 2012
A little bit late for my weekly news update, and there's been plenty going on this past week...but I'll try to keep things somewhat brief. This past week's work hasn't been extremely focused upon a particular area. A good deal of time has been devoted to things other than gameplay or artwork. For example I've been experimenting in Flash and Blender, in the earliest possible stages of planning intros, cut scenes, etc. for the game.
As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I've created a very (very) broad list of areas that require attention. While it is daunting, I believe it provides an excellent framework to focus my efforts over the next few weeks. Anyways, here's what I've been up to:
- Grenades! Starting testing out animations and gameplay mechanics. Hoping to make them a fun and tactical addition...Imagine tossing a grenade over a wall the primary weapon is unable to penetrate, etc.
- Exploding Barrels! General sprite and animations complete, for now they spawn "fire" in random positions around themselves.
- An often overlooked aspect of any game, I dedicated some time this week in order to begin conceptualizing a great tutorial for Godric! Trying to reduce text and increase interactivity!
- Playing around with the idea of achievements...But with the goal of having Godric! feel like a single, fluid cohesive experience/tiny narrative, I'm not sure that being interrupted by achievement notifications is the way to go.
- Spent some time improving the look of almost all "item" sprites/animations, as well as some lighting effects, and dramatically improved the "destroyed wooden crate" effect.
ALSO. Downloaded Fallout from GOG, as I'm sure many of you know it's free for 48 hours, really looking forward to playing in my spare time. Also just purchased Dead Space 2 on sale from GameFly, never played the original, but at such a low price I couldn't resist.
That's all for this week, looking forward to Screenshot Saturday...hopefully I'll be able to get some shots of the improved items, and maybe even a Video Update ready in time. As usual, for more info and updates check out the blog and twitter!
