cardboardmoon

I'm visualizing the game larger and larger as each day goes by. When I first started, I thought I would go the bare bones route and focus entirely on learning the code for mechanics, expecting to use placeholder art. That plan was soon abandoned, for two reasons: one, I was getting frustrated with the minuscule progress I was making with code and wanted to break away from it for a while. Two, I'm a visual and audio artist first. I couldn't last long with the single color square that slides in different directions. Nothing I was doing felt right or even felt good. I was getting worried, because like many other projects I've tried to tackle in the past, I was close to giving up.

I fixed this uncertain and uncomfortable feeling by adding variation to my developing "routine". It's in quotes because I doubt I ever hit the same order of operations twice. When I open my project, the first thing I do is run the executable. Refresh myself with what was bugging me last time I put it away. If that thing just still irks me, or if researching a possible solution sounds like a huge headache, I go straight to the sprites. Your sprites can always improve. If you are not using a technique called dithering in all of your pixel sprites, read up and make those babies juicy: En.wikipedia.org

If you are stuck on a code problem or lacking inspiration for your art or mechanics, my best suggestion is to think back to your kid years, between 6-13. If you're my age, that's about the mid-90s to the early 00's, which means I'm thinking about the Gameboys, the SNES and the N64. Pioneers. Basically the Columbus, Washington and Magellan of gaming. I digress - I think back to those consoles. and the games I played the most on them, and why I loved those specific ones so much. Usually I'll replay a game or two (for less than ten minutes, this is important) and try to note:

- the things that catch my eye the most and why

- the behavior of enemies/moving objects

- how clearly the goal of the game is represented regardless of my prior knowledge

- what makes the art look believable

When I say believable, I'm talking about implied detail or implied lines. The phrase refers to a technique present in most commercial pixel art and animated sprites. The idea involves "tricking" the mind into "seeing" more detail on, a character, for example. Here's a link to a very in-depth tutorial/essay on pixel art and making it look beautiful (don't shake your head cause it's from 2007... amazing tips here!): Yarrninja.com

Anyway. I was talking about the great expanse that I want this game to be. No, not open world. I'm not sure if there will be a completely linear world/level direction, or if you will need to backtrack to complete certain parts properly. I'm a huge Metroid fan, but also know the story to the game (at least, for now) seems very linear and I'm unsure about it's adaptability to a Metroidvania aspect. We'll see. For now, I'm still just getting a lot of the second-tier mechanics in. Thanks for reading.