news

Apologies for the lack of posting lately to those who are still visiting. I've started a new project! It is a minimalistic platformer in XNA. Here are some mockups:



It is very Knytt Stories-inspired. I'm aiming for online co-op for two players with somewhat experimental gameplay (more details on that once it is better defined).

The physics based platformer game project is now on hold. It was a difficult project to work on and I want to do something that has a better chance of being completed. I still want to make that game, so I will likely pick it up again later.

Posting will probably be light until the end of the semester. These are my goals for the next few months:

• work out the design of the XNA platformer and get some serious coding done
  
• post some the school work that I did last semester
  
• update the flash game I made for school last semester and make it public
  
• finally make an update to Polyworks

more concept art

I'm thinking about going with a more abstract style than the textured/painted look I was originally planning. The graphics would be much easier to make - I could possibly even do all the artwork for an entire game by myself.





The sprites look to be a little too detailed for the environment. Flat colours might be more suitable there instead of the shading.

level concepts updated

I made my level concepts more prettyful:





The graphics in my game might look something like this.

lighting

Originally I was going to use 3D polygons and DirectX lights, but I changed my mind because 1) working in real 3D, even in a limited way, is a pain, and 2) it's hard to predict the effects of a light on 3D geometry. Instead I'm going to implement a two dimensional method that includes shadows. I used one of VirtualTT's maps to do some testing in Photoshop.

unlit:


red, green, and blue lights overlapping, night:


shadows and light-blocking polygons, sunset:

soldier

Another bit of concept art.

concept art

Two attempts at creating the effect of depth:



(foreground drawn by Michal, backgrounds by me)

The background will be rendered in full 3D, so it will have an automatic parallax scrolling effect. The foreground layer can also be 3D but it will be rendered with orthogonal projection so it will appear flat. This is because entities like monsters and characters are flat and would look odd rendered on 3D terrain.