That seemed to be quicker than usual. I can finally see the Spelunky talk I missed!

Saw the game on indiegames blog, congrats!

Heh, I was mainly interested in seeing if others agreed with that assessment.

i played this for about a month so i know everything that was there, it still turns into a snooze after because each weapon only has that one attack type and a "charged" attack
it just

feels really lacking

There is definitely a deficiency in the core combat mechanics. While the amount of equipment you can buy/find/craft is pretty expansive, the actual moment-to-moment combat rarely evolves past what you learn in the very beginning of the game. The environments and situations change, but the core mechanics don't. So in the end it seems like it is basically an equipment grind.

If someone has gotten pretty far into the game, let us know if this formula changes at all!

I didn't mean to sound like I was saying the procedural generation itself was something special. I just think they use it very well as a retention device. I am happy to log in once a day because I know the terrain will be different each time. If it wasn't, I would have memorized enough of the islands to be getting bored by now.

I'm in as Technobabel. Having fun so far, but I can see it getting repetitive after a while. Hopefully there's enough depth to the mechanics to keep it evolving.

Okay, as promised, here is an update to the visuals of battle mode. No characters are in yet since they aren't animated, but hopefully they will start getting rigged within the next few days.

Before:




After:

What about Team Meat?

SMB is no longer coming to the Wii

Thanks for the kind words Dongle! I wish I would have had the music in, the stuff Sam English has been doing for the game is pretty awesome.

I haven't posted in a while, but progress is still being made. I'll post some new arts this weekend. The puzzle battle mode in particular has improved tremendously since the image in the first page of the thread.

I posted in this thread!

If you want to help on some unpaid stuff in the future, I could use help implementing a couple systems for The Zodiac Gate, assuming my programmer hasn't gotten to them by that point.

Good luck finding some paid work though!

I've never worked at EA, but I've worked at three studios of various sizes and each one has been a very different experience. The 'small independent' one was by far the worst of them. Worked constant overtime, never got paid on time, and took repeated pay cuts. I had a lot of say on the direction of the game, but the entire company lived paycheck to paycheck and it was extremely stressful. You really start to miss good management when you don't have it.

Current studio is pretty large, and has been the most stable and rewarding. The iPhone/smartphone space may not be as impressive as AAA, but I get to design whole games regularly, instead of working on tiny sections of one game for years.

Overall the experience is what you make it. Decide if you value stability or creative ownership more, then choose accordingly.

I think the breasts in the armorless model are over emphasized or something. Her shirt looks like it's form fitted to her body, like spandex more than the knitted fabric the texture implies. Can I suggest something like this?:

The idea being to make it look like the fabric slopes down gradually under her chest, and stretches over the separation between her breasts. This is a 2 minute, mouse-drawn paintover so it's a little rough, to put it mildly, but I think it illustrates what I'm trying to say well enough. Come to think of it, my edit still looks too form fitted. The shadow under her chest should probably be closer to a straight line (where as right now it sort of curves up too much between the breasts).

Listen to this man. Cloth and drapery can be pretty tough, I have a hard time with it myself. Reference is key!

<=== Just added Just Cause 2 to his queue.

Lovely! There isn't quite enough feedback that kicking down is the way out, but everything else i figured out on my own.

I had the same issue. There is an effect that plays when you kick down, but it was pretty ambiguous as to what its meaning was. I haven't played the updated version yet though.

Once I realized that figuring out how to play the game was the game, I started enjoying it more.

Is this the tech that Scrabble Flash uses? The limitation in size/shape/number/connectivity seems like it would make for some fun design challenges.

If I remember right, after you get a bunch of orbs you have to go into the big skull machine's mouth to 'short circuit' the thing.

Took me a while to find out how to get past it too.

Thanks for the fun Jam everyone! Who was the guy that brought the VR rig? I'm terrible at remembering names.

I'm fascinated by the idea that there are adults who can suspend their inhibitions and play the way kids do. 

This is pretty much how I feel. I can manage to let go of my inhibitions enough in a closed setting like a game of D&D, but LARPing is like a whole different level.

I would have liked to find out more about how the plot guy goes about creating campaigns, encounters and whatnot. It must be a great feeling to interact with your players so directly! 

It was certainly entertaining! I went through a (short) phase as a teenager where I was interested in trying LARPing, but I lived super far away from any groups so it wasn't an option. It's interesting to see it in action.

I was kind of wierded out by the two roommates though. The fact that neither of them seemed to have any desire to finish high school, and no goals or plans for the future is kind of depressing. Maybe as artists/game developers we are super driven people, but imagining people living like that kind of bummed me out. Even though dude was playing FF Tactics!

I enjoyed seeing the (relatively) more normal people having fun with it though.