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[laxwolf]

@Ashkin - Hello, Ashkin. Thank you very much.
@laxwolf - I haven't on this game, but I have done a vignette filter before (a black noise plane in front of the camera rotating about). What do you mean by them 'matching up'? The tiles are the same size as the player's sprite (16x16), if that's what you mean. It might look weird because the building's closer to the camera and it's 3D.

Must be it. And no need for filters, you could simply make a vignette texture and scale it over the camera.

[SolarLune]

@laxwolf - Yeah, a texture would be fine.

Okay, so here's another devlog video.

EDIT: That gray lump of metal is supposed to be a car... Is it unreadable?  

DOUBLE-EDIT: Didn't post a picture of the park. The trees are far better than the way they used to look, but they could be better.

[Mef]

This is absolutely a huge improvement!

Love the trees, overall palette and grass toned down to minimum texture!
All You need in here is some kind of transition tiles between grass (yellow) and dirt (brown).

[SolarLune]

Thanks, Mef. I'll add those transition tiles right now. I'll have to see about how they should transition...

[Pemanent]

Man this is cool.
I do like the trees also.

I think the footstep sounds are better but it seems that sometimes when you move the sound doesn't play. ? Maybe its just me. That confuses me and makes me think the sound is coming from somewhere else and not the player. Seriously though this is very nit picky stuff especially for so early on in development.

I really like your videos and hope you continue to make then. They seem very real and original. If that makes sense.

About the car, I think you should try the car as a 3D model. I'm not sure if that would be better or not. But honestly I didn't even know that was a car until you said it was.

Also, the targeting... I think the type of targeting you use will depend on the type of game you want. To me, and this is 100% personal bias, the directional shooting makes sense in games where the shooting is the gameplay. Such as Binding of Isaac, that game just wouldn't make sense with a targeting system. Where if your game will be more adventure like, or metroid-like such as you said in your first devlog, then a targeting system would make the most sense. But honestly please take that worth a grain of salt. I'm actually curious to see what other people think.

Anyways, nice progress this looks really fun!

[J. R. Hill]

The gray model in the fires on the first pages looks like a smashed car...

The gray things on this page look like rocks or tombstones

[SolarLune]

@Pemanent - Thanks. The thing about the footsteps is that when the player walks right, his animation's twice as long as when he's walking downwards or upwards - I drew extra frames. :S Soo, I need to fix that up somehow, maybe drawing the other foot moving for his horizontal movement so that the sound can play similarly for all animations, or something. Thank you, I hope I will keep up the devlog. Yeah, maybe the car should be 3D... I'll have to think about this.

@J.R. Hill - Heh, it's funny how everyone sees the same thing differently. The gray things in the picture at the top of this page are robot soldiers! They animate and explode and everything. Are you sure that they look like tombstones?

But, if you see that it's supposed to be a smashed car, then I've done something right.

Anyway, here's another update - I made transitions between dirt and cement (and cement and grass) and fixed up the barriers to be 2D. Better? Worse? I'm trying to get a definite feel for this game in terms of graphical quality and style, but I also don't want it to look bad or incoherent. Also, the top barrier's skewing. I'm not sure how, but I should prolly fix that...

[Dr.Electro]

i really like it and its pretty cool that you create it with the bge!

some things i want to point out:
- try to keep the same texel-density for sprites and 3d objects.. you have improved on that but it can be optimized even more
- set the camera to orthographic .. or tweak the focal length.. so you dont have the problem that textures gets noisy in distance.. this would also give you a oldschool isometric look
- i am not so familiar with the bge itself and dont know if it possible: what about render at half size and blew the resolution up?

very cool work so far!

[Franklins Ghost]

Games coming along nicely, nice work 

Really like the character design and also just wanted to say definitely think the new barriers look alot better and work really well with the overall look of the game.

[SolarLune]

@Dr. Electro - Thanks.  

1. I believe the pixel density in the tiles and sprites are exactly the same. The player's 16x16, each tile is 16x16, and a 32x16 barrier is two player-widths wide.

2. That would give me the oldschool look - but if I wanted a 2D game, I'd use a 2D engine. The point of the game is to be GBC in 3D. Then again, what does everyone else think? Should I focus on making it 2D, or should I keep the 3D look?

3. Right now, it's just running in Blender, so there's not really any resolution, it's just the size of the screen itself. When I export it to a run-time, I'll see about the resolution. Right now it's set to 640x576, because the GBC had a resolution of 160x144, or something like that. I'll test out a runtime right now...

[SolarLune]

GUI works and everything. It was painless, but only because I had worked with this issue before. In order to run the game without mipmapping, you have to use a command line argument. Since I would rather not have to distribute batch files, I made a game scene that checks to see if the game was run without mipmapping enabled. If not, it starts the game again with mipmapping disabled (command line argument) and closes the current game. The result is that the game comes up for a second or two, closes, and starts again. The second time, mipmapping is disabled, so the game continues to the first in-game scene. It's not painless, but it works. For some reason, it only works with SingleTexture mode (the simple graphical mode I'm working with) or GLSL mode (the most advanced graphical mode; shaders, per-pixel lighting, normal maps, shadows, etc). The console is present, too, but I think I can disable that with a command line argument, as well.

[Dr.Electro]

2. That would give me the oldschool look - but if I wanted a 2D game, I'd use a 2D engine. The point of the game is to be GBC in 3D.

i think you know that an orthographic camera doesnt make a 3d game 2d. you dont give up anything but "proper" perspective which in your case results in messy textures.. so why not give it a try? 

[SolarLune]

I'm not sure where you see messy textures. They all seem crisp to me.

Yeah, an orthographic camera won't make a 3D game 2D, but it won't quite look correct because the textures on the ground aren't drawn straight on, and so will draw 'half-sized' (i.e. those pixels are half-height, while other pixels are correctly-sized). In addition, any platforming will be a little more difficult, particularly if I plan multi-level areas, as the upper levels will always draw over the lower levels (i.e. the camera can't pass under them). I'll give it a try, though. 

Here's a quickie comparison. Anyone have any thoughts?

[Dr.Electro]

but it won't quite look correct because the textures on the ground aren't drawn straight on, and so will draw 'half-sized'

thats true.. but it works pretty good for isometric views. check out this example: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=840354&postcount=1181

anyways.. judging from you comparison i would say keep it real 3d. 

[J. R. Hill]

@J.R. Hill - Heh, it's funny how everyone sees the same thing differently. The gray things in the picture at the top of this page are robot soldiers! They animate and explode and everything. Are you sure that they look like tombstones?

I'm sure it's a lot more clear in motion, all in all I'm liking the vibe of this game.