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[Panurge]

With my totalitarian hat on (it's real shiny!), I would recommend shooting any runners because it discourages others who may be considering doing the same. Also, they may be suicide bombers. Also, live target practice.

With my enthusiast hat on (bells!), this game just looks better and better all the time. Also, this devlog is like a masterclass in how to keep up momentum. Regular updates, regular new content - can't wait to play the finished article.

[Lynx]

If your player is supposed to shoot them down before they get to the guard, the caution tape on the right side should be where the guards shoot the runner down, I think.  Otherwise, maybe move the caution tape to the point where the guards will definitely shoot the runner down if you don't do something before then?

But this is looking awesome.

[dukope]

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things...
...like friendly border guards.



Spriting Workflow
I've spent some time animating sprites now and thought to post the workflow I ended up with. The basic pipeline is to create/edit/animate the sprite frames and save/export them as individual numbered pngs. Then comes TexturePacker to put all the frames in one sprite sheet which the game uses. I tried lots of different sprite animation programs. Everything was recommended by somebody but since I'm on a mac, I couldn't try Graphics Gale, which many say is the best.

Pixen
Pixen is a native Mac app with all the bullet-pointed features. I animated the basic traveler idle, walk, and run anims in Pixen a few months ago. When I went back a few days ago to do the rest of the animations I quickly got frustrated. Biggest problem is the export process which requires too many clicks to save out the individual pngs. Although I remember Pixen having onion skinning, I couldn't find the toggle again and gave up before spending much effort on it.

ASEPRITE
This app is clunky as hell, especially on OSX. But after learning some shortcuts it got much easier and I made good progress in spite of the completely wonky mouse movement. The load/save process is really smooth and I created the traveler climb and guard walk+idle animations fairly quickly. The onion skinning is nice. Unfortunately, I started running into problems with the explosion. My initial test came out terrible; mostly due to the limited tools available.

Photoshop
Realizing I'd need something cushier for the explosion pixeling, I moved over to Photoshop. Best to make the drawing easier and deal with whatever painful export process there was afterwards. Photoshop's animation system is pretty nice and I felt completely at home with the tools and layers here. PS Extended has onion skinning but I ended up doing ok without it. For exporting, there's a built-in "Export Layers" script but it's absolute shit.  Instead, I ended up saving for web to an animated gif, then extracting the frames using ImageMagick.

ImageMagick
ImageMagick is a set of command-line tools for editing images. The main tool is called "convert" and lets you do all kinds of cool stuff. I've been using ImageMagick more and more recently and it's really come in handy on this project. For example, to take an animated gif, replace the background color with transparency, and export the frames as 32-bit png:

Code:

convert -coalesce 'Boom.gif' -define png:format=png32 -channel rgba -fill none -draw "color 0,0 replace" border/Boom-%02d.png

Easy and fast.

Now that I've got the Photoshop workflow down, I'll probably stick with that for everything. In total, I spent around 6 hours yesterday on the explosion. I don't ever want to hand-pixel an explosion again. In-game, it's gone before you even notice it so I'm leaving it here for rubberneckage:

[Quarry]

WOW, that's amazing

He moves a little bit too slowly to be shot by trained guards tho

[dukope]

WOW, that's amazing. He moves a little bit too slowly to be shot by trained guards tho

Thanks Quarry. I'll have them start shooting a little later so they don't look completely incompetent.

[corpocracy]

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things...
...like friendly border guards.

Wow. It's crazy how terrifyingly graphic a pixel art animation can be. Really cool stuff.

What do you imagine happens when a bomber (suicide or otherwise) succeeds?

Also, do you think another playable build is on the horizon? I'm itching to be able to have access to all this cool new stuff...

[Quarry]

WOW, that's amazing. He moves a little bit too slowly to be shot by trained guards tho

Thanks Quarry. I'll have them start shooting a little later so they don't look completely incompetent.

Do they have the chance to stop the intruders (with bombs or solo)

[dukope]

Do they have the chance to stop the intruders (with bombs or solo)

Yeah they may or may not get the runner before he throws a grenade. For suicide bombers that you personally let through the checkpoint, there's no chance to react.

Search Photos
Working on the implementation for these. Front is fully NSFW but the back is softcore:

Next step is to place the contraband.

[Core Xii]

This might be subtle, but... would it be better if the stamps were in reverse order? Deny on the left side, where the other country is; accept on the right side, where Aristotzka is.

[Panurge]

This game is going to be so good at exploiting the emotions of the player... The decision to order a humiliating strip search on an old grandfather etc. Oh, and please have it so players who regularly strip search attractive females with little evidence will be placed under investigation!

[Quarry]

What can players find in search photos

[ClayB]

The way you have all these systems interlocking is very cool. I actually think this game will make me feel the weight of my actions more than most games out there.

[JigxorAndy]

This is just awesome. I love how you interact with all of the documents. Just great!

[dukope]

Thanks all!

This might be subtle, but... would it be better if the stamps were in reverse order? Deny on the left side, where the other country is; accept on the right side, where Aristotzka is.

That's... a great idea. Will do.

Oh, and please have it so players who regularly strip search attractive females with little evidence will be placed under investigation!

I have something planned for the photos, but that isn't it

What can players find in search photos

Probably weapons and illegal contraband taped suspiciously to their body.

[hube]

Just played the alpha. It crashed on the "end of day" screen once after the first level. Also I had the music on that screen cut out 2 seconds in at one point. Other than that awesome stuff. Plays great, looks great and its a refreshing gameplay style. I also like that you don't specify what mistake a player made they'll never know but it keeps them on their toes for the next ones. I double triple check after making a mistake

The atmosphere is heavy and daunting. Captures the eastern block perfectly. .