Heart [zelda-like]

Hi

Heart is a zelda-like. I began developing it in Quintus for LD28, and now I'm going to give this "TIG Source Devlogs" thing a try. I expect to work on Heart for a month or two, just enough for it to be a fun couple of hours.

ART

The art is hand-drawn by me (and I suck at drawing). Then it is photographed in bad light, shrunk down, and coloured. This is the first time I've made art assets for a game, and it is a technique that I dreamed up in a sweaty caffeine fuelled rage after realizing/remembering that I wasn't going to be able to use the Creative Commons in my Ludum Dare submission. Here is a before/after example:

Line drawing on rough paper in sketch-book, photographed by the light of a lamp at 1am.

Then I scale the image down to 32px, and apply filters (my girlfriend told me about these magical filters: colour curves and hue-saturation).

Here are links to more information (for the curious).

LD28 entry (prototype): http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=22995
Artist's Statement: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/12/17/we-need-to-talk-about-heart/

NEXT STEPS

I implemented zelda-style scrolling on top of Quintus' "scenes" abstraction. My implementation is buggy and terrible, and it is the first thing I'll work on. A smooth zelda-slide is integral to the enjoyment of any zelda-like.

Once that's out of the way, I'll work on a tile-set. I think this game is set in a desert, and I want to have just one all-purpose tile-set that is versatile enough to make a good number of screens. Everything will be done in the style I described above. There will be a heavy reliance on tropes from NES/GB/SNES zelda-games.

I want the movement and fighting in Heart to be closer to that in Dhulfiqar. I'm not 100% settled on what sort of character I want to be the lead, but I have a sense that it will be someone who was cursed to wander the desert for eternity.

z.