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[Prodigga]

Yeah, the branch chooses a side at random but sometimes the RNG spits out "left" too many times in a row. I guess its a case of "don't make your RNG completely random" lol. Also bongos are an awesome idea.. Now I'm excited about doing a dance animation haha little dudes jumping around doing the rain dance

[Prodigga]

Sorry for the double post! Wanted to sign off for the night with another image, I started work on this little guy!

[retrostark]

Reminds me of GodFinger for iOS. But this looks very original and very fun to play   

[Seiseki]

Lovely artstyle and idea!

[Prodigga]

Haha I just looked up Godfinger, I should really do some market research next time hopefully this'll be different enough! I guess this is as good as a time as any to post a write up of my current 'vision' of this game - I've been doodling on paper and thinking hard all week about this. I've really started to home in on what the game will eventually be, but I am not there yet so the following might be confusing/not make sense/etc. Also, oh god, I am sorry for the terrible hand drawn images haha.

First, lets set the theme. In this game, you are the owner of a lab. You've just invented a miniaturization machine! You begin your next area of research - establish an ecosystem on a miniature earth-like planet and observe its development (and, of course, poke+prod at it to alter the way it matures, ultimately changing the fate of the entire planet (for science!)). Your technology is really advanced, ok?  

Maybe this is what the menu will look like, with all your 'save games'.


This is a not-so-serious game so we'll just skip over the details of the 'science'. To create a planet, you grab an empty container (like those in the picture above), throw in a ball of dirt, and sprinkle it with the seeds of life. Luckily you are really really smart, and you've somehow been able to reproduce the "essence" of various life forms in powder form.



It'll be up to you to pick which of these powders you want to seed your planet with. It'll be just like cooking! For a forest planet, you might want to sprinkle in some grass powder, tree powder, and maybe a pinch of human powder.



 Given the right conditions, the powder will pave the way for life on your tiny planet.




It is 3am here, so I can't write more right now. I know I didn't exactly get into game play but at least I got stuff out of my brain and out onto here. Tomorrow I'll write up a post talking more about game-y things (what do you actually do, etc), along with the problems I am facing.

Goodnight folks!

[Prodigga]

Today I rigged and started animating the Deer.

I've done a "Run" and "Paniced Run" animation. Here is the "Paniced Run" animation for the deer. Again, sorry the gif does not loop. ><



  <- probably what the dood looks like under his mask

[Irock]

The seeding idea's neat. I hope there are LOTS of different seed varieties so we can have really unique planets.

[Prodigga]

Thats what I hope for. But I am yet to come up with all the nitty gritty details - there remains some big questions unanswered too.

I haven't really figured out a system for how the different seeds will influence each other yet. I am trying to picture it like crafting in minecraft. You need certain raw ingredients for a certain item, and even then there could be a different recipe that requires the result of the first recipe as one of its ingredients to create something even cooler.

Another major hurdle is trying to figure out "what you actually do". This is a hard question to answer, because I am tyring to create a game where you can not interact with the creatures on the planet directly (you cant tell them "go make this building" or "Go eat this". They just exit.). This is why it's hard for me to figure out "what you actually do". After the initial seeding process, do you just sort of sit back and watch? Thats a little boring. I think you should seed your planet with what you like at the start, but nurturing your planet differently should result in different results. For example, maybe instead of having very specific seeds (like "Apple Tree"), maybe I can have general categories (ie: "Trees", "Shrubs", etc) and depending on the conditions on the planet, the results will vary, so its up to you to discover all the possibilities. For example, you create a planet and seed it with "trees". You make it rain a little and you provide good sunshine - you eventually get "normal" trees. If you provided very little rain and lots of sun, you get cacti. This way the "discovery" part of the game is longer, and I can extend the gameplay past the initial "seed selection" part.

Now I just need to come up with "nurturing" mechanics besides the obvious "rain"/"sun". Hmmm.

What do you guys think, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how this could be made fun? I am going to gather my ideas and make another post eventually.

edit: almost forgot, these are the animations for the deer. I am mostly happy with them all. Walk is a little funny, sort of looks too much like its strutting. Ah well, maybe I will do another pass eventually.


Idle

Idle (Fiddle)

Walk

Run (Paniced)

nom nom nom

[Sebioff]

Very charming art and animations, I'll watch this!
Your gameplay idea reminds me a bit of the GROW series, where you try out different combinations of stuff to get different outcomes...I think if you have enough content, just experimenting with it and watching what happens/the interactions between different elements will be a lot of fun in itself

[knifeySpoonie]

heh, lovely colours and style dude, really like the feeling of this.

[poe]

Such a beautiful game!

[Prodigga]

Thanks for your comments y'all.

@Sebioff
I sort of want the player to have something to do while he watches. I feel it adds another level of complexity to the game which I feel would be nice to have in a "discovery" game. You could still have the fun of discovering new things by mixing and matching seeds, but once the novelty of that wares off you have something new to try by interacting with the planet!

[retrostark]

Really don't worry about the GodFinger thing, this is looking very unique I just wanted you to be aware of it so that you could steer away from it being similar enough that they would file a lawsuit or something of the sort that would hurt you 

[SafetySnail]

This is looking super great! Excited to see where this goes and hoping you can pull off a true science experiment feel, definitely seems like a cool concept.

There's only one thing that bugs me here and it's this animation:

Walk

Love the style, but it looks really awkward for this animal to walk same arm as leg. Other than that everything is looking great. I love the human animations, lots of character.
Keeping an eye on this one.

[Prodigga]

@retrostark
Thats ok man! I am happy you pointed it out. It made me rethink a lot of stuff and I am happier with the direction it is going now. This is exactly the sort of thing I wanted from this community so thanks !

@SafetySnail
I agree with you, I was "ok" with how it turned out but I am actually going to rework it now. I will look up some 'stock footage' of deers walking. I need to find a better 'walk cycle' diagram for quadrupeds. Edit: I see what you mean now with the leg+arm moving on the same side. Oops.

[eigenbom]

Great animation and style. I love masks.

[Prodigga]

Man after it was pointed out that the deers legs+arms were being used in the wrong order, I couldn't stop giggling at it. Here is it with the legs+arms alternating properly



Also, thanks @eigenbom!

[lucasblucas]

Looks interesting! I love that you've got some of the game's character already built. Looking forward to hearing more about the mechanics.

[Rebusmind]

Really like the art style. Can't wait to hear/see more.

[Pixelmixer]

Yeah, I agree with @rebusmind. The art style is coming together very nicely. You might check out the game Reus, which is also a somewhat similar 2D planet builder game.