[Disasters]

Disasters

Thought I'd stop working on the landscape for a while and make art for the things that destroy it! I've been working on making the disasters look better and more engaging. Since I have been working so much on the landscape, I'm now able to have the disasters occur in the correct biomes.

I've added forest fires which only occur on fully forested areas and I've added hurricanes that strike on the shorelines. In the future, I'll make the hurricanes move around the map each turn and travel towards the country territory via the oceans from the edges of the screen. This will make them more realistic and also create a feeling of an impending problem that the player must deal with.

This is looking good, the style is well done. Looks like you are doing a good job blocking things out and mocking up ideas before getting too deep into anything. Are there going to be any blocker platforms in the game that you must jump on top of in order to not lose the level?

Wow the art on this is amazing! One thing I noticed is on the monkey wrench weapon, maybe there could be some sort of a piece on the clamp showing where the laser beam is going to originate. Right now it feels a bit random that it shows up like that since monkey wrenches don't normally behave that way. Some sort of sci fi piece on the clamp might help illustrate that better.

Looks like some silly riotous fun! I'm curious on the mechanics of getting away with farting on people. I assume different types of people are more reactive and sensitive to it than others?

Looks good! Gives me a sci fi Trine feeling. Are there going to be any puzzles you solve to advance in the game?

Maybe you were already going to do this but it might be a good idea to show what ground tile the cursor is over when it is suspended in the air. Might help with understanding where it is in space better.

This is looking good. It seems to me that you have some inconsistency in the image sizes and therefore their pixel sizes are different. For example, the tiles on your roof have a much smaller pixel size than the lone bricks on the walls. Id suggest trying to unify their sizes to have a cohesive pixel size throughout your sprites.

This is looking really good! I personally like the monochromatic color scheme. I think it can offer a stylistic choice that can make the player feel a certain way while playing. There are tons of games out there with many different types of palettes so I don't think there is a right or wrong way in this regard. It may even make it stand out more.

I was looking at your laser beam disappearing platform gif and thought that maybe it could be communicated better. The character seems to be standing on the outer shell and when the center gets taken away they fall through. I wouldn't have read it that way at first if I were playing so maybe it would be better to make it more obvious that the player is going to fall through once that laser reaches them.

Hey great to see some of the progress done on this game! I remember meeting you in person at The MIX during GDC. I think you were wearing a wizards hat and you talked about how it's important to market your game quite early before it comes out. I've taken that to heart and have been marketing more now so thanks for that!

[Pixel Perfect Buildings and Improved Terrain Art]

Pixel Perfect Buildings and Improved Terrain Art

I noticed the mountains and buildings were looking a bit blurry so I spent some time making them be pixel perfect on the screen without any image blur filtering. Now they are much more crisp and clear. Unfortunately I can't do the same for the rest of the landscape as it is rotated away from the camera little bit so it causes some artifacts when the image filtering is taken off.

I've also fixed the beaches to have omni directional ripples. Before they had ripples going in one direction which was inaccurate as the ocean should push the sand in many different directions.

I fixed the trees on the mountains to match the rest of the forests in the game. The mountains were not standing out as much as they should so I added some snow on top of them to make them pop. In the future, this snow amount will change depending on the season it is in the game.

It seems your demo link is broken. Based on your gifs I think the running and jumping animations are pretty good. I think it would be more interesting if the character animations interacted with the dot more. Maybe they hold on to it with their tail or something to indicate that the character is physically using it.

This looks interesting. It reminds me of the waterloo level in Psychonauts. As a critique Id say that the current map is very busy and contrasted. This makes it hard to focus on any given part. Although I noticed you said youll tie the look together with some post processing so itll be cool to see what it looks like after that.

I love the surrealist style in the game. Are you inspired by the art movement at all or any specific artists?

[Waterfalls and Improved River Generation]

Waterfalls and Improved River Generation

For a while I haven't had any transition for mountains that begin rivers. I've now added waterfalls which solve this issue for me. Mountains now will generate waterfalls if they begin rivers. With this new addition I thought I'd post some gifs to show the landscape off in motion. The first one shows a close up of the waterfalls and second shows the terrain generator in action!

I've also made improvements on how rivers are generated. Instead of wildly swerving around the landscape, they make their way to the nearest ocean coastline. The deserts have also been modified to have more accurate lighting details. The sand dune sprites have been polished as well.

The game is looking great! Ive seen screens from this game around on Twitter and Reddit so you guys are definitely getting the marketing down. It seems like you've had to do a lot of redesigns/reworking of many different aspects of the game. Would you say this sort of thing is a normal part of the development cycle or is there anything you could have done differently to avoid those pitfalls?

I'm so glad to see someone else as infatuated with fractals as I am. They are also a huge inspiration in things I do, especially art. In my game I actually use a fractal I generated as the background plane for the ground in the map. I may use them in more assets as well. I can't wait to see this finished and I'll definitely play it. I've been looking for a game like this for a long time.

This looks really good, the art style is very catching. I see Rayman and some Sonic influence in the art style. Are there any other specific games you are drawing a lot of influence from in your theme?

This looks really good. Is there going to be any hiding mechanics like in Mark of the Ninja? I get that sort of feel when I see the gifs of the character slashing out the lights.

[Swampy Terrain]

Swampy Terrain

Been working on the terrain generator a lot. Added swamp/deltas around the rivers and rocky areas can now blend into the forested areas. Also did some reworking of the terrain generator as I had found a major bug in it.

I really like this idea. Do you have to be good or is there a way to do bad things to people around you too?