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[DamienDe]

Damn it...damn it...damn it...I am just not happy with how the game is turning out. I think I will change the viewpoint from the Zelda 64 like view to a more pushed back perspective like in typical isometric games (think Diablo).
The battle system just is not really fun with the Zelda view and I have all kinds of problems with multiple enemies because of the "not-so-realtime" system.
Right now, the player pauses the games to get a mouse cursor to issue commands and click on enemies and I just hate it...it is no fun.
With a view farther away from the character I can use point and click walking instead of WASD and it is okay not to be able to rotate the view all the time, as you see more of the world. The result is, that I always have a mouse cursor to do stuff.

And well...I always liked the more isometric viewpoint better in RPGs anyway . When I can implement it and it works I am free to add party gameplay in future games.

There are some technical problems, because the engine essentially is just on big pile of polygons. For the isometric view, I will throw out the camera which collides with geometry and zooms in on the player character in narrow spots. So now I have to find other ways to deal with obstructing geometry.
Think of going inside a house. Outside you can see everything fine, but when you enter the house the roof should disappear, which is kinda hard to do with a polygon soup.

Well, I have some ideas and first tests seem to proof, that I can do it...so back to work.

[DamienDe]

Why does it not work out that smoothly all the time. Some shader changes, here a collision check more, there some value tweaking and I am happy how it works and the best thing is, everything can now be controlled by the mouse ... saves me from coding a keymapping menu

[DamienDe]

Okay, I am canceling the game. I just could not do it in the time frame. All I got are some sprites standing around and you could talk to them or kill them by clicking on them.

The project was just to big and ambitious for me to do in one month, with all the stuff going on in life. 5 years ago, when I was still at the university and did not have a child I could do small games in one night easily, but now...well I have to get up, when my kid needs me and not, when I got enough sleep.
I hope you guys do not take this as lame excuses, I really did work on the project every night and even if the game does not make the competition, I got so much work done on my "engine", so the next try at a game might be much more successful.

So, now I am thinking about releasing some sort of walk around demo. Does this make any sense ? And what if I finish the game later, should I just keep posting in this thread or should I put it elsewhere on the board.

Again, I am very sorry and I wish all contestants all the luck in the world

[miconazole]

I totally understand, I recently dropped out of a 3-month-long art challenge because it was taking up too much of every day. I graduated from college last year and it would have been a good summer break project but now I just got too much stuff to do, and I don't even have a kid or a real job. Plus I wanted to work on this game.

You should release a demo just to make a record of what you've achieved. And if you still think your project is worthwhile, you should finish it! I'm going to keep working on my game after the compo too...

[DamienDe]

I need some feedback, how I should proceed with my indie game career
I could not make the compo, but I want to go on and someday release a real game to the public.
Some days ago I started a blog, because I think it will keep me working on games, so I have something to post there.
The address is http://poisonstudio.wordpress.com/.
Please tell me, if you think, that this is a shameless plug, I will remove this link asap.
But I don´t try to gather viewers, just tell me if a blog helped you focus on your work.

Right now I am designing a little bit on a game, which shares the engine and some ideas wit dying noises. I really liked the whole up in the air stuff. If I can work out some issues, the new game might be about flying around in a world like the on of my failed attempt here.