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[Dacke]

Homecoming

Homecoming is a game me and pen are making. It will be a platformer with the running and the jumping and with lots of tiny flying skulls.

I'm writing the platformer-engine from scratch in C++ and OpenGL just for this competition. It's probably a silly thing to do, but I'm loving the experience.

pen is drawing lots of incredible things and will be doing all of the graphics. He is also the master of design and will bring you levels, monsters and stories of untold horror and general scariness.

[pen]

Conceptart dump-post!







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Possible sprite, though it will be half as big:


Early mockup (original size 2400*3200px), main character is just a placeholder.

[Renton]

Whoa. These are awesome!

[pen]

Added an ordinary tree 

Whoa. These are awesome!

Thank you! I have absolutely NO idea how to turn these into graphics in my first game project ever a game! 

[Gainsworthy]

The designs are rather disturbing. I like the cut of your collective jib, so I'll keep an eye out for you.

But, which CPB entry is this based on, exactly? Just outta interest.

[Dacke]

The designs are rather disturbing. I like the cut of your collective jib, so I'll keep an eye out for you.

But, which CPB entry is this based on, exactly? Just outta interest.

And we love you too Gainsworthy

I guess posting concept art without backing it up with ingame stuff can seem a bit empty. Both the engine and graphics are work in progress, though. We will probably be using bigger and more detailed sprites for the final game, to better capture pen's amazing designs and details. But here is a screenshot of the current version:

The running and the jumping and the wildly flailing legs!

We are indeed working with a specific CPB entry, but which one is currently a terrible secret. (A Terrible Secret of Space, anyone?)

[george]

wow, that is seriously hot stuff.

[Chris Whitman]

You should definitely move to larger sprites and a more painted look. Otherwise I'm afraid you might end up losing a lot of the more expressive and dynamic qualities of the concept art.

[pen]

@george: thankies!

You should definitely move to larger sprites and a more painted look. Otherwise I'm afraid you might end up losing a lot of the more expressive and dynamic qualities of the concept art.

Yeah, I intend to do it 4x the size it'll be ingame (which, with a 600*800 window leads to psd-files with extraordinary huge dimensions!), and the final character will be 128*128, or somewhat smaller if it feels too big.

superb reply btw!

[Synnah]

God, that concept art is so good! I love how the first creature appears to have materialised out of a series of random brush strokes.

[agj]

Oh shit, pen, that art is awesome.

I'm writing the platformer-engine from scratch in C++ and OpenGL just for this competition.

Wow, do you think you can make it? I hope you do, this looks fantastic so far. Good luck, guys.

[Tanner]

Oh shit, art! Pen, that is awesome.

[Melly]

Those look like Silent Hill concepts. And that's why I love them.

[pen]

Updated the conceptart post. It takes time to add detail to such big images (since we're too cool for crazy enough to work without tilesets). I'm already having nightmares from having to do castle interiors 

[Melly]

Man that looks creepy-awesome.

[mirosurabu]

I'll second Melly. I wish I could draw like that.

Keep up the good work.

[pen]

Man that looks creepy-awesome.

Thanks!
Now there's just some 100.000*100.000 pixels left to design and paint, without tilesets... Then All I need to do is make the monsters, main character and item effects... I'm as big a loon as Dacke I tells ya!

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@mirosurabu: Keep at it, draw in your spare time and in time you'll surprise yourself with what you can do!

[medieval]

That tree-man looks awesomely disturbing.

[Rory]

I the first one! That tree is pretty creepy as well.
I really like the art style you guys are employing, very... Okami-like springs to mind, but I'm not sure if that's what I really mean. It's awesome.

[Dacke]

Thanks everyone!

Time for a small update on the engine:

Most of my time has been spent on battling the horrible language known as C++ and exploring the strange secrets of OpenGL.

But I have gotten lots of programming done and designed some really sweet algorithms. I'm pretty confident that moving objects can't end up inside walls! Even when moving super fast!

The loading of the tiles for the levels (directly from image files) is also working like a charm. It's like jumping around in the image.

But now I need some advice:

We use huge textures for the level graphics. Currently I'm keeping all used textures in the primary memory from the start of the game. This solution will require lots and lots of RAM. I could, of cource, load the textures as they are needed. To avoid loading times I would have to multithread in C++ and simply put: I don't wanna!

What I would like to know is:
How much RAM may our game use when running on your computer?