zorg, oldblood and margfx - thank you for that. I was just using free fonts to get an idea of the style, but I'll be custom making it for the final image and those suggestions are super helpful! I can see what you mean about being readable. I'll be taking another bash at it in the next couple of weeks so I'll share the next draft then.
In the meantime:
DEVLOG 007
Or "Only 5 weeks left until I want to launch the Kickstarter"
Here are some of the highlights from last week:
New Stuff
We have some exciting stuff, such as this 'Mowl' which is half owl and half mole. She's designed to pop out of the ground but not really to be a big threat, more to help you recharge your magic and reach higher areas or cross gaps that are a bit too far for you to fly over. For example:
We've now also got moving platforms with lovely placeholder art, which I posted on my twitter (I'll not post a gif here as it just slows the whole page down) and some equally amazingly drawn giant spikes/barriers to squash you. These had a collision bug that took me around an hour to fix, as it was an issue with some old code I'd used from the original Ludum Dare version of the game. I keep finding this crappy code and getting pushed back. I really need to take time out to track the rest of the bad code down and get it sorted out, but the focus has to be on getting everything ready for Kickstarter now.
Here's a look at the giant spike:
Ouch.
Kickstarter Progress
The VideoWell, I've not started with this yet other than doing a rough storyboard to show the best bits and have a nice interest curve to it. I have now got an Elgato game capture HD (thank you Mr Credit Card) and it works a treat, so I can now capture 1080p footage of my screen. From next week I will be starting to capture footage so I'm hoping to have a first draft of the trailer by the 29th January.
The Project PageOk, other than the rough project image that I've post earlier, I've made a start on some of the copy for the page and roughed out the layout as a whole. I'm not very confident with my writing so what I'm posting here is the 2 paragraph intro to the game that took me roughly 6 drafts to get to this stage. Be that as it may, I would love your feedback on this if you wouldn't at all mind:
Mable & The Wood is a 2D action platformer set in a fairytale land, where the overuse of magic has started to drain the world of colour. You play the part of a shape-shifting girl who is half human and half faerie and is sworn to protect the wood and the creatures within it.
Armed with a sword that cannot be lifted, you must drop it to fly away in faerie form and re-summon it to destroy anything in its path. Flying uses magic, which drains colour from the world and can only be restored by killing the creatures of the wood that you are sworn to save.
Would you have already clicked away or does that have you at all interested? Wait, are you asleep!? WAKE UP! Sheesh.
Anyway, other than a couple of nights of working on level design and drinking moderately (surprisingly productive), that was my week.
The Week Ahead
Ok so my priorities this week are to get a demo ready to submit to the Leftfield Collection at Rezzed in London. Get a little more polish in there and code in a few of the bits that I want to show off in the demo (even though they're challenges from later levels).
In addition to this I need to get as much recorded as possible so I can make a start on the trailer. I feel like having a trailer and demo is vital if I'm contacting press, which I also want to be doing next week as it'll give them 5 weeks to think about covering the game or not!
The question is, is it better to send a better trailer/demo but send it late or send something not as polished but send it early? I guess we'll find out (and I will let you know what I find out).
Anyway, on that note I had best get back to things. I'll just leave you with my favourite bug of the week:
And the moral of this story is:
If you can't code shaders sober then getting drunk really won't help.
It's a lesson I will live by.