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[ChevyRay]

My goodness, Paul.

This is utterly beautiful holey moley. Do you have a full-res version of this I can download? I'd like to have it as my desktop for awhile.

Your world is coming together very nicely, and as has already been said is looking much more coherent and "whole". This screenshot in particular...

It's great to see so many details now coming together. Keep up the good work so far, this is definitely going in the right direction!

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

thanks; the title screen is actually the largest size i have, sorry -- harlock only sent it to me as 640x480. i could ask him for the larger version but he's rarely online / checks email and takes forever to reply to me so it may take a while (if ever)

[Kingel]

Very nice. I think it's really starting to look like a complete ecosystem.

However, the ship and other creatures look like they belong in a top-down view, which looks a bit strange. The reflections have already been mentioned, and I don't think there are any shortcuts to making them look right since the object is viewed from above and the object's reflection is viewed from below.

[G.I.L.]

Holy snap that looks so amazing . Will there be a public demo soon? 

[Xion]

this is looking gorgeous, mang.

The top-down ship, as Arachne pointed out, has been bugging me since the very first shots though.

[moi]

HOOOOOoooooolllly shit mang
This is AAA top quality ma boi 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

the reason for the top down thing is that creatures and the ship rotate, whereas tile objects don't -- it's not feasible with our resources to create 50+ creatures and a ship that are drawn differently in every direction, so just drawing it top down and rotating is the best that can be done there. once the shadow is more prominent on the creatures and ship it'll give them some more depth though. if you look at aquaria, it had a similar issue: it used rotation on sprites which made some (most?) sprites seem 'directly' side-view, whereas other things were more of a perspective angle (although it wasn't as obvious in that game since it was side view rather than top-down so the contrast was less important).

no public demo until it's done (mid-2010 most likely), but there is a playtesting version that you can get access to by pre-ordering it (see its previously mentioned kickstarter page for the paypal address), but it's still very raw right now so i don't recommend that unless you want to play it in a terrible state

[Fuzz]

the playtesting version is totally worth the 15 bucks, don't be so hard on yourself, paul!

wynand's writing is really amazing in this, better than in immortal defense. the graphics are awesome (as seen above), the gameplay is really fun and creative, the soundtrack is brilliant, and it's really polished already.

looking forward to the next playtesting version, from your livejournal it looks like you've fixed most of the issues i had with this one.

[Hempuli‽]

What boggles me slightly is the fact that there're same kinds of background pieces next to each other. Doesn't always look that bad, but sometimes it jumps at my eyes.

[s0]

What boggles me slightly is the fact that there're same kinds of background pieces next to each other. Doesn't always look that bad, but sometimes it jumps at my eyes.

Agreed.

Also, holy shit how could I have overlooked this for so long? Looks gorgeous! 

[ChevyRay]

Actually, Hempuli's point is a good one. This bothers me quite a lot about freely-placed tiles (as opposed to grid-locked ones) in games. Quite often, invisible "lines" become visible in the layouts, and result in an unattractive symmetry when you'd rather have more of a chaotic, natural look (especially in a game like this).



In this shot, the two shorter red lines show where two sets of these trees are identically relative to eachother compared to the opposite pair. The longer line to the right of them isn't so bad, but it's a bit close.

One that really bugs me is the vertical line to the left. Even if these were just one-pixel offset horizontally, it'd look better, but they're lined up exactly, and it doesn't look quite as nice as it could.

The big purple mushrooms are big enough that it doesn't matter, unless there's a huge row of them all relative, it won't produce noticeable lines. The crystals at the bottom are fine too, since they're so busy and chaotic already, it's hard for the eye to make any immediate patterns or lines out of it.

[Zaphos]

Hmm, why are all the plants and rocks ... translucent with respect to background objects but not themselves?  It seems weird to see water-reflections and other details behind each object bleeding through, since otherwise they look solid (especially since there are self occlusions within each sprite!) ...

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

stylistic choice; most things in the game use additive blending because i like the way that looks better; it also blends in with the water colors (which vary) better that way. it comes at a big cost, but i think the effect is worth it. also, objects become less transparent as the player approaches the object, which provides a dream-like effect.

[Zaphos]

Interesting -- I guess since the translucency varies dynamically, it'd be too expensive to do in a consistent way?  It looks kinda weird to me, but might add to the dream-like effect I guess.

[Fuzz]

If you'd like to see the game in action, I have some gameplay videos up, although it's running really slowly (8 fps) and has really bad sound quality in the videos.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SvartaSkepnader#g/c/33A7F89B7C4C0AAF
(the videos are in sequential order, although the numbers aren't visible there, also: beware of spoilers, although there isn't anything significant)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

vid of the level editor & the process i go through when making an area





i'll need to repeat that process literally 800 times before the entire world is made

[supershigi]

Wow Paul, that is a crazy amount of work... I can't wait to play the game.  I actually hadn't seen some of the gameplay footage that Fuzz posted until now.  The artwork is really beautiful.

[Eclipse]

awesome, very nice editor and the environment looks wonderful!

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

thanks-thanks

my plan for the rest of development is to have each month be dedicated to a set of features (for instance, february was map obstacles; march is creature coding) and anything i don't do in that month is saved until either just before release or post-release patches. so if i don't finish something at its designated time, i can't work on it again for a long time, which gives motivation to finish it during that month.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

here's a vid of the intro of the latest version (no gameplay shown, just the intro) if anyone is curious: