Still working! Creeping my way through 2016, but getting some good progress on the art in particular. Here are a couple (still unfinished) shots of what I’m up to lately.
Characters! Also, Paul learned how to get sassy
Colors! Not very exciting, but finally worked out the game’s color palette.
One of my biggest challenges, for both Halfway House and my future projects, is working out how best to display dialog. GUI is always a beast, and for a text-heavy adventure game, this is the most important GUI of all. You want it to be legible and expressive, but not to cover too much of the screen. Particularly if you want to have portraits along with the sprites of the characters. There are a million different ways to do this, but I’m slowly working out the one I like the best. (This post is super image heavy with examples from other games.)
Hella Basic – NOTE – everything is roughhhh draft
Well, after some deliberation, my ‘faster’ project wasn’t turning out so fast after all. So I’m back to work on Halfway House! I’ll have more updates soon, but here is a bit of promotional artwork I’ve been working on. Below the cut is a detail picture…
Sorry it’s been a million years since I updated. I am still working on this project, have no fear! (If you were fearing…) I’m working on a hopefully shorter game project for the moment, hoping to have it finished this year and back to work on Halfway House!
The new project is called ‘Lamp Black.’ Here are a few character designs, but I hope to have more to show in the coming weeks.
Our Hero
Example of Outfit Changes
More Characters
I’ll talk more about this project in the future, and probably give it its own blog, but it will be in a similar genre to Halfway House, a gothic horror adventure game. This one will be rather Dracula inspired, our main character is a portrait artist in a 1700s-esque world, who along with her daughter, travels to a foreign land to paint a portrait for a mysterious noble. She will have to complete the portrait while avoiding eerie strangers, as well as protect her daughter and stay alive through the impossible schedule so they can both escape.
More to come, and I hope to have an update/bug-fix for Three Kings soon as well.
I just entered the ‘Indie Game Maker Contest 2015’ by the skin of my teeth. (Got it in 4 minutes before the deadline!) I made a short game set in the same location as HH, with a different story and characters. It was a really good opportunity to make some graphics I’d never gotten around to, and can hopefully reuse for HH, and learned a lot as I actually *finished* something for the first time in a long while. It was extremely hard, and I was putting in 14-16 hour days for almost the entire month and worked 29 hours straight at the very end. But enough whining, check it out here:
http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/724/#.VcZV7Pn4-JA
(See Screenshots Below…)
As the title says, I do exist still, plodding through these art resources like ugh. Here are a few samples, that are all unfinished, and at wildly different degrees of polish. More to come as I am able.
That’s right, Long Live the Queen Ba–GULK
I got a copy of this game along with a Valentine’s Day themed game bundle, though I’d been wanting to play it for a while. I’ve enjoyed the weird statistic heavy game play of dating sims in the past, and something like Princess Maker minus the pedo-undertones sounded great! In this game, you play the darling pink haired princess who will grow up to be queen, but she is in charge of herself, and not being ordered around by the player controlled ‘daddy’ figure. (ew.)
Be afraid, be very afraid.
They’re coming to get you Ba– oh, no I guess we’ve got some waiting to do.
I thought from time to time I’d post some game reviews, in between these sporadic updates.
My favorite game series of all time, was the Silent Hill franchise. I loved all 4 of the first games (yes, even the Room!) When Team Silent was disbanded, and the film came out, I lost interest big time. From butched-out David Boreanaz style heroes, to rehashes of earlier characters plus facial scars, there wasn’t a lot to recommend them.
I ain’t even joking.
There’s something off about this place…
It’s been a while since I last posted, but I have been working on the game still! Most of what I’ve been doing is unglamorous and… well, uninteresting. (You and me both, baby.) The UI is functional, I moved to a new animation style that will help me in the future, more on that later– it features floating severed heads, very fun. I’ve been plugging away at some sprites, animations, backgrounds etc. And, I’ve been putting in placeholders.
Behold! 2 bit glory!
A bit o’Bitsy
Phew I barely got this post in before 2015! (Thank you PST time zone…) As with most things, the last 5% takes 95% of the time, so I’ve spent a long time working out kinks and bugs. I’m not completely done either, but it’s to a tolerable level at least.
So… SCREENSHOTS!
Paul gets hassled by Mom
Halfway House Game 