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Crystal Towers 2 - Touching up
Dec. 14th, 2010 10:47 pmI might actually be entering the final touching-up phase that I've said that I'd be looking forward to for approximately the last four years. Admittedly I've had a list of main things to do on the whiteboard since the start of November and have just crossed the first two of them off due to getting so distracted by fixing the tidal wave of little bugs as the testers encountered them, but after a period away, I've had some time to have fun with the introduction and some backgrounds.
Writing a script for sprites is hard work, but rewarding once you see them in action - I've made myself laugh a couple of times at the introduction through getting to see the effect that I've had to imagine through mathematics until running it for the first time. The characters are handled with their heads being separate objects from their bodies, so that they can be animated as facing a different direction and talking without having to redraw all their animations for every state. And as a bonus, certain snippets of dialogue (like the above) are picked from a list at the start of the frame, so everybody will get a very slightly different introduction.
And I've finally got rid of the gradient background for the first level - I'll have to change the banner on the site to not proudly show off a sprite overlap error, as well. I decided to have a go at improving these with some simple backdrops because if you look at things like the sky from Cave Story, there really isn't a lot to it - a few layers of cloud and some stars, but as long as it's muted enough, the player isn't going to be looking there to notice its simplicity.
I've also looked into the submission process for Steam, and that's looking quite simple as well, as long as they like the game enough. I think, by putting a graphical suit and tie on the game especially in the early stages, I'm in with a chance there as well.
Writing a script for sprites is hard work, but rewarding once you see them in action - I've made myself laugh a couple of times at the introduction through getting to see the effect that I've had to imagine through mathematics until running it for the first time. The characters are handled with their heads being separate objects from their bodies, so that they can be animated as facing a different direction and talking without having to redraw all their animations for every state. And as a bonus, certain snippets of dialogue (like the above) are picked from a list at the start of the frame, so everybody will get a very slightly different introduction.
And I've finally got rid of the gradient background for the first level - I'll have to change the banner on the site to not proudly show off a sprite overlap error, as well. I decided to have a go at improving these with some simple backdrops because if you look at things like the sky from Cave Story, there really isn't a lot to it - a few layers of cloud and some stars, but as long as it's muted enough, the player isn't going to be looking there to notice its simplicity.
I've also looked into the submission process for Steam, and that's looking quite simple as well, as long as they like the game enough. I think, by putting a graphical suit and tie on the game especially in the early stages, I'm in with a chance there as well.
