It's been 3 months since I last updated the blog. A combination of uni work and laziness is to blame. That's not to say I haven't been working on anything in the meantime. I'll catch you up on all the games I've been making.
I've been doing some more work on Rising Deep. The name will probably change as I keep calling it Deep Rising by accident.
Still placeholder graphics but as you can see, I wanted to reduce the visual information so block types are going to be reduced and I'm not running the 'everything is 4 pixels or less' thing as it caused too much confusion.
In terms of theme I liked the idea of the game being set in a cave this time like the game 'Knytt'. It would allow me to play with the idea of one huge level with a view that scrolls as if it's made of separate rooms. With characters potentially very far from eachother the option to scroll out would be an option too.
Down the right side of the screen would be stats, goals, pickups etc.
I also liked the idea of torches and the characters acting like light sources, revealing information on the walls behind them.
Anyways, I scrapped this idea
The long distances wasn't really viable as it would take forever to find your way around, and the characters on their own just aren't that much fun to play as the interesting decisions come from how the characters interact with eachother.
Both of these levels are actually in the playable thing I included but they represent different games.
The game to the right is my next idea, and it's set on a ship again.
Graphics would be drawn over the top?
Apparently the ship has crashed?!
Initially the player is introduced to each character separately. The water has not made its way into the ship yet. Eventually the characters will meet, (are they the only survivors?) and once the player is comfortable in how the characters can interact with eachother, still-water levels will be introduced. And once the player is comfortable with this, rising-water levels will be introduced.
The idea is that generally the levels will be quite small, like the bonus ones in the original Rising Deep with the occasional large level with perhaps a shortcut upon completing it. The necessity of the shortcuts are because I want all the levels to be interconnected in this one with MOSTLY puzzles involving sticking together but occasionally puzzles which might involve one or two of the characters taking alternative routes.
I also like the idea of the ship falling over at some point and all the levels being flipped by 90 degrees.
Anyways, here's the link to the new exe. It's pretty buggy (skip to the next level with 'P') and you can change camera modes with 'Spacebar'. There isn't that much to do but It should give a rough idea of where I hope to take the game =] (it'll take a little while to start because it has to compile the music)
