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Saturday, September 27, 2014

Gearend - Finding Focus

Today I spent a pretty fair amount of time in development, but unfortunately didn't get much done. I was trying to get a specific animation effect to work for an enemy, but it didn't work out, and I ended up changing what the enemy looked like to account for the lack of ability to sprite it. That enemy is this one, a self-destructing rolling canister.



I also started spriting a few more enemies, which turned out far creepier than anything else I've done so far, which can be interesting once I get into it. I'll see about animating them and putting them into the game. So far I've got four enemies, which is a nice number for the beginning of the game.

I changed a few of the colors I'd put down so far in an attempt to add some spice and pep to the different tiles, and while I'm not so much of a fan of the new colors, I do like the effect it brings, so it's fine the way it is.

I've gotta really become determined to work on this reliably and consistently if I want to be a dev for a living, so that's something I need to and am working on. It's easy to get distracted when you don't have any need to get up and focus on anything, haha!

So about the whole "re-making of the enemy because I couldn't get the animation to look right" thing - I think I wasted my time there, not because the enemy was so cool the way it was originally (it was just a cube), but rather because in the end, it doesn't really matter too much what individual elements or pieces of my project I might have to sacrifice or alter.

Circumstances change, and something that I might have planned for awhile may not pan out - that's just the way it can be sometimes. However, it's better to make the game and come back later to tweak, update, and fix, than to never release it because you get stuck trying to tweak elements to perfection. My motivation relies on making progress, I think - if I don't, then it's hard to make myself pick up the project. It's something to remember for myself, for sure.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Gearend - Upgrades

Hello there! So, work continues on my projects. For Gearend, I decided to make the first boss a bipedal robot like the player character, which should make it easier to design and work with. I'll introduce him a little bit when I get him into the game, but he's going to be kind of an interesting character, I think.


Today I implemented Energy and Health Upgrades - they're RAM chips and Hard Disks in-game. When you pick them up, they give you a little message about what was on them from a time when humans were prevalent, like "You can see a small puppy sniffing the video camera.", or "It's a video of a middle-aged man returning home to his wife and kids."

(Yeah, I know RAM chips can't store data when they're unplugged, but whatever, I'm trying to make them interesting.)

Just something to make it interesting to pick up the upgrades, kinda like Earthbound's flavor text after you go to the different points of interest or whatever.

Gonna keep chugging away on this!~