Random Fact Thursday

We use spritesheets for our animations and world building!

To tableflip or not to tableflip

In terms of style, I am in a dubio...

I somewhere feel I wouldn't play this game if I were to judge it by the style. This screenshot is extremely unattractive to me. I believe this to be because of my use of brushes and ungamey shading. It also feels rather stiff in places, but that is partly because of the techniques we chose.

Sketches like these still fit perfectly in the game, though. So maybe I shouldn't worry too much.

Random Fact Thursday

Just like with real backpacks, 

if you make a mess in there,

 you will have to take everything out 

to get to that piece of candy at the bottom!

Editor

A somewhat unexpected addition to the game: the "interesting scenery creator"!
In order to create more interesting random environments than the computer would, we required an editor and system that allows smooth exporting and importing of tilesets.

Abilities

• Insta-fill the parcel with a type of ground.
• Add assets.
• Scroll through spritesheets.
• Easilly move all assets around the parcel.
• Randomised ground tiles.
• Exports the source code instead of a scene to prevent lag.

Aaaand we really need to add a undo function soon, aaargh!!

Random fact Thursday

Kids will probably have to wear clothes in our game, while adults can run a nude rampant. 

It's a silly world we live in!

Design thinking

We did some design thinking and I wrote something about what would make our game fun to play. So this is what our focus will be for now:

Survival / Exploration; What makes it awesome?

• The thrill of a dangerous world. You will need to explore to survive, but exploring is also dangerous. The world is against you, (simply living is a challenge) the weather will play a part in this as well as a day / night cycle. Starvation and dehydration are also factors to be considered.
• Playing with limited vision. This will increase the anxiety, not knowing what’s around a corner makes you wander.
• Finding items that you can use to improve yourself or your holdout, makes you continue to play. You want to get better and get more stuff. We always strive for improvement as a sense of progress.

The following features are needed to make the game interesting!

General schedule:

• First off is vision! This will increase -if not make- the experience of exploring. On a side note it will also improve performance.
  
  
• After that will be world generation. The world you explore must be exciting. Finding interesting buildings / ruins / items is a must. We need many different locations with each a different feel to them. For instance a couple of houses grouped together is nice but after ten of them it gets boring. If after those ten villages you find a small military outpost, now that’s exciting!
  
  
• Items!! Finding those precious items you value so highly is a must! You must be rewarded for your troubles. The feeling of: “YES! I SO NEEDED THAT!” is what we want to create. We need a great number of items, ranging from clothing, food ‘n drinks and weapons to medicines, tools, gadgets and building materials. We want you to go through all the desks and drawers to look for that one awesome thingie you need so bad.
  
  
• Together with the items comes the inventory system. It must be easily accessible for the player. We like the approach of a no-slot inventory. Like the one you see in Ultima Online. The weight and possibly the volume of items will determine if you are able to carry something or not.
  
  
• Status of a character. The player must be able to see the status of the characters. It should be apparent if they are wounded, cold, sick or hungry. Also equally important is to show a characters skills and abilities.
  
  
• Playtesting!
  
  
• Environment! The environment must influence a characters needs and behavior. If you stand out in the rain you will get cold, especially if you do not have a raincoat or umbrella. The same goes for night and day time. At night it will be colder and you can’t see much without a light source. Also you will stand out a lot when using a light source, attracting unwanted attention! The surrounding buildings or vegetation will block sight and may make passing through an area more dangerous.
  
  
• Playtesting!
  
  
• Enemy types and behavior. The implementation of scary monsters which might be lurking around each corner will increase the thrill of the game. Mindless monsters wandering about will make you hide around corners and staying quiet. More intelligent monsters will provide a strategic element when encountering them.  Monsters must spawn and wander in ways that seem logical.
  
  
• Playtesting!

Random fact Thursday

Did you know you can explore a total of 2,562,559,548,192,900 tiles in our game?
And if you are curious as how to pronounce it, we looked it up for you!

US
two quadrillion,
five hundred sixty two trillion,
five hundred fifty nine billion,
five hundred forty eight million,
one hundred ninety two thousand,
nine hundred

NL
twee biljard,
vijfhonderd tweeenzestig biljoen,
vijfhonderd negenenvijftig miljard,
vijfhonderd achtenveertig miljoen,
honderd tweeennegentig duizend,
negenhonderd