Aeges Road Weekly Update
I will make this quick this week. There is finally progress in the art department. After a long week and a half of frustration, I gave up on variable height terrain. I just couldn't make it look right in the art department. So now that I am behind I did a few things to speed up art.
Yesterday I programmed a tile maker and splicer in java. It takes a texture, turns it into an isometric tile, batches a directory full of masks, and outputs a nicely formated png full of tiles and fringes. It essentially turned 2 hours of work into about 5 - 15 minutes depending on how long it takes me to process a texture into usable form. I am calling it UglyISO right now. After the first of April, I plan on extending its functionality to do wall tiles and overlays.
Once I am done with the game, if anyone is interested, I will put some error handling on the thing and release it for free download. It is nowhere near the caliber of programs such as World Creator, but I can stay in my Mac environment to do it. There is also a new java project working on making such a utility. It will probably be much more robust, and will probably beat me out. I need to find that link again and post it here.
As soon as I get the starter dungeon reworked, I will release another alpha that will mostly be art improvements. I personally haven't run into any new errors with the application. The only big problem I am aware of right now is an AI glitch that leaves them suspended there doing nothing until you kill them. If anyone finds another error, please let me know.
posted by Code Ugly (FKA drslinky1500) | 12:54 PM
2 Comments:
I'm sorry to hear that art's been such a frustration for you. I think what you have even in alpha 7 is just fine. The environment tiles look good, the bat looks good, and even the human figure is fine in an abstract way, if you could distinguish them more with more colors or maybe a simple decoration.
It seems like you had really high goals for the art. I think it might be better to "give yourself permission" (that's a concept I have to apply to myself a lot) to go with simpler, more functional art for now and work on filling in the game itself. It's a question of how to be a good steward of your limited time. And I think you'll find yourself encouraged once you start adding more to the game. I know that's happened to me too many times. I'll spend way too long trying to plan something out perfectly beforehand (that's one of my big traps) and get discouraged and start procrastinating, and then when I finally start doing it, it goes easily and I get excited again. Anyhow, I'd be excited to see more of your game come together, even if the graphics aren't what you'd hoped for.
I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds, but I felt compelled to share those thoughts after your last couple of posts.
Thanks for the tips. I certainly did have high goals, but I just could not pull off the look I had in my head, so I backtracked and reworked the floor and wall tiles to a different feel that still fits the characters.
The characters, though a bit deformed, are not what I have envisioned, but I am somewhat satisfied with the results. I just need to do as you say, and finish decorating them. I think that is my next step once I get the level up system working.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home