Dev - Update 4.5

Yay for more concept art...and trains!

This is a midway update just to let you guys know what I'm up to. I'm actually done writing everything in the engine now except for some extra enemy AI (I've written two types of enemy AI). The game is coming along smoothly and I'm working on the introduction and tutorial right this very moment. I'll be working on some graphics stuff with Jack Yeates (Musician and Co-Artist/Spriter) and all the while, I'll be improving upon the cutscene engine I wrote for the game.

The game has taken on a simplistic approach to cutscenes and I'm trying to have gameplay follow suit. Everything left now is just designing levels and cutscenes/finishing up all the tiles and art assets. I bought a giant whiteboard for level designing and I plan to utilize it to the best of my ability. The game is coming along very smoothly and it's exciting to see your first game come together. Expect some great things in the next couple of Development Updates. :D

Dev - Update 4

Yay for concept art~ By Ryan Huggins

Let's start ONCE again, with what's gotten done in the last week.

• Completed Start-Menu HUD
• Shop-Menu HUD
• Weather system (either dynamic or static)
• Choices in the Message System
• Animated levels (Animated background, foregrounds, water, grass, etc)
• Animated anything really...(ART Stuff)
• Variable Wall Scaling (where the type of terrain affects if/how you can grab onto it)
• More or less Enemy AI is incomplete (stupid) <-- saving this for last
• And the most important facet... De-generative gameplay focus (will be completed when all enemy AI is done...TONS of balancing will be required. ugh) Everything but balancing is done
• [NEW] Cutscene control engine D:

This picture is probably more representative of what's gotten done this week.

This has been an relatively productive week, with me getting more or less everything I've wanted done, plus a little bit more. Drawing on the notion of updated art that I brought up last week, I don't have anything new to show you guys. Besides a few more concepts at least. These are the several level concepts we have done.

This was an idea for an interior of CAS. By Ryan Huggins.

Another interior concept (the first one actually). By Ryan Huggins

This is the concept to outside of a factory type place. By Ryan Huggins

This is the grasslands concept piece. By Jack Yeates

This is the same piece, just at a different time. By Jack Yeates

The next work just was an idea for the characters. Castiel (left) and Lily (right). Castiel is an "angel", or he claims to be; Lily doesn't believe him at all. The wing there is metaphorical and conceptual. :P The other concept piece is the very first picture on the blog post.  

This was a quick concept piece of Lily and Castiel. By Jack Yeates

Other than all of this art and coding and such, I haven't been doing much else. I haven't been sleeping much; struggling to finish the rest of the engine before July starts. :P I'm coming close, and with help from a bunch of great people (outside of Siifour) everything is coming together nicely. I really do hope that the work pays off in the end and that the game makes a small sum of money for the charities and all the people out there with some sort of degenerative disease!

I'm aiming for a large update in the next week or two. So, expect greatness. Ryan Huggins~

Week 12

Monday; March 21th, 2011

It's incredible how many weeks have gone by so far! Twelve in fact; that's like...84 days and I don't really have anything to show for it; it's saddening... Regardless, I do have a lot of inspiration going for me this week. My little schedule is going to afford me massive amounts of time to actually get things done; now all that's left is actually sticking to it. I just scheduled some legitimate daily meetings with the various people I work with (Marcus - Siifour Co-Founder and Alex - Project Duo), so hopefully that will keep all of us actually active on our individual projects. It also turns out that I'm running out of time to get CAS seriously going; I need a technical demo out by Summer to show progress and I only have what, 5 level designs? Alas, I wish I was a little better at programming, so coding the engine wouldn't be so much of a drag. Ugh...I also have to actually purchase a domain name sometime soon...and design some sort of website...and make a Twitter account... Tons and tons of things to do it seems.

It also so happens that I'm incredibly broke right now. We are going to have to figure out how to pool a large sum of money together to get everything I want to do, done.

Project CAS - On the development edge of things, I've almost completed another level concept, bringing the grand total up to 5 complete concepts. I'll probably finish it tomorrow during school so I can get work started on another one after I get Page 3 of Project Duo outlined and whatnot. I'm working on the final draft of the detailed gameplay/story draft right now actually; I'm probably going to stop with the outlining when that's done and just get all the art done (at least for the first Arc (there are 4 arcs)). Other than that, I'm hoping to utilize a few pieces of paper and maybe a wiki to design/detail all of the weapons, enemies, and important locations more thoroughly. I'm going to have a ton of fun, but at the same time, I really, REALLY, want to get the gameplay coded. We'll see what happens.

Acrophilia - This weekend was extremely productive for us at Acrophilia. A few of us went to a place called Hill's Gymnastics in Gaithersburg, MD and for the first time we learned tricks in a professional environment. A few of us got slightly injured (ankles are slightly sore/damaged), but nothing serious; and on the flip side, most of us can back flip now. We are seriously making some progress, it's really great and I'm rather happy. Filming-wise, we are working on a short recycling video project to warm up for our first big project, Faction. Faction is a short-film about a transporter who questions the morality of his latest mission and decides to take matters into his own hands for the first time in a long time. The plot itself is rather simple, but hopefully, the story, and the artistic vision will pull through and we'll make something nice! We plan to start filming for that during our Spring Break in April. 

Speaking of April, my birthday is coming up. April 6th. Considering I'm still a young boy (16 going on 17), I'm hoping my mom will buy me a new camcorder since Acrophilia is in desperate need of a new one. I'm also looking forward to seeing what our documentary will be like. :p But anyway, see you next week and expect greatness. Ryan Huggins~