If you tuned into the stream on Tuesday, you’ll know that I tried to implement a transition system so that my player could change layouts. You’ll also know that I didn’t get very far.
But, despite that, I think we can still call the stream a success, as we had a proper session of co-op coding and I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed it!
Plus, afterwards, Iain helped me fix the dang system, so it’s all ready for next week! Huzzah!
I’m also writing a tutorial to go along with it (ideal for Tuesday Tips, #content), but I will quickly run through how the system works during Tuesday’s stream. Seeing as I'll be adding in more area change locations.
What this did give me though, as well as a ‘valuable learning experience’ is a teeny, tiny insight into what it’s like to be a game developer. Things rarely go as expected, sometimes things crop up that you can’t do the way you wanted, no matter how many times you hit it with the proverbial hammer. It feels frustrating and, in some cases, quite upsetting when things don’t go your way. But it feels incredible when you finally figure the thing out and your mechanic works perfectly. It’s even nicer when you’ve been able to work through it with other people.
This probably means that the streams throughout this whole game making process are going to run in a similar vein. I have an idea, try to implement that idea, fail, community helps, I still fail, cry. Rinse and repeat. Well. Maybe not the crying bit, not on stream at least! But hey, so long as we make a little bit of progress each week, that’s fine by me. And you know, my house, my rules and all that.
But what about the game?
Well, I’ve done some more tile designing, and I now have a preliminary design for two more of the buildings in the Entertainment District – the museum and the theatre.
The museum (left) I’m quite happy with, though it does need a couple of tweaks, it's looking a little flat. But I think I was being a bit ambitious with angles for the theatre (right) and it looks a little clunky but it’ll do as a placeholder for now. I’ll see what it looks like in-game and decide if it needs a rework.
The last thing to create for the Entertainment District is the Arcade. I still have no idea how that’s going to look, so I may just put it as ‘under construction’ or ‘coming soon’. I need to make some signs anyway!
Now that I have a working transition system, I can start thinking about putting in the remaining two exterior layouts in for this city. And then look at the interior stuff, making sure doors work and so on. Which should give me plenty to do in next week’s stream!
I also picked up a couple of bits of software that were on sale, that may or may not help improve my pixel art and may or may not allow me to make some music or at least a jingle for this game. So, look forward to that, it could be brilliant, it could be awful. Who knows?
Remember, I'll be streaming on a Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday for gamedev, Thursday for gaming (you really don't want to miss my fabulous voice acting.)
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