More visual cues

One more arena

jon's fantastic artwork. =D =D

such rainbow. much wow.

Hull meter

Added a Hull meter today.

Got a new enemy into the game... finally!

They are hard to kill.

More animations

These took me forever!

New enemy (wip)

Work in progress. Animation's taking longer than I've first imagined. (Character design by victoria)

e27

e27 featured us for a bit in its coverage of Casual Connect Asia =).
http://e27.co/casual-connect-asia-2014-games-demand-mention-20140523/

Baby step

Not a lot of progress this week, but here's a little something:

New Mark running animation

Because holding a gun like that while running looks cooler.

More bugs!

Laser turrets need some serious fixing. Are you reading this, cs =D?

I'm too good at this game (psst, it's just broken =P)

Oh joy! We have a ton of balancing to do for the game! At first it was too hard, but after I've figured out the loop holes (one of the turret types is crazy overpowered, while everything else is crazy weak), the game quite literally plays itself! Haha. Still, the onscreen mayhem was nice to watch (now if we just go a step further with the effects and visual feedback.. heeheeheehee).

It's been real busy

The entire team had been busy at work preparing a build of Blue Giant (or Spacejacked - that's what it's called, for now?) for Casual Connect Asia (as I'm writing this, jon and cs are at the event showing our early demo). It's been a good month (starting 23rd April) and we've put together quite a fair bit (the gif does not show the entirety of the gameplay).

There are still a lot to be done, and I shall list them here as a reminder:

• Game seriously needs a tutorial
• Game is still lacking in content, duh (more enemy types, upgrades)
• Game needs some form of randomization to spice up each replay experience
• NPCs to provide a clearer context to the game
• Pacing (as well as anything to signify progress)
• More visual aids (player can't tell, and can't know what's happening in other arenas)
• Game needs a ton of playtesting

As it is now, I believe the project has got tremendous potential (and that's the bottomline, I'll not let any negativity from some Tom, Dick or Harry get to me) to be great fun - we just need to press on.

New enemy added!

Just a little speedy type enemy, with character design by victoria and animation by moi.

Something like an explosion... a.k.a more feedback

Repair-feedback

Here's a little quickie I've added yesterday.

New enemy animation

Added new animation for our current enemy. Because why not. Next up, explosions.

Main Menu + Transition

Managed to put together a simple menu screen and a neat screen transition (many thanks to jon and his ImageMagik prowess) for Blue Giant today... did I say Blue Giant? We will be changing the title soon =)
(Title shown in the screenshot is not final)

Also, an improved environment mockup for Triad vs Zombies.

Mock up

I don't have much to show for Blue Giant today. But there's some progress, if only a little.

But here's a little mock up I whipped up for Triad vs Zombies.

Yeah, I'm redesigning Mark's sprite.

Scrolling background

Triad vs Zombies Title Screen

Yes. That's the title now.

More visual feedback!

I think the late nights are getting to me. Woke up with a huge headache today so I skipped going to the office with the rest of the gang =X. As for blue giant, I've been working on visual feedback. I'm fairly satisfied with what we have thus far but I think it still needs a little more juice and attention to detail. For instance, Dave's (that's our protagonist) upright and nonchalant posture when attacking the aliens bugs me a great deal.

cs' working on another part of the game, namely, the ability to build turrets on platforms, akin to a tower defence game. I should find time during the weekend to integrate his part into the game - that ought to bring us a step closer to a presentable demo.

In other news, jon is back from his one-week absence (no thanks to exams!) Woo hoo~

Next up on my list of things to do for blue giant: Explosions. Then integrating cs' part (uhhhh borring workkk).

Yet another mini progress update

Dave's Repair Animation

Yeah! Move it!

Lowrez jam

Not sure where this is going =D.

Nice

So a couple of days ago I shared the blue giant image on my twitter account and tagged "screenshotsaturday".

This is completely unexpected, but indiestatik actually picked up my twitter post and featured our screenshot on its screenshot scrutiny article (http://indiestatik.com/2014/05/05/screenshot-scrutiny-3rd-may-2014). Awesome stuff!

With the ongoing adjustments to the artwork and the continuous development of more visual feedback, I hope to share a better screenshot this Saturday!

Aloha

It seems like the new style and animation is pretty well received by the few who's seen it. Victoria was pretty taken aback by the drastic change in style, but she was quick to adapt, giving the arena a fresh coat of paint (there has been a couple of complaints about my choice of colors) while giving me a lengthy lecture about picking colors. I'll put up the modified background and character (with a groovy half outline) onto this blog soon-ish, so stay tuned.

Suffice to say, this minimalist art style is here to say =). This ought to speed up development.

Progress~

Everything blew up!!

YARRRRGGGHHHHHHHHH!

Putting things together!

Tiled editor. It's pretty sweet =).

Attack animation!

Goo is a special kind of interesting to animate.

Another piece of animation

Just a little something for fun..

Working on the enemy sprites based on victoria's original concept at the moment (they look pretty rad). Haven't quite put everything into the game just yet, but here's a little concept image!

Sprites!!

On to the next sprite!

Hi ho

Most of yesterday was spent porting my gui code from as3 to haxe; I'm still working on the new look (brand new spritesheets) - it should be up later in the day (or night). It's now almost 4am and I need to sleep. Nighty night.

New look?

I came to a realization not too long ago - the current detailed art style of Blue Giant is going to do us in. I had the impression that I was the only one to have realized this, so I was quick to relay my concerns to jon. The problem we have is the unreasonably long process of creating art assets from conceptualization to seeing it move in-game.

To begin, the background artwork of a single arena in the game has been in the works for 2 weeks and it's still not done. The level of detail is impressive, but I highly doubt we can afford that much time to create a single arena - and we need 5.

Secondly, our artist cannot animate well. She is a brilliant character designer however. As such I've suggested that she could do a single frame of the characters with much of the major details omitted (so it'll be easier for me to animate) and I'll help her with the animation; AFTER which she can then fill in the details in each and every frame. In hindsight, it is a severely thing-wasting process, and time is a very limited resource.

Clearly something needs to be done, so I came up with a rough concept art of how the game could look in-game - stripping away all the details that are bogging us down. I was happy enough with the result that even if any of my team mates object I would still have gone with it (because I'm a jerk, and enough is enough). Fortunately, jon seems fine with the concept and suggested that I fix up some colors.

And so, here we have it, a completely new look - and the arena and character is designed and drawn in no more than a couple days.

A little update on Blue Giant

We've been getting the gameplay up and running as much as we can. Here's another crappy screenshot with some placeholding graphics =)