Man, who knew that making maps with depth could be so hard?
...Everyone? Okay then.
THIS PAST WEEK
As you probably guessed, I had some trouble making maps (or rather, just one map) this week. It's a cliffside path that goes down the mountain, and making the shape and putting everything in place wasn't too hard... if it weren't for the fact that it looked completely flat. I knew I could shade certain parts of the cliff to give it an illusion of depth, but couldn't quite figure out which parts and how much. In the end I resorted to making a 3D model of the cliff using Sims and using that as reference.
I used to play Sims for fun, now it's a modelling tool. Admittedly it's a useful tool, but I still can't help but feel I lost something...
Anyways, thanks to the 3D model I was able to finish the map. I'm pretty sure it's not completely accurate, but I think it looks okay. Besides, being a night map means the cover of darkness can help hide many of the inaccuracies.
Next on the list is that I found a number of sprites that may be suitable as enemies. I tried to get sprites from the same artist, but the selection is a bit limited that way so I had to look at multiple artists to get the variety of enemies I would like. The problem with that is, they rarely have the same or even similar art styles, so I'm now worried about the enemies being in completely different styles. There might be some ways around it, but I'll have to experiment with that. For now, these are two of the enemies I've picked and added into the game. Had to tweak/add some more code, but it worked out okay.
Finally I added some new music and death sfx for the new enemies. The music I almost definitely will change later, but the sfx will probably stay. At the very least every monster will have an unique death sound and attack sound. The latter is especially important since it'll also serve as an audio cue for players. Maybe I'll also have a walking or idle sfx so it can serve as another audio cue.
THE NEXT WEEK
More of the same I think. The demo still needs more maps, I'll need to experiment with enemy sprites of different art styles and see if I can make them look more uniformed, and get more SFX. Of course, I'll keep looking for a more suitable bgm track for the prologue level. More enemies would be nice too. Even if I don't use them now I can use it later.
SUMMARY/TL;DR
Completed This Week:
- Made cliff-side path map
- Got some new enemies
- New music/SFX
To Do Next Week:
- Make more maps
- Find enemy sprites
- Try to unify enemy sprite art styles
- Find new music/sfx
Hard to believe it's already week eight. Counting the two extra weeks or so, I've been working on this for 2.5-3 months now. Hopefully the hardest stuff is behind us now, and work can pick up pace in the future. Thanks for reading, see you next week!