Hello everyone, What a couple of months it's been! I honestly should have posted an update sooner, but alas, I have been head-down working on my next milestone; completing the background artwork for all 5 acts. Yes! That's correct, I have completed a total of 303 individual scenes for "The Abandoned Planet" (TAP).... with more to come as puzzle development commences. Maybe you're thinking, "that doesn't sound like a lot". Well, it is! While games like Myst and Riven, with their pre-rendered backgrounds, contained 100s (maybe 1000s) of backgrounds, those games weren't hand drawn. They were pre-rendered using 3D assets and then just moving the camera and taking snapshots. A huge task, for sure, but nothing compared to hand-drawing the backgrounds. On the other hand, games like Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle offer around 100 backgrounds each. This is because hand drawn artwork is extremely time-consuming. For TAP, I draw each background. I choose each color from a pre-determined palette. Each pixel has to be precisely placed. So, 300+ backgrounds is a lot, especially for a solo-developer who also has to animate, do puzzle-design, program, and bug fix. Yikes!

Preview of Scenes in Acts 4 and 5

Despite this huge challenge, It's been really fun! Getting to slowly see the story of the game come to life is really satisfying. Here are some backgrounds from Acts 4 and 5 that I haven't shared before:





As you can see, some of the backgrounds are static, while some of them have animations. I like to animate all the non-puzzle related animations along with the background.

Puzzle Programming and Animations

But that doesn't mean I haven't done any of the puzzles or programming along the way. I do actually some of the animations related to puzzles and this leads me down the rabbit hole of programming some of the puzzles along the way. Here are two examples:

In the first gif, the astronaut picks up a vial from the hand of a dead alien. I really needed to create this artwork and program the associated actions to feel like I completed that zone. The same is true of the second gif, since that animation is necessary for the context of the scene. Oh yeah... and I also do the SFX for these animations as a I go along, instead of leaving it for later. Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today! I digress... as you can see in the above previews, the astronaut travels a long way from the crash site in the demo. She truly goes on an adventure that will change her life forever.

Conclusion

I'm really motived and excited to complete TAP and get it into your hands by the end of the year. I know I previously said that The Abandoned Planet would be released Q3 2023, but it's going to be Q4. There's just no way I can complete it before then. I want to make sure I deliver a premium indie-game experience. Thank you all for your patience and for following along in the journey. Let me know if you have any questions. I wish you all the best. Jeremy Fryc dexterstardust.com