Happy May, all! So, I took 2 weeks off the day job to both unwind a bit and to get some Act 2 stuff done. Glad to say I rate 10/10 on both those things! Most of the work has gone towards putting the completed artwork in-engine. I am dying to show you guys what it all looks like, but with such a short game I feel like every reveal is a spoiler to some extent. So instead, here's one big scene, again outside and in the rain:
And here are a few of the others, but super tiny because I'm a tease like that:
The individual bits and bobs of act 2 are almost done (except the character art, but we're kinda waiting till the near end before diving into that too deeply), and the only real challenge that remain is the save system. I have touched on this before, but to summarise: Act 1 used a simple chapters-as-checkpoints save system, which worked fine because it was entirely linear. Act 2 is not as linear, so this will not work. The trick though is not making a working save system, since that's the easy part - the trick is to make a dynamic save system that LOOKS like it's a simple linear chapters-as-checkpoints save system so that the user experience does not appear to change. This will get even more tricky in Act 3, because Act 3 contains some procedural content. Oy. Later, later. My main workstation also suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure last weekend. TME is unharmed though since that is backed up in two places in addition to the source control. Did manage to partially recover the contents of the drive too and didn't lose anything I couldn't tolerate losing. And in the process also got quite cozy with Linux' dumpe2fs and e2fsck commands. And not related to anything. Someone wrote a good piece on Gamasutra on what it's like to try and do indie on the side while working a day job. You can read it here:http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/242864/Work__Life__Work_Balance_Making_two_games_at_once_and_surviving.php I can relate to a lot of it, and so far this experience has been rather educational. Finally, the act 2 soundtrack is almost ready to roll out. It'll drop before Act 2. Woop!

Happy May, all! So, I took 2 weeks off the day job to both unwind a bit and to get some Act 2 stuff done. Glad to say I rate 10/10 on both those things! Most of the work has gone towards putting the completed artwork in-engine. I am dying to show you guys what it all looks like, but with such a short game I feel like every reveal is a spoiler to some extent. So instead, here's one big scene, again outside and in the rain:
And here are a few of the others, but super tiny because I'm a tease like that:
The individual bits and bobs of act 2 are almost done (except the character art, but we're kinda waiting till the near end before diving into that too deeply), and the only real challenge that remain is the save system. I have touched on this before, but to summarise: Act 1 used a simple chapters-as-checkpoints save system, which worked fine because it was entirely linear. Act 2 is not as linear, so this will not work. The trick though is not making a working save system, since that's the easy part - the trick is to make a dynamic save system that LOOKS like it's a simple linear chapters-as-checkpoints save system so that the user experience does not appear to change. This will get even more tricky in Act 3, because Act 3 contains some procedural content. Oy. Later, later. My main workstation also suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure last weekend. TME is unharmed though since that is backed up in two places in addition to the source control. Did manage to partially recover the contents of the drive too and didn't lose anything I couldn't tolerate losing. And in the process also got quite cozy with Linux' dumpe2fs and e2fsck commands. Finally, the act 2 soundtrack is almost ready to roll out. It'll drop before Act 2. Woop!