We celebrated the 1st anniversary of our 1st working day last week! :) We had a lot of cake, it was fun!
Game-wise, we've made some big design changes in the last couple of weeks. Initially, color was an 'energy source' which was sort of abstract, and I was having a hard time making the rules consistent (especially since I'm trying to avoid sci-fi). I knew I wanted to try having Veil move slower when she was missing color (the chameleon is going to be redesigned as a girl chameleon!), and in brainstorming I kept coming back to the idea of things turning into stone when they lost their color. When I thought more in this direction, I found that I was able to come up with ideas much easier. For awhile I worried that it was too "magicky" - but the premise is already magicky, so I think it's ok. We're going to try it for awhile and see what happens!
I made some rough & ugly concepts while Issam and I were discussing what the 'transition to stone' could possibly look like. Also we've been working from the assumption that you need to return the correct color to an object to make it "work," and how to show that.
Using vertex color to have some of the original color remain. Right now its spreading too much towards the middle - I would want it to cling to the edges more.
Experimenting with fading in the stone texture where color is missing. In this concept, the texture of the grass seems too busy - so then I tried...
...doing this kind of ugly mockup using a screen shot from Wind Waker. Haha. We wanted to see the blending if the colored textures were less noisy to begin with. We spent a lot of time sliding the opacity back and forth to see the transition. I think if the textures are simple enough (which is what I want anyway!), then it will be ok to transition to a noisier stone texture. (I played Wind Waker for the first time last week! I'd been thinking about Ocarina a lot, since it's the sort of feel I'm going for with our temples, and I got a lot of ideas. I wrote about it in my
game journal.)
Issam also implemented a version of it in game with the placeholder texture. It already changes the feel pretty dramatically - and opens up gameplay possibilities. We're definitely not going to use a photo real stone texture though. :)
See, you wouldn't expect to be able to move that block. (Also, why does it sound like I'm hitting a million buttons?)
The tutorial section was playable a couple of weeks ago, but after having Issam play through it, I found some weaknesses that I am trying to address. (Mainly, the first half was interesting, and the second half was really boring and didn't contain any actual puzzles...). I spent the tail end of last week redesigning it with the stone concept, and now I am starting to implement the new puzzles.
We're trying to have something ready for the Albany IGDA meeting on May 1st, where we'll be giving a presentation about how our first year has been going. I'll post some more about that later.
PS - The new Fez Remix album is really great to listen to while working!
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