Courier looks pretty nice, is it 3D-rendered?

No, none of it is. It's all mouse-drawn in photoshop.

Hey everyone! I still exist!

I've been a little [read: lot] quieter about development on Courier since the failure of my Kickstarter. There hasn't really been any less development, just a greater desire to have less-frequent updates with more impact. I, perhaps, have waited a little too long this time around, but some interesting developments have come about! Firstly, I quit my job and can work on Courier without that giant time-sink ruining my productivity. I am now a stay-at-home Dad, so still not really full-time development, but tons more available time. (My wife got a job that pays double what mine did, so we switched). So, in a way, I ended up with a better situation than if my Kickstarter had worked out!

I've been hard at work on the game and enjoying it more without so much pressure looming over my head. I've been spending some good time mapping out more areas of the game, I improved the shadowing throughout the game, I've increased the detail even more, and lots of other things I can't seem to recall right now.

Here's a look at a part of the overworld a little more north than what I've been showing so far:

This area isn't done by any stretch, so I wanted to give live-streaming a shot. I'll be live-streaming development on that part of the overworld tomorrow night (Sept 4th) at 10:30 PM EST here: http://www.twitch.tv/C7even. If people are interested, I'll show a bit of the inner-workings of my project on the stream, too. I'm hoping to make this a regular thing to live-stream development, so hopefully people will be interested!

I haven't posted any new shots in a while. I've been a bit quieter about development for a while, but here are two new shots from Courier!

And I'll be live-streaming some mapping tomorrow night (Sep 4) at 10:30 EST here: http://www.twitch.tv/C7even

I completely agree with using adaptive music for games--the rest of the game interacts, why in the world shouldn't the music? If kickstarter doesn't work for you, you may find luck with finishing one complete group and releasing that on asset stores and using any success with that one to fund subsequent ones. And, in case you were wondering, Construct 2 makes adaptive music very easy to implement (I've made several instances of it).

It looks neat, Myristavia ! A few pointers that may help you a bit in defining your art style. I might try to find a way to either break up how much bevel/emboss you're doing in photoshop or find a way to hide it a bit. I would also look into colors for your lighting and shading other than white/black. Outside, shadows are typically dark blue, though your eyes will trick you. I also like having a bit of a yellowish hue in the lighting, but that's up to you. All of your artwork is very bright, contrasty, and colorful (which are good things, and not all of them are words...), but be sure to add some fog or something behind the main layer of play so players don't get confused about what they can interact with and what they cannot. Background confusion is a common challenge for platformers, so work on fixing it as soon as possible. It's coming along nicely, though, and I definitely can related to the job + game dev thing (as can many), so keep on pushing through!

Yes, it's perfectly doable in C2, and as many layers as you need and can keep track of. If you mean for mobile, we're done discussing things, but for PC/Mac/Linux, it would need a significant team depending on how in-depth you need it or how much variety you need. One person will not get it done at a satisfactory level of quality if they aren't already multi-talented and familiar with the software, game development, and code structure. You would need a team and some really good convincing skills.

Congrats, Beaverlicious! I'm glad someone's had success already!

I'll be the sole dissenting opinion and say I prefer the design of B. A is my second choice, I don't like C at all.

If I may butt in, I can give a great scenario where unloading sounds would be useful. In the case of my game (and maybe some other users down the road), I place my music files in the Sounds folder because, to my knowledge, only one Music track can be played at a time and streaming isn't exactly instant. Just close. For most users, this is sufficient, but I currently preload necessary music parts when entering a new section of my game and the soundtrack changes dynamically based on player location, game state, and other input. This is done by layering, sequencing, and swapping audio files on-the-fly. Streaming it all wouldn't be accurate enough--the next segment needs to be loaded into memory in advance so it can start truly in an instant. And I don't think they could overlap from the Music folder, anyways. It hasn't been an issue yet for my game, but I can see someone taking a stroll throughout the entire world in a single play session and getting everything loaded to memory and, for lower-end users, getting performance issues. For most users, unloading audio isn't necessary, but I do think it is a command that can definitely help in specialized cases.

C-7 amazing looking game! Will definitely up vote that! How many games have you made before?

Sorry I didn't see this sooner! 2 smaller finished games, 2 larger unfinished games (one a result of hard drive failure when I was younger, one a result of funding issues and limitations of Construct Classic).

I don't like posting links to the manual, but the Dictionary object would do precisely what you are looking for. You'd use something like Dictionary>Add "shield" and set it to 50 or whatever. Then you can reference that value at any time Dictionary.Get("shield") instead of your global variable call.

The manual: https://www.scirra.com/manual/140/dictionary

Absolutely possible. You can store the data in either an Array or a Dictionary object (I prefer Arrays so I can just reference a spreadsheet of my own). You would store the bass stat for each as 0,1 0,2 0,3 and so on. Then the upgrade number in 1,1 1,2 1,3 etc. Then I would set the "result" in 2,1 as Array.At(0,1)+Array.At(1,1) so then you can reference all three numbers in your UI to make things even clearer for your users.