C-7

Wow...After 1 year the game is still in alpha?Are you developing the game alone?If it's just you, gratz in double.

Haha yes, still in alpha. I had to take a little time from it for a little of that for life reasons, but I work on this game around my irregularly-houred day job (and family!). Mostly late at night when the wife and kids are sleeping. And, yes, I work on the game on my own. Thanks!

Awesome! Congratulations on the coverage you're getting! You guys deserve it, the game looks fantastic.

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> > I agree, more realistic characters will really give this a boost.

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I'm sure this game will get a great response either way

I sure hope so! I'm glad discussions can go meaningfully on this forum, too. It makes some of us okay with posting things as they develop instead of holding back for a finished product.

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Yes. Since it is getting to a further stage of development now, I'll be running a kickstarter soon to try and jump to fulltime development on it. If that goes well, I plan to release in Spring or Summer of 2015.

> I really like the tileset!

> I'm just not too keen on that character art, to me it clashes a lot with the semi-realistic style you have going on with the in-game graphics.

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> I think this kind of rendering would give the whole graphics a good, consistent feel.

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I agree, more realistic characters will really give this a boost.

Thanks for the input! This is actually one of the opinions with which I completely disagree. I ran through a number of styles of characters initially (including more realistic) and it shifted into generic instead of matching. Thematically, the character styles fit quite well--much of the game is quite light-hearted, even when it gets darker. I feel if they were any more textured, they would be more difficult to read visually and would get lost in the environments. The proportions are a little exaggerated, the texturing is more muted (though still present), the shading is a little more contrasted, and they have very slight outlines. But this contrast is important to gameplay--the people are the primary gameplay elements that you interact with throughout along with puzzle 'devices' and obstacles. So thank you, but that's an element I'm quite happy with and will keep.

> The other option is to create the objects at the start of the layout and place them where they need to be using code.

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this is what i want to do but construct gives an error message if object isn't present in layout.

Correct. They have to be on some layout to be included with the game information/export. Just have a dummy layout and throw all your objects on there to meet that requirement.

It's looking good, burningcake!

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and loving every minute of it!

Courier is looking much more vivid and detailed these days!

Click for full size

Click for full size

Thanks! Here are a couple more:

Click for full size

You're doing such a fantastic job with your lighting, and I think if you pushed it a bit further it would really make your game "pop."

Thank you a ton! I've heard numerous people give different opinions on where I should go graphically/color-wise with the game. So I made multiple variations on things and applied different color settings to them and polled people to see what was most appealing and liked. Firstly, my reasons for the more muted colors is because I wanted to avoid the all-primary-colors look of a lot of games and wanted to distance it from the cartoonish look of a lot of games now. I also liked the cohesion given throughout. So I toyed with a bunch of stuff and got to a look that I still like and people seem to enjoy more. It really makes the older shots look dull by comparison, which I'm okay with! I have no delusions of being perfect, so I'm glad to see changes implemented that people have asked for that seem to improve the game. Have a look!

I think setting up realistic benchmarks for yourself is a good solution. Tinker until it starts to hamper a benchmark, then move on.

Ya know, you guys are right. I was still stuck in the mindset of making the game as a browser game that I wanted to omit too many tiny details that would bog it down for some users. I've since gone back through and applied a lot more detail throughout (and am adding more). Here's a look at how it's coming along:

And a lower-res gif showing some motion: