Progress Update, February

Howdy all, it’s been a good few weeks since I last updated so I figured you were all due some progress info, how time flies eh!

Progress is marching on at a nice and steady pace, we could probably do another dev video with what we have done but we’re thinking of waiting until we have the enemy AI stuff working before we do that.

Interfaces

Interfaces are now fully ported, improved and are hooked up to drive the game through events.

Portals

I’ve recreated the portal code which allows you to move between maps based on the other improvements done already and also added Spine artwork which makes portal creation more straight forward. The portals now also use Spine based hit box detection to make them more accurate to interact with. They also now use the same interact prompt as objects so when this gets more advanced you’ll be able to choose actions such as picking the lock or kicking a door down.

Combat Animations

I’ve made a bunch of new animations for Will which are going to be used in combat. Animations such as crouching, aiming and firing along with variations for when Will is unarmed and armed with a pistol, other guns will come later. I’ve learnt a lot through working with Spine and figured out quite a few areas where I can speed up the work-flow meaning I’m now working like a well oiled machine with the entire process so I should be able to build a lot more art in a smaller space of time. Here, have a sneak peak…

Player Sprite Shooting

Combat Interface

Something else that I’ve tackled has been a brand spanking new first pass interface for the combat screen, it doesn’t have any hooks to the game code yet but it’s ready for when we start on the combat mechanic itself and uses the same event driven UI as the rest of the game meaning it’s extremely simple to have it talk to the main game screen. Here’s a sneak peak at it running in game, note though that it’s all using place holder art for now, certainly don’t take this as any inkling of what it will look like in the end…

In Game Combat UI

A sneak peak at the new in game combat interface.

Enemy AI

And finally Dan has been busy working on the enemy AI, he has them patrolling about and is currently working on player detection and vision cones. They sometimes have a tendency to not stop walking however, so when the code is a bit more stable and they are behaving themselves we’ll look at getting a dev diary up to show you it in action.

Hopefully soon we can start looking at some combat!

That’s all for now folks!

Alex

In Game Screens

I’m a day late on this but as promised here are some images displaying the new tiling world art and objects as well as a glimpse of the player and alien sprites used in the world. These are actual screen grabs taken from the prototype running in 720p on the PC.

It’s all starting to come together which is great and I’m hard at work knocking off the tasks on my check list and glueing all the cracks together to form one cohesive whole, I’ve also registered for development on the Playstation Vita/Mobile. It’s getting rather exciting!… Anyway, have some pretties!

Prototype Screen: World

A screen grab of the prototype world as it currently looks.

Prototype Screen: Inventory

An in game grab of how the inventory looks with some new item art and overlaid onto the world.

Prototype Screen: Safe House

A screen of how the safe house currently looks in the prototype.

Items… Lots Of Items

As promised last time here is some item artwork that I’ve been working on. The larger ones being used for the item details screen and the smaller ones being used in the inventory list screen.

Inventory Item Art

Items that you will be able to find and use.

So far I’ve been keeping the exact details of the game a little hush hush until I’ve got a full working prototype but I’m sure looking at the items available you can glean a little bit of info about what the game is.

The Invasion Begins

This past few weeks I’ve spent finalising the design of the primary foe in the game and incurring Wacom claw by drawing a pain staking 34 different frames of animation for the beast to be used in the fight screens. Here’s a few for you to check out…

Fight Screen Alien Sprite Art

Alien artwork used in fight screens.

I’m currently working on a load of inventory artwork which I will no doubt post up soon after they are done, but at some point in the next few weeks I’ll also try and upload a more detailed concept of the Alien for you to take a gander at.

Until then, enjoy!

Run Sprite Run!

It’s been rather quiet around these parts just lately but that should be changing very soon and to kick things off here’s some new artwork I’ve been creating for the main characters sprite animations during fight screens.

Fight Screen Player Sprite Art

Player artwork used in fight screens when switching cover.

Things have been progressing nicely while finishing the work for hire contracts I’ve been working on as well as having a week off to go snow boarding. A lot of the updates to the game have been programming and tool related which isn’t very exciting visually hence the lack of updates. For those interested the game is now building for Android though I can’t create the APK as the game is already too big for the free version of Xamarin, I’ve programmed the new cut scene engine to be used for fight screen intros and story related stuff. I’ve also created a script based tool for animating and exporting XML for the cut scene panel artwork and animation curves. The other good news is that Firing Pin is now a member of Microsofts BizSpark Programme which gives some neat benefits including free copies off Visual Studio Pro and a 12 month Windows 8 developer account… Yay!

Until Next Time!