This blog will give me a chance to go into more detail on art, game design, and features. Since this is the first devlog I'm going to tell the basic story of our development history and games.
Read MoreRUNED (Formerly Remnant) Devlog 3 /
Working color version of 8 frame walk cycle.
It's been a long long time since the last Runed devlog, and this will be the last devlog coming from me. Due to various circumstances, I politely resigned from the project as of August 13th, 2015. I know that's already a long time ago, but I wanted to button up the issue just in case somebody was waiting to hear more about the game from me. I've also been terribly busy on another game dev project that I can't wait to share more about.
Developing a game requires a great deal of hard work and time. In all I was on board for nearly 8 months as the sole artist for Runed. In that time, I learned a great deal about the technical intricacies of developing a pixel art game. Not only that, my pixel art skills vastly improved from beginning to end. Just look at my first devlog post and some of my most current pixel art to see for yourself.
When it comes to game development you often hear the words, "Never give up." I definitely have not given up. Sometimes you have to quit one thing in order to open to doors to something better. Indeed, that I have. The fire burns strong.
Where most of the game's light comes from.
If you are interested in learning the current status of Runed, or if you're looking for a C# programmer, try contacting @DeathGameDev for details.
Namazu Colony /
The great Namazu Colonly, one of countless celestial beasts with alien cities seamlessly interwoven into the hulking anatomy. Only seldom seen through the most powerful telescopes pointed at the farthest edges of the galaxy, much of these space gods and their inhabitants remains a mystery.
This concept of giant space creature/cities has fascinated me for some time and I would love to further explore the theme and develop fiction around these enigmatic titans. Although, it's definitely not a simple subject to convincingly depict.
The first challenge was scale. This piece was created in a 640x640px composition, which may not seem large in itself, but that's a lot of dots to fill for pixel art. In terms of the fish design, it was very fun but tricky to incorporate a staggering amount of precise mechanical details into an organic shape and still preserve enough recognizable anatomy of something that's characterized for being soft and curvy. Furthermore, the contorted gesture of the fish causes the perspective of the mechanical details to shift several times across it's body. This not only made it hard to manage the perspective of the forms, but also the lighting effects.
Although, it wasn't all tedium to slowly chip away on this over the course of 2 months. I had a great time designing the mechanical details and pondering the potential stories in this fantastic universe. I always enjoy making color palettes as well, and these synth wave inspired colors do the space theme justice.
Throughout the creation process I periodically snapped screen shots to document my work. While the interval between screen shots was somewhat inconsistent these images capture a nice summary of the entire process. You can see I developed the face before I fleshed out the rest of the body. Sometimes I like to test a concept by fully detailing a small portion before spending much time cleaning up the whole. This allows me to quickly establish scale, perspective, colors, and can help me better visualize the complete work better than just a rough line drawing.
In spite of the difficulties, I'm quite pleased with the results. By pushing through this challenge I have become a better pixel artist, and am already well into my next large-scale piece!
Remnant Devlog 2 /
When I first began work on this project in January, I had little experience with pixel art and never created it for an actual working title. Therefore, the more I do and learn about pixel art, the worse my earlier work on Remnant appears. This growing awareness began to significantly hamper my motivation to continue working on this title. Fortunately, I have grown enough to see the weakness in my work, and divulged the opportunity to make things better while the game is still in early development.
Over the past two weeks I've been revamping nearly all the graphical assets with a much greater focus on defining the overall style and staying consistent by sticking to a few key design points. The first point is the character's physique. I've decided to make the characters more stocking and 'game-like' without sacrificing realism. The next point is color. This time around I've been much more careful about color selection as I build and refine one consistent palette. The final point is to push the animation further by making everything more bouncy and lively. I'm hoping these points will help give the graphics a distinct flavor.
The shot below exemplifies a little bit of everything I've been doing to improve the visuals.
New tiles are not only attractive, but keep focus in the playable area.
I was especially troubled by my first attempt at the character designs. Some of these new designs are still being developed, yet the improvements from the bland old versions are apparent.
Great improvements have also been made to the tiles and environmental sprites. The color palette is doing well to supplement colorful accents to the predominantly brown hues.
Another new addition is progress on the bird character. This particular bird's flight abilities were handicapped by a life in a cage. However, By pressing and holding a button the player can fly for a short time before a stamina meter depletes.
Lastly, I want to show a sample of revised animation for the human's idle animation. While simple, it captures the lively spirit I want to infuse into all of the animation. Don't mind the working color scheme.
That's all for now. Hope to have more animation to show you next time.
Remnant: Devlog 1 /
Since early January 2015 I began my first game dev project after making a partnership with an aspiring programmer via twitter. I've been wanting to somehow get involved with the game dev scene for quite some time, so I jumped at the chance. Since that time, progress on Remnant has been up and down, but overall steady.
Remnant is a two dimensional puzzle platformer, with a twist. In this darkly wondrous world, the player receives a mysterious necklace from his dying grandfather. Rune magic imbued in the necklace allows the player to shape shift into various animals. The unique abilities of each animal form must be used throughout the game in order to progress through a subterranean labyrinth and uncover a shocking secret that won’t stay buried forever.
As the game is based in 2D pixel art, my first task was making 32 x 32px tiles for the environment. As simple as it seems, making a cool looking texture for dirt in such a small space definitely requires a special sense. Fortunately, my lifelong passion of gaming has instilled me with such a sense, however, I still have much growing to do.
Beyond making tile sets, this learning experience has expanded to involve me in character design, animation, level design, story telling, concept art, and really all faucets of game design outside of actual coding.
look forward to future devlogs detailing more specifics about the game as it develops. Follow me on twitter to get the most current peak at new content.
Quest of Fury: Devlog 1 /
I was only 7 years old when I made the original Quest of Fury; a board game with light rpg elements where the players must build their armies and assault the opposing side. Even for a 7 year old's invention, I remember the game being surprisingly fun, as it was often played among friends and family. Eventually we all grew up and the whereabouts of the actual game elude me to this day. But with a clear memory of the game, I decided it would be a great design project to try and remake it. While I've added several new features, the core concepts remain unchanged. Sure enough, it's still fun! Fun enough to possibly hit your table some day.
The world of QoF is divided between the Light Side and Dark Side. Which will you choose?
Landing on a sword or axe icon results in a battle. Each side of the realm has 4 different levels of monsters. The monsters are represented on battle cards below.
Currently I have yet to design cards for friendly units and items. Updates and further explanation on how to play the game coming at a later date.
Pulse City /
What started as a simple study in perspective quickly exploded into a vibrant sci-fi world, as I became inspired to make it a plausible concept for a city builder/alien invasion defense game. Behold, the Pulse City.
For this isometric study I used an exaggerated perspective by making nearly all the vanishing lines at 45 degree angles. This technique offers efficient production of geometric forms. However, the repetition of shapes tends to make things look flat. While flat graphics can be charming, I wanted to convey a great deal of depth. In order to do so I used overlapping, vertical hierarchy, and even some atmospheric perspective by varying the level of detail.
In the images you can see a great deal of the process. I started by simply designing one building at a time. Once I completed a handful of unique structures I began playing with the composition. From that point on it was just a puzzle of finding the perfect placement for all the structures, and building new ones where needed. I used the same process to fill out the background with dozens of unique ship designs and the orbital defense colony.
Prints and more!
Monster Mash /
Here's a nice collection of familiar Halloween faces created just for the sake of sharing some good October time fun.
