Doing 180

One step forward, two steps back

A lot has been done this month... and then thrown out the window. 

I've started a global tileset swap. I initially chose Epic RPG World as my new tileset. It's a great tileset, I totally recommend it! However, it quickly became apparent that it was missing a lot of tiles specific for this project. Therefore, I started looking for an artist to create the missing elements. The artist was found, but in the process of discussion and forming requirements it was decided that in order to develop a unique style of the game it would be better to create all the tiles from scratch. I'll show you a couple of screenshots of what the game looks like now, but don't get too used to it, because in a month or two this look will change again xD

I also started working on upgrading the controls to involve mouse / touch. I was tempted to go back to the idea of running the game on phones after all... But that idea turned out to be too big; besides, I couldn't think of solutions to some of the problems. So I abandoned the idea. I've posted a bit more of my thought process in this post on Reddit, you can check it out if you want, but it's not that valuable, so I'm not copying it here xD

Responsiveness

Here at last, albeit small, progress is being made. The game UI is now scalable! The game still looks best at 1920 x 1080, but now also looks tolerable on smaller screens, up to 1024 x 768. Support for resolutions less than 1024 x 768 causes certain difficulties and requires significant design changes, so it is not there, and probably won't be. But nobody uses monitors that small these days, right? (if you're reading this on your vintage 800 x 600 CRT - sorry, I didn't mean to offend you). There is no separate optimization for higher resolutions yet either - but maybe it will show up in the future (however, the game already looks not too bad there, so this task is not a high priority).

Intermediate loading screens

Due to increased map generation time, a loading screen is now shown when moving between levels.

What's next?

In the next episode:

• continuation of the work on updating the tiles;
• start of the work on the audio;
• and lots and lots of polishing.

Stay tuned!