Tuesday, April 26, 2011

In Profundis progress (4/25)

I've gotten the platforming part working acceptably for now.  I've added one more task to accomplish before making the new video and going on the ALL-OUT MEDIA BLITZ which honestly just includes posting to Reddit and submitting to Rock, Paper, Shotgun and maybe Tigsource.  But that's because it's one of the key features that I think will make In Profundis worth playing: the limited visibility routine.

When you can see the map around you on your screen filled it, the feeling is entirely different when you can only see the area right around you.  But just limiting what is shown to what you can see at a given instant, I think, is not fair to the player.

My compromise is a roguelike-style on-screen "map memory" that shows places you've seen before but can't now with a different graphics style.  The idea is to present those areas with a "hand-drawn" graphics set, like sketched with a marker, but for the time being they're displayed with schematic-style shapes with line shading.  The graphics aren't bad I think, but I need to work more on the visibility algorithm.  It works currently acceptably in real-time, in fact I'm often seeing a substantial time gain since I don't have to draw the parts of the map that haven't been seen yet.  But it's a little _too_ realistic I think; for gameplay's sake, I think it would be better if the player had a little extra visibility, maybe a little around corners.

Here's a screenshot, which is also the first public viewing of the little guy who's the placeholder I'm using for the player (he's crouched down in the middle of the screen).  Click for full-size:

1 comment:

  1. After reading your design articles, I've been wanting to play a game made by you (I have yet to play Mayflight). Looking forward to be playing this, for sure. Good luck!

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