New Game Prototyping

Published March 27, 2014
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Decided to ditch the 3D platformer for the time being and go back to writing a 2D platformer. I find a 2D game demands less in terms of quality of content and isn't as immediately comparable to AAA experiences and can be a lot more simple fun.

I'm still using 3D rendering approaches but in an orthographic context, so I can still use models and skeleton animation to free me up from drawing sprites (which I'm not good at).

I saw a picture of Braid in the days before Jon Blow hired an artist and it made me realise that I can get the whole mechanics of a game in place using almost meaningless art before I worry about the visuals side.

So I've put some routines in to draw my skeleton as exported from the modelling package just with lines and dots and am going to just get the mechanics working using this debug drawing approach, safe in the knowledge that, in theory, I can replace the skeleton with a rigged model at any point in the future and all should just work.

So far you can walk, run and fall and it handles slopes correctly. Need to get jumping, edge grabbing and climbing sorted next.
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Comments

dmatter

There's a pretty interesting article on Gamasutra about how the artwork for Braid was developed. Worth a read I think.

March 27, 2014 05:56 PM
Aardvajk

Thanks. That was actually the article I saw the image in. Really hit home to me that the visuals can be sorted out long after the mechanics in a game.

My little stick man is running around and feeling very nice and fluid after some further tweaking. Hoping that having the mechanics working well will keep my attention long enough to make some half-decent art assets.

March 27, 2014 08:53 PM
Burnt_Fyr

Glad to see you working in 2d again, I thought squishy had a lot of potential and I was sad to see you abandon it to focus on your modeller.

March 28, 2014 04:04 PM
Aardvajk

Thanks Burnt_Fyr. Without meaning to get to emo about it, afraid that Squishy project is far to linked in my mind to a period in my life I'd rather forget, but all the positive words I've had about that project are still hugely appreciated.

March 29, 2014 11:51 AM
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