One of the hardest things with W:E's development has been the smooth integration of art assets. I have two different artists working on the project, and despite my best efforts there are always some aesthetic clashes. This problem is compounded by the fact that all three of us live in different parts of the world. I am desperately looking for a suggestion to a solution, because the current system is beyond broken -- it was never able in the first place.

Anyways...

Another slight aesthetic problem is the particle system. For spells and attacking it looks pretty good, but the blood particles just aren't up to grade. Currently, the blood particles are different sized crimson particles that shrink and fade out as they are emitted. The system works but is quite lackluster and I think it could look a lot better.

Early W:E Screenshot with the ugly blood

Criticisms welcome.

In January I will be working on a project for work that will use the cross platform PTK engine. I had never heard of PTK prior to being assigned this project and I was quite curious as to how it worked. So I downloaded it and got started...well, not exactly. The documentation is pretty bad and getting it set up with VS 2005 wasn't the most pleasant of experiences. However, after getting it set-up, the engine is actually quite easy to use.

PTK uses OpenGL or DX (depending on what you specify) and allows raw OpenGL calls at any time. Which is nice, because I am not limited to the bare-basic rendering calls the engine has built in. My favorite part about the engine is the KSound2 class, which is basically a wrapper for OpenAL. Although the class is relatively simple, it is really nice to use OpenAL and .Ogg in only three lines of code.

I decided to write a small Zelda-esque app with the engine just to get used to it. So, last night I spent about an hour with it and implemented time-based animation/movement, scrolling, and a flexible tilemap. Not too bad for an hour. Of course, I also put lots of arbitrary sounds in for the hell of it.

PTK Example -- 'The Dark Labyrinth'

Yes, the game takes place in a labyrinth full of grass...


I'll probably post some more screenshots tomorrow of W:E, as I need some feedback on how the spells currently look and I think I am going to keep working on 'The Dark Labyrinth' as time permits also.