Interstellar Tortoise

(7/23/08)

I am feeling really good about this new art style. It is really working out so far. I got a letter from a person I’ve been corresponding with who lives in ???? . This guy found my website and played the first point n click game I made (Mysterium), who dug it and was asking about what else I was working on. I showed him the prototype/first pass of Mysterium and he described the Art style as “off-putting” which I found super useful to hear. He encouraged me to do what I think works, but his words only further confirmed that I need to go to a more accessible direction.

Haven’t gotten too much done in the past few days because my dad had to go to the hospital. He is okay now, but it was a bit of a frightening experience.

One thing that I am starting to notice is that for any feature to become properly implemented, there are usually more steps than I first expect.

Example: Have a ‘save’ function in the game (something that I implemented in a rudimentary form a couple months ago). Well, you can’t just have a button that says ‘save’ in the HUD of the game. You need to make an options screen with a save option, probably with several different slots of memory for other players ( or for having a backup in case the player didn’t like the outcome of an in-game decision).

If there are several slots, then there might need to be an option to erase or move the data into another slot. Then you need to have a load screen giving the user the option of which of the slots to pull data from. Lots of stuff seems to have extra steps involved.

Well, gotta get to work!

7/18/08

Um… Well… scratch that last entry. 

I did some more tests and decided to do all of the work as vector art inside Flash.  I came up with a really simple buy appealing style that I can create really quickly and should be able to reuse as much as the pixel art that I was thinking to do. 

This is kind of a big deal for me because I am so accustomed to doing things so detailed – This will be a huge departure from my usual stuff.  Here is why I’ve changed my mind:

1.       Small file sizes

2.       reusability

3.       this style is fast to make

4.       Its appealing to the average person

5.       I will learn a new art style

6.       It is totally portable to different file sizes

7.       I can create it right inside Flash

8.       It looks BEAUTIFUL on hi rez screens.

9.       It just feels right

(Journal 7.10.2008)

Well, I finally conclusively decided on the art style for the whole of the game. I started thinking about how nifty it would be if I could get a port onto the DS, and started thinking what it would be like to make everything at that screen resolution.

So I did a few tests. I realized that using the DS screen resolution could do quite a few good things me, as well as for the game:

• Drop the file size for the Art to roughly 1/5^th what I was originally thinking.
• Drop the time it would take to create each background at least in half.
• The production environment would be far more familiar for me – as this is very similar to what I was doing when I worked at Handheld Games. This would also make it easier to make time predictions for scheduling.
• This would make the game more portable into new environments.
• This would make it easier to reuse art in different areas of the game.
• This would make it easier to have a more consistent look throughout the game.
• This would keep me from doing anything too drastic artistically – and avoid alienating audiences.

So I am now committed to this. Its going to be great.