Devlog #3

As per each devlog, I am impressed with the progress that I have made.  It may not be much, but it is mine.  The most noticeable change in my game is in the color palette.  I did not like how the main character blended in with the background.  A protagonist such as Toby should be the focal point of the game.  I thought the red orange color helped Toby stand out and it creates the dark, creepy aura of dusk.  The color change also warms up the ambience, which I like.  Along with this change, I arrived at the conclusion that I was restricting my artistic talent yet again.  Instead of randomly placing assets during development I decided to hand draw a scene and then add the assets in to match what I drew.  This makes it easier to create a more vibrant and living world.  I especially like the windmill complete with animated turbines. 

I mentioned in the last devlog that I was going to create another level, and I am a developer of my word.  I created an interior to one of the buildings which the player could enter, unfortunately I must rebuild the level because of necessary change in asset size.  It is not essential to export my art assets at 400% size.  In all actuality, this made some image textures too large to import into Unreal Engine.  I took the time to reimport every image texture which ruined the placement of the sprites in game, but I believe was important bug fix.  I have included an image in this devlog of how the level looked before the change.

As you may notice, I focus a lot on artwork because that is my background, but there are a few programming developments as well.  I have programmed a simple shooting mechanic for Toby.  I say simple because currently all the mechanic does is spawn an arrow sprite that gets destroyed after three seconds or when it collides with something.  This mechanic is designed to work like a crossbow that needs to be reloaded after each shot; This may change in the future depending on its practicality and amusement.  I think it would be cool to include a system where the player can choose different types of bolts which perform various effects on the world.

Lastly, I programmed a few triggers that allow the player to interact with the world such as level changes, climbing ladders, and tutorial cues.  Some of these interactions come with their own animations.  I am becoming much better at pixel art, and sometimes I am tempted to return to the beginning and remake everything because I know I could do it better.  I have refrained from this because I need to have a finished project.  When I move on to the next project, I can implement my new and improved skills.

For the next installment of the Chosen I plan on including a legitimate playable demo which will require a focus on programming and game mechanics.  Of course, I will work on artwork, but this is not the focus.  My code is also getting messy, so I need to simplify the code.  For those of you familiar with coding this usually involves using switch statements instead of cascading if else statements.  Stay tuned for more exciting content to come!