Spear of Brutality - end of year update

Year is ending a despite my good efforts (and general laziness) I  was not able to meet my goal for this year. Biggest factor here however were the fact that I started studying my Masters degree during Autumn and that took a considerable amount of my free time.

As promised in the first post I have decided to share parts of what I have so far for Spear of Brutality and the Trail of Schabbs:

• Brutal Spear stuff
• Trail of Schabbs textures.

Feel free to use them as you see fit as long as you credit me.

I will continue working on the Trail of Schabbs next year and keep updating, if not monthly, bi-monthly about the status.

Spear of Brutality - late October update

So the end of the Year is closing in fast so I though it is time to set some goals for these last two (or one and a half) months.

Last month I was basically planning what kind of enemies should be in the demo and came up the following list:
- Mechanic (normal soldier),
- Soldier in hev-suit
- Dog (non-cybernetic),
- SS

Soldier in hev-suit and the dog is already finished so this months goal is to get the mechanic and the SS done so in December I can focus on finishing the demo. Alongside the enemy graphics the rough scetches for the levels should be ready.

This is it for the late October update, more information at the end of this month / beginning of the next.

Spear of Brutality - late August update

Or should  I say September update...

End of August I started studying my Masters degree in the field of Technology leadership so that has taken most of my time leaving only a small slot to focus on this.

Because of that I have made a decision that I will put Spear of Brutality on  hold for now and fully focus on the Experience... This is due the fact that I see the Experience having more potential than SoB as the content is more original.

To ensure I am able to deliver, I have set my goals for October: to plan all the enemies and hopefully finish some because making the sprites for the enemies is the most time consuming part.

Hopefully next time I have some real news for you.

Spear of Brutality - late July update

Sorry for the late update, also this is a short one...

Turns out that trying to organize the object ids was a mistake and it brought more problems than I anticipated... After trying the whole month to get things in order I decided it would be better to return to using original ids instead.

This month I will be reverting the ids back and also looking into enemies again.

Spear of Brutality - April update

Some unfortunate new... Due things getting hectic with work I was not able to meet the goals I set for the month: to finalize the first few levels for the Spear of Brutality.

If there is anything I can take from this experience is that I should start making schedules and allocating time (e.g. couple of hours per week) to work on the project to ensure that I get things done in time.

So what would be the goal for this month?

Well, to finally start working on the maps seriously and complete them one by one. If everything goes smoothly next time the sewer section (3 levels + boss) is ready.

Spear of Brutality - February update

Let's talk about mapping for a moment as for the past month I have been studying the way iD software did their maps.

 When I am creating a map myself I try to come up with realistic structures and room desing that could be found from real locations...

This usually leads to the map layouts being quite similar across the levels (e.g. there is always a storage room for ammo next to storage room for health) with quite many copy-paste rooms found and all the rooms using only pure geometric shapes. Also what is common to my maps that I try to break them in thematic sectors that are usually connected by some sort of central room.

 Maps created by iD software are way different...

In iD's maps the rooms come in all shapes and sizes and usually what the room represents can be deducted from used sprites and textures (e.g. sewers use grey/dirt bricks, dungeons blue bricks, strages red bricks and castle grey walls and marble).

Also what is typycal to levels made by iD is that they tend to be circular: each area of the map is connected to each other in a way that the player can do a circle if all the keys are collected. Exception to this is the boss levels that follow quite simple funnel like structure: player starting area that leads to ammo/health storage followed by the boss arena just before the elevator.

 So now my goal is in Spear of Brutality to create a feeling like you would be playing levels from Spear of Destiny while still keeping some of my own usual tropes.
Aside for studying maps and making some tests I have mostly focused on working on the enemies for both Spear of Brutality and the Experimence... One of the new enemies that player will face is the guards in radiation suits:

Spear of Brutality - January update

The first of the twelve updates, so let's see what has happened... Actually I am still bit uncertain in which format I should be writing these "progress reports" so let's just start with simple status: For the past month I have been working on missing pick-ups and weapons sprites taking it as my goal to finish them by the end of the next month (examples of the new pick-ups in the end of the blog post)... After those are done I will be finally moving to finishing the enemy sprites. In the next updates I will be going in more detail sharing also concept art but also trying to elaborate my thoughs behind certain choices whether they are about sprites / textures / maps or just features... Also it would be nice to hear what aspect of the development you would like to hear so I could write in more detail.