{"author_name":"Gabriel","cat":"October Challenge 2012","comments":[{"author_name":"zakchaos","time":"September 27, 2012 6:53 pm","epoch":1348789980,"text":"Participate!","spam":"N"},{"author_name":"","time":"September 28, 2012 5:47 pm","epoch":1348872420,"text":"Well, for now, the least I can say is that I still can’t resist tweaking it a little further. Who knows… I’m slowly making my mind… \ud83d\ude00","spam":"N"}],"epoch":1348783260,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"51374","p_author":"Gabriel","p_authorkey":"11099","p_urlkey":"87067","p_title":"To participate or not to participate in the October Challenge?","p_cat":"October Challenge 2012","p_event":"LD24","p_time":"1348783260","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"2","p_status":"UPD5","us_key":"11099","us_name":"Gabriel","us_username":"gabriel","event_start":"1345766400","event_key":"12","event_name":"LD24"},"text":"

I’m not sure… The idea of not working directly on The Journey of Eko<\/a> for an entire month is kinda scary, to be honest… But I admit I’ve been having a lot of fun working on a Singularity<\/a> post-compo version for the last weeks! Here’s how it’s looking now:<\/p>\n

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For those who don’t remember, here’s what the LD24 version used to look like:<\/p>\n

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In short, what I did from a graphics standpoint was importing assets from The Journey of Eko, and adding some shaders and particles. And of course removing the silhouette look.<\/p>\n

As for gameplay, I did a new combat system from scratch, now based in directional sword slashes and combos. For those familiar with Smash Brothers Brawl, it now plays somewhat like a fast Ike (“We like Ike!”). I’ve also focused a lot on visual feedback for the fight.<\/p>\n

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I was\u00a0very, very impressed<\/em>\u00a0by deepnight’s Strike of Rage<\/a>. If you haven’t played it yet, you definitely should! He was able to pull off a great, professional level look and feel for his beat-em-up in only 48 hours, it’s really freaking amazing. I played it over and over again, and decided I would implement some of his ideas in Singularity’s combat – specially particles and camera shake. Deepnight<\/strong>, sorry for reverse-engineering your animations aesthetics – that’s the price you pay for being so good! \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

Anyways, the game that used to be Singularity is becoming quite decent now. I’ve been further developing it initially because I wanted it to be all it could be without the LD time restriction; then I continued because it was serving as a decent prototype for The Journey of Eko’s combat system. Now I don’t know the reason anymore, I think I’m doing it just because it’s fun!<\/p>\n

So, I thought: maybe I could turn this “Singularity<\/a> \/ Journey of Eko<\/a> crossover” into my October Challenge game? I could work on it for a month, get some experience on actually trying to sell a game, and get community feedback that could then be directly applied in our main project. Or I could just stop working on Singularity and get back to the ‘real’ Journey of Eko. Ohh, cruel doubt!<\/p>\n

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Tell me what you think! And while I can’t decide but can’t stop improving my sword combat prototype either, do let me know (tweet to @pixel_cows<\/a> or something) if you are willing to receive the most current build to test \/ provide feedback. It will be greatly appreciated!<\/p>\n

Cheers,<\/p>\n

Gabriel<\/strong>
\n www.pixelcows.com<\/a><\/p>","time":"September 27th, 2012 5:01 pm","title":"To participate or not to participate in the October Challenge?"}