xray walker

Another bit of adobe Illustrator + Spine animation

This is a prototype player character. he has no arms but a big gun - That's all you need for most games right?

CYBLOB

Hola!

So I've been creating more stuff in Spine and it sure is a pleasure to work with. There are a few more features I'd like but I'm pretty sure they al live in the PRO version. - well maybe one day I'll treat myself.

This is a low level enemy for a project I'm working on with the good folks at SuperChop Games. Just trying stuff out at the moment, time will tell.

formal wear animations

Hullo,

I've been raking through my old hard drives tiding stuff up and getting rid of some unnecessary gigabytes when I came across these.

Made for a wedding themed project that never made it off the starting line (the marriage did however and is going well :¬)

IT LIVES!

Hello people!

Apologies, not checked in here for waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. Checking my analytics I'm surprised at the number of page views this blog gets, considering how long its been since I added any content. Now I just feel bad.

Anyway I'm working on 3 separate game projects at the moment, only one of which I am at liberty to blog about, but I'll do my best to share what I can here. If I post a few old odds and ends I've got lying around, maybe I can start blogging again reasonably frequently. Wish me luck (or motivation)

Anyway,

First up, I have recently purchased SPINE a slammin' skeletal animation tool. It's really going to open up the sorts of things I can create and I am pretty excited about it.

Here is my first ever swing with it, pretty ropey, but great things will follow!

He gets about for an old fella.

Here are a few more animations - it's rather satisfying making an image move, and then there is another thrill when you get to control that creation in game. Yes, fun stuff this game malarkey.

I'm not dead!

Hey amigos.

...not dead, just busy (or should that read lazy?)

anyway I have been up to various game related bits, and I will blog them over the next few weeks.

Nothing more on the 8² tileset (booo, hisss) - one day I promise I'll get back to it.

In the mean time check out the moves on this old timer! pretty sharp, amiright?

Rock out

lo fidelity castro

Hey hey amigos,

Here is a something I did, trying my hand at some animation. I very much enjoyed the additional possibilities of describing form through motion. For example, the individual frames for the dog's running animation look like nothing, but some how it comes together and evokes dogishness when animated.

Anyway, this might turn into something. fingers crossed.

7DRL 2013

Hey Hey folks, back from the wilderness again!

Its been 7DRL time and once again I teamed up with my good pal Ido Yehieli. This year neither of us had a great deal of time on our hands, but we managed to bash out something presentable and playable - all praise to Ido's programming wizardry.

   

Fisticuffsmanship is a simple game about killing folk. We've tried a few different mechanics to make bumping in to people a little bit more interesting and strategic and to give fights a more dramatic flavour. Some of the mechanics worked out, some didn't. Ill try to do a little write up soon to chew the ideas over some more.

From a graphics perspective it was made using a custom font for programming convenience (I didn't make the splendid text font - that can be found here). It was pretty fun mucking around with Fontstruct and I think the end result has a certain charm. If your on a PC and you want to get a better look at things, hit 'Ctrl +' a few times to biggerfy everything. Once I've had a chance to rearrange it, I'll post the font I made up here for people to have a muck around with.

Anyway, have a go and see what you think.

Long time no post

I've not touched the tileset in a long while, and it will probably be a bit longer before I return to it. I've just had to much else on my plate in recent months.

Anyway, I'm still alive, and to prove it here is an animated doodle. If anyone wants to make a game out of this little fella let me know.

Still in space

Another planet. I had stopped making these, but then I thought of a combination of filters that would let me light up night side cities. All the planets I have posted do far have been hasty mockups but at some point I'm going to take a little time to make 6 or so high res well themed globes.

elements

Here are some graphics for a project currently in the works. Not much to say about it for the time being except its gonna be a good one!

Heroes

Here are four Heroes (click to see full size), depicted carrying a range of weapons. from left to right: unarmed, club, crook, fork, staff, spear, knife, sword, bow, crossbow, hammer, axe, mace, flail whip.

This is a bit of a fools errand but was quite entertaining. Next I get to try and add a shield to each of these poses.

I'll stop soon (probably)

got it licked now!

experiments in space

This is a small test piece for another potential project. knowing no 3d programs I had to use Photoshop to make my revolving planet - turns out it makes this kind of thing pretty easy.

anyway - just a small technical victory for me that I wanted to share.

Clothes

Here are a small selection of clothes to go with the small items I have made. The top row consist of various peasant and warrior outfits, the second row are just a few slightly silly costumes. Can I get a 'hell yea!' for my red warrior bikini set?

I originally had trousers in the set and was considering making some gloves as well but have decided there isn't much point - Aside from being pretty dull to draw, Three armour slots seem to be sufficient for a player to customise their load out (would those plus 1 leather pants of the dragon really add that much?)

Anyway - at some point I still intend to make multi tile weapon and armour graphics - in which case the most generic of these items would be used to represent items of their kind in the play field. I guess it all depends on what kind of a game you want to make....

Check it!

Howdy folks,

So far, for the latest version of the tileset I've had 148 downloads, that’s pretty phenomenal from my point of view and I'm proud that so many people have taken an interest in my little project. I've had a few people get in touch to let me know that they are working on something, and one Heroic Champion has even been sending me regular builds of their game!

Over at  Droidgnome Cursed Dungeons is gearing up for its first official release, and while still in the very early stages I think it’s shaping up to be a pretty tidy roguelike for Android. Droidgnome has done a great job of implementing touch screen controls and a nice minimal interface (half the battle for a mobile game) and solid level generation that throws up a nice variety of levels. You should go check it out, and if you have an Android device pile on the pressure for that public release.

It has been incredibly helpful for me to see the tiles in action, seeing the sprites shuffle around, watching fires crackle and making doors and chests open and close has been more gratifying than a grown man should admit. It’s also given me a chance to see whets missing from the tileset and what needs more work. All in all, its a world away from staring at my static Photoshop files for hours on end.

So people, what are you working on? Show us your screenshots, send us your early builds, blog it, leave a comment or send me an email. I’d love to see what your making of the graphics and to hear what you need to complete the epic games of wonder I know you have hidden away.

Remember folks - Sharing is caring!

Revised cliffs

I've just tried to tweak the cliff tiles a bit for improved readability. To help get the perspective across I have added a layer of shading to the cliffs to darken them at their base, I have also added a very slim shadow (all there was room for) to help differentiate the different levels in the terrain.

What d'you think? any improvement?

Cliffs of Insanity

...well not quite that bad, but they did give me a headache when a power-cut lost all my work and I had to start again.

Anyway, here are some cliffs for the overworld. They follow the same perspective as the indoor tiles (roughly) but are designed to work on a slightly larger scale. Because of this there are a few rules for their deployment. Front facing cliffs take up two rows of tiles and the tale ends of cliffs also take up two tiles. i have also included varients for each piece to insure the rock formations look relatively natural.

I want navigating the overworld to have a different pace and texture to the dungeon levels. Partly to add variety to the environments, but also to accentuate the claustrophobia of subterrania.

Hopefully when I have tiles for buildings, roads, rivers, plant life and ruins some of you fine folks will be able to make some exciting world gen algorithms.