One of the things I've been working on.

Well, it seems I’ve completely forgotten to pay attention to my own site, now, have I? Well, there are a few reasons for that, actually.

First of all, since this site is gonna be where I’ll talk about my personal game-related projects, I don’t really like to post stuff that’s not related to that. Unfortunately, that means rare updates since I’m barely making it in college and have to focus most of my attention to my classes. It doesn’t help that I have a buttload of art commissions on the side, either, which means even opening an art program brings me headaches (though strangely not the good ol’ pencil and paper… meh, must’ve gotten used to sketching by now).

Speaking of which: I’m still having trouble with the sprite designs for the game. I mean, platformer sprites I can do okay – side-view perspective’s easier for me – but overhead sprites? Not my forte, which is bad since I’ve almost finished the design doc for that project (or at least the part explaining how the world and the dungeons work). It’s weird – I can do pixel art for platformers, but I don’t know how to design one; and yet even though I can design an overhead adventure game (think Zelda) pretty well, the art always comes out… well, mediocre, at best. I’m gonna start using the artwork from La Pucelle, Disgaea and Makai Kingdom as reference, by the way – especially La Pucelle (Ryoji Nomura is my idol). I feel like those are the most expressive pixel art styles I’ve seen in recent memory, which is what I’m going for with that project.

By the way, I now dub this work as Project Midnight (working title).

Now, the way I wish to design games is thus: If I ever make more than one game based on the same world, I will never, ever use the same genre twice (which means, of course, that I’m gonna have to learn to design platformers one day… *shudders*). Still, I might have to break this rule if the games end up too large for Xbox Live Indie Games (though I hope not – that’s the secondary purpose for the pixel art), but until that day comes I’m gonna experiment with various tools and genres. First genres I’ll experiment with: overhead 2D adventure games, and interactive fiction. Why the latter? Because it’s fun. Also, it helps me set up some of the characters in the other game, as well as to make sure I have the backstories worked out. See the screenshot at the top? That’s the project. I’ll be using the Inform 7 engine for it ’cause it’s easier than the alternatives without sacrificing power.

…Well, that’s it, really.

(Note to self: change banner, please)