Deck16

Another Vox Venio development update.

Tonight I made a larger level and noticed the frame rate dropping. A few tweaks to the tile-drawing and camera code and everything was back to smoothness — even with a fairly massive level. Better to find this stuff early, I suppose.

Next on my list are multi-tile tiles (e.g. both a foreground and background tile on the same square) and N-layer background textures (each with variable parallax). I should also implement some voice commands that give finer control, such as “come here” and “step left”.

Other than that I’m a bit worried about doing anything significant. Art direction is going to be important. I don’t want to spend time making an enemy type, for example, if there’s a strong chance I’ll have to unpick it once the art is decided upon.

Also the tile-size and physics are dictated, mostly, by the art direction. Pixely, vibrant games have small characters, large tiles, and exaggerated physics. More realistic or darker games are usually the opposite. So I’d like to have a rough idea of what physics and tile-sizes I need to work with before I make too much stuff that moves.

I think it might soon be time to look for artists. If you’re an artist, why not contact me? Artistically, my mind is empty, so Vox Venio’s artist will have a massive impact on the look and feel of the game. You read about the basic idea of the game here, and read further updates here.