Hello! It has been thirteen weeks since I last worked on Introvert, a personal Platformer project that I had worked on for three weeks before the start of school. It is now my holidays again! (Yay!)
I have roughly three weeks of holidays left and I do not intend to waste it. I began working on Introvert last night. Some of the things I have to get settled is a schedule and a list of the several milestones I hope to achieve in time to come. Unfortunately, I realised that I cannot really do a lot in three weeks. After these three weeks, I have to do an internship that will shorten the development time I have even further.
Today, I researched for some references on how games did their backgrounds. Two games I looked into were Super Granny, a platformer by WildTangent and MapleStory.
I first decided to do the background for the dark forest scene.
BG_DarkForest
I took quite a number of hours, but I did manage to create something rather decent. Although I had never used Photoshop before at the beginning, after 12 weeks I have somewhat picked up a little bit of Photoshop. It is indeed a really good tool. I am currently slowly transiting to Photoshop from Paint. It was really fun creating this picture. Also, it reminds me of the game Slender, which is a horror game. I went to draw a slender guy in the picture (the "ghost" in that game), but of course I deleted it eventually so you can't see him. I also added some fireflies because I did not want this to be scary, but more peaceful instead.
I also went on to create a second background. This one is for the early levels.
BG_Reminiscence
This picture took a shorter time. I also went on to create a third background. (This really is more time consuming than I thought).
BG_GrowingUp
This picture looks incomplete, but the bottom right is actually covered by platforms so I did not draw that area. This background will be used for one stage only, so unless I will reuse it for other stages, it's unlikely I'll fill up the bottom. The top left wall is pretty plain though, and I might add something there. But this is what I have at the moment.
I found many reference pictures that I saved in my powerpoint, but I don't think I want to upload them here. I need to draw at least three more backgrounds:
- Level Selection Stage (this is an actual playable stage so it needs a background)
- BG_WhereWeMet: This will be composed of a happy scenery.
- BG_Melancholy: A scene which portrays the mood of the late levels.
THE 3 BACKGROUNDS ALL LOOK REALLY AWESOME! I am very satisfied with the backgrounds so far. I was complimented that I had drawn them well and relatively quickly, and I was really happy to hear that. There is one problem though. When I tested the backgrounds with the levels, I found that the DarkForest background does not match with the tiles in those levels. The green wasn't the same, and the style just seems so different. The background just does not match with the tiles. I am going to rectify the tiles to fix the problem.
I might have to redo all my tiles in the future.
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After much testing, and a slight recolouration of the forest tiles, I went to implement the backgrounds in the game. I also prepared a code to animate the backgrounds, because there is a possibility that I will animate the backgrounds in the future. Currently they are static and does not look very good to me. For example, the fireflies in the forest background aren't moving. I hope animating the background won't add too much lag. The game is going to have more animations in the future.
What about the TD Game I was working on previously?
Well, I have decided to give up on the Tower Defense game. I wanted to only work on it during my free time. However, I have absolutely no free time to dedicate at all. Since it would take years to finish this particular TD game, I have decided to abandon it. I did create some artwork for fun, but those are purely for fun. If I were to create a second game, it would not be a TD.
Oh one last thing
A friend gave me the idea of making a sequel, and name the different "games" appropriately because this is more of a story based game.
One of the ideas he gave me for this particular chapter was "Introvert: The Beginning". Frankly speaking, I don't think it will be possible for me to create subsequent chapters unless some friends are willing to help me. It definitely isn't easy making this game. I am already very happy with what I have now, but of course, I won't strike off the idea of multiple chapters since after all, it's an interesting idea. I shall focus and work toward the completion of this game.
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