The babiest of steps
My beautiful dark twisted baby
Piece by piece
Goodness, look at that screencap. What a hideous thing! I have never loved anything more completely or helplessly. It’s coming together.
Credit where due; that is KB’s UFO & UFO tower, RTS Engine unit and building assets & mini map, Innoble Software’s Better Spheres! sphere (which I have mercilessly deformed), Sean Duffy’s Diverse Space Skybox, and an image I swiped from the internet who’s attribution I have mislaid. Contact me if it’s you.
We’re half-way through the 2nd sprint and figuring out how we’re all going to work together. KB is making sketches and models, the folks at Double Coconut are building the PlayFab interface for future admins and players, NC is provided much-needed criticism, and I’m testing long-held and much-loved concepts.
Wait, what’s that now? NC is providing much-needed criticism? Ain’t that like the last thing anyone needs when setting off on such a commitment of time, resources, and ego? Actually I feel just the opposite. It’s much better to have the clearest possible vision of the road ahead, even if that vision skews slightly negative. Because let’s face it, my enthusiasm is skewing very positive and I’d like to maintain that optimism not through sheer force of will, but through the cold intellectual understanding that in this case, my optimism is hard-fought and well-founded.
NC’s feedback on some core issues (the spherical map, asymmetrical forces and the balancing thereof, and the Alien faction’s abduction ability) are salient. That means that they go to the top of the exploration list once the data trainer is up and running. It will be a very hard thing to let go of the spherical map (hinted at in the screen cap) but if ultimately we make a better game without it, then without it we will make a better game. We’re trying to converge on “best” here, and some brutal pruning and trimming will be needed, I know this.
OK, yeah, BUT imagine you’re playing the game and you see some hideous monster marching into your line of sight, looming over the horizon, it’s shadow falling across your forces. That’s going to be a tough moment to work away from!
So, what was accomplished this last month; proof-of-concept for runtime mesh/collider creation and deformation, air-layer collision segregation for flying units and nascent eclipse lighting, explored sponsoring fiction writers for extraneous content with ML. Oh shoot almost forgot; new concepts for back-story and game title! We’ve been calling it the Unnamed Monster Project for quite a while, it’s starting to stick, which is bad. Instead of UMP, may I offer you…
Every thousand thousand years the gods or fear and terror weaken and threaten to pass out of existence altogether. At this moment, always and forever at this moment, the planet Hope is thrown into dark eclipse by the last spirit of Deimos, the father of all fear. During this eclipse, all aspirants to the True Throne of Terror birth themselves in great and ravenous number; they do battle for the right to be known as the true source of horror itself for the next ageless time.
The sun dims, hidden by the ancient face, and red light colors every surface. The people cower, and wail, and die. The monsters of every mind roam the land. This is
The Eclipse Of Hope
Eh, I don’t know. It’s start in the right direction. Hit me up if you can do better!