Hello to all, we trust you have been exposing yourselves frivilously to the vastly increased does of ultra-violet saturated sunshine we have been blessed with, enticing even the most hardened of gamers from their subterranean domains to enrich themselves with some golden rays... well, nearly all hardened gamers - we here at FPS have collapsed the entrance to our futuristic cave from the inside, ensuring all possible distractions are well and firmly removed from sight. Another week of slow but steady progress, we have been concentrating on various aspects of development.
The primary point to concern ourselves with is the unique ability each bird posesses. There needs to be enough variation beween each ability to keep the gameplay pleasantly diverse while maintaining the main aspect of relaxation that the game revolves around. Having narrowed our decisions down to a select few, the practicality of integating each ability into the game in a functionally realisic way is paramount as the limitations of a game engine present oppurtunities for intuitition and lateral thought in the design process - nessessecity is the mother of all invention as they say, and our engine is no different.
Developing the graphical shine of the game has been a development-wide process. As our picture of the final game gets bigger, so does our understanding of what features need expanding, diversifying or improving - what will give the game that much more enjoyment and accessablity to the player? The particle sysem that forms a lot of what appears on-screen is being carefully revised and improved by Jules to give a more ambient and satisfying effect as are various other elements of the visual side. Textures are stil being improved by Rich to simulate the landscapes that form the environments of each level more realistically, and small tweaks to terrain geometry are bring made to work hand in hand with the edited textures.
Clouds - Flight has lots of them, and each one needs to be individually placed in 3D space and the coordinates mapped out by hand, then encoded into the level files for playtesting. As laborious a process as this may seem, it is crucial to our understanding of how each level plays considering the varying factors of each bird's manouverability/speed etc. and so with this spatial honeycombed map of clouds it's possible to really see how each level is shaping up and the differences between them.
Our other activities this week are so covert that if we told you we would have to come to your neighbourhood and hide in your bushes so we're afraid we are sworn to secrecy, but in coming weeks we may reveal the other ideas that have been floating around, um, Floating Point Studios.
Cheers!
