For better or for worse, it's about time I actually start talking about my current project in the open. I guess you could say "current" is a bit of a misnomer, considering that I've been working on this little guy for something near two years. Instead of saying "I did some work on 'the game'" or "I added some stuff to my 'current project'" I can now easily just say: I've been doing some work on Neverfall.

Of course, I've set up a generic page with a few screenshots, but you won't find much information there. I don't plan on simply revealing everything about what the game will entail, but I will say this: it will be a platformer based on exploration and gaining powerups. It's actually kind of amazing to see the progress it's made over time. Today I was looking at some old videos I took showcasing interesting gameplay mechanics. I noticed that, while progress is slow, the game really is coming together. There is still a boatload of stuff to do.. All in due time!

The thing I'm most excited about regarding this is that now I can post screenshots. The latest and greatest:

While tinkering around with some sprite ideas for the main player I unexpectedly stumbled upon a completely new design which I actually like quite a bit. I was originally attempting to try to stylize the sprite I've been using all along to make it look less flat. The unexpected part comes in where I decided to try something completely new: use a tile sized sprite instead of something much larger.

As it turns out, a sprite of this size has two major advantages. First, it seems to fit the overall motif I was working towards with the game. On top of fitting in with the motif, it makes the world seem much larger (as the original sprite was nearly 3 times the size). Second, it is so much easier to produce animations and new frames for a sprite this size. I don't have any hard numbers, but I'd say the difficulty level is reduced by many, many factors. While the sprite and its animations don't look top-notch, by any means, they do look much better then their predecessor. Recreating 95% of the old animations in the new style (plus some new stuff) took a fraction of the time.

I still haven't fully committed to this new size, but I think I will in the end. To that end, I'm unsure as to whether this will change the overall size of the rest of the creatures in the game. I'd like to think it won't, but a few may have to be modified, at least.

If anything, this new style has given me a bit of a motivation boost. It could be that it seems to just click with what I envisioned for the game... or it could be that the simple change to what I was looking at every time I tested did the trick. I still need to generate some more tiles, though!