graystripe2000 - Tumblr blog

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This week in gamedev is all about menus.

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Oh? What’s this?

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Current progress on Astro Abductors. There’s now a HUD, human, enemy, fireballs for the enemy, health system and background.

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After the attempt at creating a character for my last game ended up being a disaster, I decided to shelve it and make a game using only Kenney assets. This time, you’re an alien in a UFO abducting people. I managed to get the abduction mechanic working, until AI was added to the enemy and somehow broke it.

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Finally came up with a concept sketch of my new game’s character.

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Decided to try to learn blender by modeling a rock from the cancelled game Crash Landed. Used Vertex paint for the textures. Also have the import to Unreal Engine 4. Used a photo from Crash Mania as a reference.

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Game update time. Lately I’ve been experimenting with new puzzle ideas which are:

* Break a box to get the artifact inside. Bring all the artifacts to their pedestals to proceed.

* Shoot a crystal to light it up. Light up all four of them to proceed.

As you can see, I’ve been replacing the placeholder visuals with some finished assets, courtesy of OpenGameArt.

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Must’ve been really old like late PS1-early PS2 old. Since AFAIK those couldn’t do normal maps.

The real reason Cynder and other characters changed colors in DOTD

"I won't talk much about Spyro because for me it's one of the worst productions I've worked on. Our engine was too old to correctly display normal maps. It was decided to boost glossiness and had an orange bloom. The whole game render looked oily and ugly On most ELB productions, we didn't have an artistic director and decisions were made by the studio manager. These choices were decisive in the final rendering of the game. It was difficult to bring subtlety to the textures since the render was broken." - Yannick Gombart

This explains SO MUCH. We finally have the actual reason why Cynder’s change in scale color from black to indigo/dark purple! And the Chronicler's colors changing from gray to bright blue! And it has nothing to do with story!

Cynder, the Chronicler, and other characters had their textures changed so that they can stand out in the messy bloom that covered the whole game and a result of DOTD’s broken game render and outdated game engine.

The game also didn’t have an art director, can you believe it?? So Etranges Libellules’ studio manager had to make the decisions. That explains why the character designs were all over the place too!

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A sprite of Stealth Elf from Skylanders.

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Managed to make the camera look towards certain objects when something like a door opening is happening. Plus, a placeholder main menu screen.

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Year of The Dragon playable characters in their TLOS version:

These 4 formed an emegency squad in the story, helping the dragons and other species during the war againts the dark armies. (These designs are heavily inspired by scrapped Reignited concept art)

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Re-Did my characters sprite to be more consistent with the others. There’s also a placeholder pause menu.

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Been adding puzzle mechanics. So far, I have a door that only opens when you light all the torches, and crystals that send your laser to whatever direction it’s facing. Some crystals can even be rotated.

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My game now has a camera, finally. Sprite’s just to show where the player is in relation to it.

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You know, the Legend of Spyro was two decades ago now. (You're welcome for feeling old btw)

The fact that there are STILL psychotic Spyro/Cynder shippers who seem to spend their every waking moment hunting down people who dare make ship art of them with other characters, even if it's not a serious post, is honestly insane. These people would have to be in their mid-twenties now at EARLIEST.

We all have our childhood ship but lordy, there's probably better things you could be doing with your time instead of having an internet meltdown over it.

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Idle sprites are done! Hooray! 🥳

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The Rayman sprite I was using as a placeholder has now been replaced with an actual character.