Home > Textures working, camera fixed…

Textures working, camera fixed…

May 12,2009 8:17 am no comments

Since we’ve implemented a virtual D-pad, we decided to make the Combat Arena bigger than the screen and have a dynamic camera, which would zoom in and out, following the characters.  This was a good decision (after spending countless hours trying “other” things that didn’t work...see video example of what we tried)  The camera is working better, even though it’s not as smooth as it needs to be for the final.  Each time I play, I’m surprised at how big the Combat Arena seems.  Martin figured out the compressed textures that was giving him a headache for the past few days.  Going from PNGs to what he’s using now has greatly reduced space and memory consumption (1/8th the space.)  Now the entire game loads in a matter of seconds, instead of….well…more seconds (again, it takes about 1/8th the time to load.)

With the art for the Combat Arenas, you can see their progression from Light to Dark.  These have taken the most time to do and we decided to go with more reddish for the dark team (instead of purple and blue.)  One comment from our designer was “Blue!  Blue!  Why does everything have to be so blue!” as he fell to the earth and pounded his fists to the ground, weeping.  The whole idea was to make each team a bit camouflaged on their color square, so they have a tiny visual advantage.  The reddish color works well, because most of the dark team has some type of red in them (trying the blue scheme, they got lost more easily, so our beloved designer was right.)

Now, its just a matter of sending bugs to Martin.  I can’t say enough about him…He has been great!  Working long hours (he was up until 5 this morning doing camera work.)  We’ve got a great team here at React…mainly, I think, because we’re all HUGE fans of Archon and working on this project has been a dream come true for us all.

No comments yet.