For this project I will finally be going back to the game project I started last semester with a focus on some major changes in art, game design, and underlying programming. I’ve been wanting to jump back into this project for a large amount of time, but I didn’t think I could make noticeable progress in the span of the time I had to work on the project. I have the majority of spring break to work on this so I believe I can showcase the major improvements I would like to make.
The first thing I would like to do with the project is to reorganize the loading flow of the game. I want a large portion of the map load instead of the room by room loading I have had in the previous iteration. This will make the game run much more smoothly on screen transitions by maintaining player momentum, saving player location, and generally loading faster between similar areas.
The second thing I would like to tackle is making the environments more interactive and deep. This will involve implementing parallax in the backgrounds, creating foreground objects, adding mappings to create lighting effects, and general animation polish.
Lastly, I want to implement a UI and a bit of combat. This last bit is a little ambitious to say the least, but I believe I have enough time to nail that out in the coming weeks. I will have a basic, hack ‘n’ slash form of combat was well as a health system to be handled by the game. This project may end up having a bit of its scope reduced because of deadlines, but I’m really hoping to have it all taken out for showcase in 2 weeks.
