So yeah, my ability to stream weekly has been superbly bad for a while now. Unfortunately it’ll probably get worse before it gets betterm what with the upcoming GDC and so on! I’ll try to do better, believe me!
In any case, today’s stream was very active and productive! I finally divided the game’s map into sub-areas containing thematically similar levels (example above). This has been on the to-do list for a while now but because I’m sure there are several bugs with the sub-map system still & I’ve had to have a testable version available I haven’t dared to really get to it. A quick test already turned up several bugs, although nothing too serious. Once this map system is stable enough, I’ll start laying down the final theming of the levels, sculpting the “main” map and implementing missing features (for example locks that require a certain amount of completed levels to open). Also more music!
Here’s a teaser of an underwater-themed song I made:
Well, well, well… A new year! It has definitely started in a very hectic manner for me, what with all the IGF business. I streamed today for the first time this year, and actually got a pretty large system finished!
Originally I had planned for all the levels to use the same object palette by default, with level-specific changes possible to be done via the level editor. However, after implementing this I realized that I’ll want to have several, maybe even over a dozen levels that use the same changes (to create “areas” or clusters of levels that are thematically similar), and doing all the changes by hand every time would get old fast, both for me and potential users who want to use the editor. Therefore I’ve now implement a theme system, where I can edit and save a theme with a specified palette & changes to the objects, and then load that theme into a level. So next I’ll just have to create themes for all these environments/themes I want to have and apply them to the levels accordingly.
I’ve been dabbling with the level editor for a long time now and I hope this change allows me to move forward, at least for a little while!!
Someone asked me to draw my favourite animal, so I drew some corgis. I think strictly speaking my favourite dogs would be larger breeds (tibetan mastiffs, for example), but corgis do just fine. The largest one had a reference from the internet.
Well would you look at that, Baba Is You was nominated finalist in 4 categories at the Independent Games Festival, the largest (?) indie game competition in the world. One of these is even the grand prize! Here’s the full list:
SEUMAS MCNALLY GRAND PRIZE
EXCELLENCE IN DESIGN
NUOVO AWARD (Basically the “innovative experimental stuff” award)
BEST STUDENT GAME (I’m still a student at the University of Helsinki, mind you!)
So yeah, this is very exciting news for me! Can’t wait to get this game actually done!!!
In related news, I’ll be traveling to the Game Developers’ Conference in March, partially to finally attend this magical event I’ve been hearing so much about, but also partially because I felt that Baba had garnered enough semi-spontaneous interest that it’d be a good idea to show it off in a larger event. Being a finalist in a bunch of categories is a really good additional reason to go, so I guess I’m happy I am doing just that?
