The Production Blog of Sword 'N' Board
 
Picture
Wow, so I finally found some time to update!

For those of you that don't know I started a new job recently, but of course I was also still working through my last 2 weeks of my old job so I was having to bounce back and forth between the two, and as you can imagine it left me little time to do anything else!

But, I found myself with some time here to finally work on things and get an update, and let everyone know what's going on!

I finally started working on the Start Menu for the game, which is part of what you see here to the left, though I do still feel it's missing something. I'm sure it will hit me at the worst possible time. But things are really starting to come together!

I also started improving the animations for Sidd himself. While I think a few of his animations are great and really don't need to be changed, there was something about his downwards walk cycle that always bothered me and I just couldn't put my finger on why until recently.

If it's one thing I learned during the production of Sword 'N' Board it's that a downwards overhead perspective is really weird to work in, and when designing assets you really have to take that into account. Not only that, but you really have to think of the "angle" that is suggested to the player. It's a fixed camera angle, but it's also 2D. So all of your assets and your characters need to fit in with that angle, otherwise they will stick out like a sore thumb.
Another thing to remember, is it's not 100% top down, or even completely correct when it comes to perspective so it can drive you a bit crazy at times.

When I did his first Left and Right walk cycle, it turned out great, and really fit well into the game. When i did his downwards walk cycle I was happy with it at first and it slowly started to bug me. Well, after doing his upwards walk cycle (in the correct perspective and angle) I realized that when Sidd traveled down, his perspective changed, and something was telling me that it just didn't look right.

So now, it's all about fixing the mistakes with that, and really getting that fixed and ironed out.

The main thing that I'm really worrying about this game, aside from the obvious things, are the controls.

So many Indie games that I've played have just terrible controls, and it's really the games that have amazing controls and an obvious polish that seem to stand out, and I don't want this game to be at all different when it comes to that. After all, you're running around and fighting imaginary monsters and I want the controls to be as responsive as possible. There's really no use in making a game, that's going to end up frustrating its players because they can't control the character the way they want to.

As it stands right now, Sidd will swing his sword as fast as you can hit the attack button, which I think is great. If you get hit by a monster you can only blame it on your own inability to hit the attack button fast enough. I originally thought about having him swing his sword as long as you have the sword button held down, but that felt really too cheap, and a lot like E Honda's hundred Hand slap move from Street Fighter, and I just didn't think it fit very well and so I removed it.

This way also the player has the ability to attack when they choose or to move and reposition themselves in case they find themselves dodging projectiles or other enemies.

Right now, it's just a lot of animations and refining. I hope to have more artwork to post soon! So keep an eye out on the Facebook for that.

The Beta is just around the corner!




Leave a Reply.