... And I'm Back Online.

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I've been back for about a week now.  I'd say it's harder to return than it was to go away; technology in particular feels really bizarre and kind of alienating, particularly when you've been traveling where there is no electricity and people grow their own food.
Neverthleess I'm back on AV.  For the next month or so I'll be preparing my IGF submission.  I'm not going to go too crazy, but the Secret Feature is in.  Still kind of debating on whether I should include some way for the IGF judges to skip to that part or if they should have to play until they get to it.  It's a bit like the Half Life 2 Gravity Gun in that I don't introduce it immediately, but about an hour into the game.

Another Screenshot!

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It's been a while since I've posted anything.  As usual I'm nose deep developing the game; lately it's been doing level design.  Here's one of the rooms I did recently.  The critters you see are re-used from another area as I haven't coded the AI for this area's monsters yet.  The the background and the mushroom caps are animated.

Oh yeah, I left the ridiculously high frame rate showing.  Retro graphics are great for high frame rates!

Submitted to Dream Build Play!!!!

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For the past month I've been getting Axiom Verge ready for Dream Build Play (or Dream.Build.Play as Microsoft wants us to call it), and for the month before that I was getting it ready for IndieCade.  So FINALLY I get to work on something other than making it all super polished for the judges.  It's like I've finished final exams or something (appropriate for this time of year!)

I'm not sure where I want to focus next.  More areas?  The automap screen?  The dialogue feed?  More expressions for the character portraits?  The sense of freedom is exhilerating.

And now I can play other video games without feeling guilty.  Analogue:  A Hate Story and Xenoblade Chronicles, I'm looking at you!

Super Exciting Save Game UI!!!

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Evidently players aren't that excited about images or video of UI -they just assume it's there, somewhere, and that it works.  They don't really care much about it beyond that.  So my feelings won't be hurt if this post isn't that interesting to you.

But us developers can't get enough of UI - which you've probably noticed if you've ever watched a game trailer put together by a dev.  We love a good menu screen with text justification and tiled window borders and stuff.  So this goes out to all those UI-loving devs out there:  The Axiom Verge save game load screen!  This is an actual in-game screenshot of actual saves from me playing!  

(The middle one was saved before I'd implemented the elapsed play time feature, hence all the 0's).