Upgrading Website

I'm currently going from version 5 to version 6 of Squarespace, so if some things look wonky, that's why.  I expect to have it more or less in its final form by Monday

Kickstarter Preview

So, I haven't disappeared into obscurity.  On the contrary, I've been hard at work making a new trailer for use in Kickstarter.

Thanks to a tip from my pal Matt White (of Ghost Song fame), I've been grabbing animated gifs of my progress in an attempt to help grow the fanbase beforehand.

What do you think?

More Sprite Work

Here's an updated version of Trace's sprite when unarmed.

Revised Trace Sprite

So by now it's pretty clear that I'm not going to finish this gig by the end of 2013.  On the plus side, however, I'm married, my dog is recovering well from cancer, and the day job seems to be picking up.

A long time coming has been Trace's sprite overhaul, which I've put off for months, if not years, owing to just how long and tedious a task it would be.  However, the base sprite is done, now!  Here are some screens of the new sprite running around in the game world.

Minor Update

I've had very little time to work on it, latey, but I did manage to get this cutscene in game.

EDIT:  The narrator here isn't a native English speaker.  Hence, the lack of correct grammar :)

My Best Friend

So you might have noticed I haven't updated in a while.  Unfortunately it may be a while still. Max, my best friend/fursborn/producer, is in California being treated for cancer.  The good news is he has an 80-85% chance of cure, the bad news is Chloe and I really miss him, and since driving back and forth to the hospital takes a full day, that is what we'll be doing with our weekends.

I'm still slowly working on AV in the evenings as well as talking with various publishers about ways I can work on AV full-time, but family comes first, always.

Axiom Verge In USGamer Feature

Jeremy Parish, the perennial expert on Metroidvanias, interviewed me and a bunch of other indies for a recent feature on www.usgamer.net:

With Metroid, Indies Do What Nintendon't

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/with-metroid-indies-do-what-nintendont

It's a great article for anyone that's a fan of Metroid-like games!

Pixel Painting

Work in progress.

And now with bubbles.

Address Disruptor

Here's how it looks when you turn your glitch ray on enemies, effectively scrambling them.  What else would you like to see from this feature??

Inventory

This past week I've been working on the inventory screen.  I'm at the point where the number of unique items has made it cumbersome to give each one its own controller mapping, so I've switched the mapping to a Zelda-like interface with a single button for attack and another button for item.

To keep the action flowing, I've updated the quick-select interface to allow selecting a weapon or item by pressing a shoulder button during play, Mass Effect style.  The action pauses as long as the button is held to keep you from getting killed as you browse your arsenal.

If you managed to find the (ancient, moldy, outdated) demo that's floating around, you'll see that this is different in that it features two rows, as well as pausing the gameplay as you scroll.

Graphically, AV is somewhere between NES and SNES, so I took most of my inspiration from games of those eras - probably A Link to the Past more than anything else. But it's always tricky to try to balance these things. I may yet add button icons pertaining to the relevant platform, or a means to select a separate "chat" interface similar to Phantasy Star IV or Metal Gear Solid.  What do you think?