I like to do things in spurts. So here's some things that have been done lately:
Animations and particle effects! Also notice that little location marker the pony walks to? It's a small thing that needs a bit more work, but...
razzle-dazzle.
And transparency when going behind large objects. And some regular trees! And an iron fence. And Stella' cottage!
I figured transparency would be pretty important with a game with a perspective like this. Everything being flat, and with some objects being tall and big, it would be pretty annoying to have your character hidden behind these things. It'd also result in wider level-design, as without transparency you wouldn't be able to see anything behind large objects, so there'd be no use placing objects behind one another.
Some things I'd like to progress on:
- Interiors, specifically Stella's, since she has story and character, which would make it more interesting to work on. However, with multiple scenes I would need to work on...
- Scene/game managers. Currently I just have this once messy scene that I test everything in. In order to make new scenes right now, I'd need to copy and paste the player and camera into each scene. I should probably make a script that spawns my character automatically in every scene where I want characters to spawn.
- The town of Merryville, where Stella lives. Town name's semi-undecided. Laying out a whole map of what the town looks like would be a good idea, to properly gauge size and playability. This game isn't going to be fast-paced, it's meant to be a chill, fun, pony-filled land. A Ponyland, you could say. But because the ponies move at a rather leisurely pace, I want to make sure the maps are condensed and interesting no matter where you are. I'd rather avoid vast, empty maps.
- Inventory system would be a great first piece of interface work. But alas, with inventories come XML files and thinking about how things are going to communicate with servers and bleh. Maybe a cute saddlebag inventory icon could be enough to work on for now.
