Hello, everyone! I'm back, as expected, with the new game that I'll be working on.
As I've mentioned before, I feel kind of sad about abandoning Point of Stealth at such an early point of development, and so I specifically chose this project such that I can leave it at just about any time (and, let's face it, that likely will happen at some point, even if it is at the end of the competition) without feeling like I left it incomplete. To do that, I've avoided planning it out very much and only thought about what features it could have just enough to be sure that I've at least got a good foundation.
So, my goal for this project is to make an atmospheric 'game.' I've never really tried to make something atmospheric before, and I'm thinking that by trying to do so, I'm almost certainly bound to learn a few things that'll be useful later on. If it all goes well, then I'll be free to build upon the 'game' (which I'm currently not planning to include much more than walking around), and if nothing works out at all, then there's no problem moving on from an exercise in game-development.
Okay, I realize that I haven't really said anything about the actual 'game,' but that's because there's not much to say about it at this point. I'm going back to 2D, although I'll still be using Unity and this time it will be from a side-view, rather than my usual top-down perspective, and the setting will be a very dark dystopian society (and when I say dark, I'm talking about the lighting!). Atmosphere can easily be ruined by bad artwork, but clearly I want to get away from spending too much time drawing/animating, so my plan for this 'game' is to put more effort into the appearance from a programming side of things.
For instance, rather than find a 3D model and animate it or draw what I need, I'm going to have an Invisible Man wearing a hat and a cape and who will be, well, glowing slightly. I'm still trying to nail down what I want the glowing-ness to be like, but so long as I have something like that to give a sense of presence to the bulk of the character, the hat to give him orientation (for instance, while running it's going to be slightly lower and tilted forward), and the cape to give an impression of motion, I think I can get away with very little animation. There will be some, and I'll still need artwork for various other things (the background, namely), but I'm hoping that I can spend more time on things like the lighting and maybe weather, or just a sense of weight to movement and stuff like that. Unity is going to be very helpful for this, particularly for the cape the player will wear, because it's able to do cloth simulations that will lend a sense of credibility to the character's movement that I expect to be very valuable.
Anyway, enough talking about what I expect things to be like for now. I'll try to get back here later today to post about the first sprint!