Hello readers,
Recently I’ve had the urge to get back into some dabbling with game design again.
The game this blog is about (Cron Game), is a type of game I’ve had in mind for quite some time. I dont really know how far I will get with this approach, but the rough concept is as follows:
- a strategic game
- isometric 2d world
- contemporary setting (no elves and orks and creepy wizards)
- easily accessible -> no tricky installations, just click and play
Since I’ve had some previous experience with 3d engines, I have reinstalled my old 3d editor and tested out some simple renderings of static structures.
an isometric rendering of a little house
rendered to 128px wide ISO Tile
Here I tested how applying a texture will look like:
.. But before wasting time already on creating textures and other details, I first want to explore the more general issues with an isometric rendered game.
During a prototype stage, I intentionally stay away from making art-assets “nice”. Doing so will prevent me from over defining the look and feel of the game too early. (The mind gets intuitively used to a specific look, and then its harder to deviate and see the better alternatives)
…
Hui, a first scene (is it a village?) clicked together in Gimp.
This is purely a mock up, as I have not worked on an isometric renderer yet.
I think its good general advice to first set up a scene in a GFX editor, before jumping right into the depths of the code. Its just so much quicker to iterate through some ideas graphically – rather than adjusting the code base.
Seems to be going well for now. I can already see the little AI-people going about their days and the battles ahead 😉