Sprites

Are you using the old ones or the new ones in those screenshots, Tom?

Suck this

Made some new sounds, machinegun and vacuum noises. I like vacuum_running_002 the best I think.

Snow-Ash

Ah fuck it - it looks like snow:

Backgrounds

I've been working on transparent backgrounds, then switching over to black for the cleanup. The conversion between .tiff and .png is what produces those halos sometimes.

Also: The files I'm sending you via email have transparent backgrounds, right? Those are the ones to use.

Spotlight

I added the spotlight in, but you can't control it yet. Also, the guts and lamp limb are now connected in a rickety manner (they wiggle!):

I think an interesting look would be small static spotlights attached to the gunner nest which are angled sharply down so you can view below and around the nests. I guess it would just be an addition to the lamplight, but mostly it would look cool.

Fucking blog images

Posting images on the blog makes them lose their transparency. Anyways Rollin, you should stop working on white backgrounds, instead you use black backgrounds that way you will never have a white halo of pixels - just my 2 cents.

Everything So Far

Lines of Fury

I was looking at the latest screenshots, and I thought to myself, "Some of those parts need outlines." So here is a big update of Necrocarriage parts.

And Then

There could be a third layer for the backgrounds? Maybe? They might be affected by the light differently, I was thinking...

That

...Is an incredibly good idea. That is going to look SO much better. I can see it already.

Perhaps there could be a second "layer" of objects- ones not affected by the light-source polygons?
That way, we could have things like LED lights (or nightvision goggles) that just look bright in the darkness, but don't actually give off a lot of light.

I'm thinking things like "You can see the zombies' red eyes in the dark as they approach."
The player would be aware of the zombies, but the machine gunners couldn't act without the light.

Lighting instead of darking

The original idea for lighting was to symbolize unlit areas by covering them with a black sprite which varied in opacity. I was thinking a better method would be to change the opacity of the individual game objects on a scale 0-1. So a completely lit object in the spotlight would have an opacity of 1 and would be completely visible. A partially lit object would possibly have an opacity value of .5 which would leave the object half transparent. And of course, an object in the dark would have a opacity value of 0 which would be invisible. These values would also determine the machine gunners aim on an object. There would no longer be a need to tint things black where the light doesn't hit, instead the spot light and lamplight will need sprites that show magnitude and direction. I can make those sprites though - Rollin.

Check Out This Flashlight

http://files.filefront.com/The+Apocalyptic+Game+About+Penguins+Client/;8218466;;/fileinfo.html


...(Play through to level two or three).

...Where'd they get those sweet lights?

What to Do

Hm. Now the question is: How do we make the levels look good like that?

I'd like to see the carriage so far with the lighting- I'm not sure the edges of some of the newer parts look right.

Also: The machine gun nests are a little bit too far off of the carriage's hull- their shapes should fit into the lines on the chassis like a puzzle.

Level-esque

I took the mushroom background out and replaced it with a simple 128x32 terrain sprite and scaled it to 1000% instead of 100%. To get the geometry of the terrain sprite I used a polygon mapper. Here is a screen shot with diagnostics so you can see were the vertices of the terrain lay:

Which way to the beach?

I'm showin off my gunz:


Good stuff Rollin!

Gore Fest

Hey, the ash snow thing is a cool idea. Just had a chance to bust out the USB keyboard I got last week, so I'm playing around with REASON to make some dramatic tunes. I'm going for symphonic synth-deathmetal on the current one.

Nice gunner chairs too Rollin. Dig the ammo belts.

Hey Tom, we might need some kinda green particle to act similar to water for Zombie Puke!

Particle Tom:

Particle effects we desire:

1. Blood (falls off, splatters around, and stacks when zombies or characters are hit with things).
2. Gold (hidden up in rafters with body parts; falls and stacks on the ground when knocked down, and is able to be picked up and stored in the fuel tank (behind the icons)).
3. Smoke (comes out of the two exhaust pipes on the fuel tank, and out of the cannon when it is fired; also starts billowing out of parts when they get damaged).
4. Fire (comes out of carriage parts when they are severely damaged; maybe a bit could shoot out of the cannon when it is fired).
5. Water?
6. Dust? (when things hit the ground or run into each other)
7. Ash snow (sweet idea- maybe just in the tomb-ish areas of the game? Or certain levels?)

Basically, the blood, gold, and water would work much the same way, but be different colors. The smoke and fire would work in a second fashion (floating up instead of falling down and splattering around).

Is this okay?

These Look Better

(yup)

Killaz

Locked 'n' Loaded

(bitches)