So, I'm still busy joining forums and sites and meeting as many people in the community as possible. I extended invitations to several Youtube posters who are making games, but not really members of any site yet and am hoping they'll join to have their projects featured. I've also contacted several independent game designers for interviews, but I won't reveal any names until it's confirmed, so I'm hoping we'll get some good info off of them. Apart from that I've added two new forums to my list of active sites, please feel free to check them out: Creation Asylum & Project RPG.
I'd like to take a moment to thank the members of Creation Asylum for offering suggestions on improving the blog's layout, so I'm going to be playing with some different background images and color schemes; please don't be scared away if you see an odd arrangement.
As you can see I don't have a webcomic for this post, so I'd like to have an open invitation to any artist interested in having their work appear on the blog. I'm trying to incorporate as many elements of the community and its members here, so if anyone has a comic they would like posted I encourage you to contact me and we'll get it up here. As you can see it just makes posts more interesting and better to read.
There are so many small things you can add to your maps to make them not only more appealing to look at, but also more fun for the player. I'm going to use my project: Waterside as example here. For anyone who played Jay's One Stop Pop Shop, you'll remember I had many new systems at the time like being able to choose your wardrobe and change clothes and also I incorporated little things like being able to turn on every lamp post. I now do that in every game. Why? Because it makes boring towns interesting. The more the player can explore, the more they will. So please, and I emphasize this, be creative. Here's an edited charset I made with already several examples for you ready to use.
- Flower boxes that are empty and can be planted/picked
- Mail boxes that receive mail
- Baskets with fruit you can take
- Lamps that can be turned on/off
- Signs that can be read
- Empty counters that can have merchants added
- An entire flower cart that can have a little girl selling flowers
- Mountain and rock edges that grow moss
So use your imagination, it doesn't take an artist to open up a chipset, modify something to make it full/empty, working/broken, bland/colorful.
These little differences make games so much more appealing and interesting.
I'll be adding the charset to the Resources Section along with another set of very useful trees. I've also added a new tutorial, which can be found in the Tutorials Section. As always I'm looking for new projects to review and cover, webcomics to be posted, forums to join and obviously you; members to read hopefully the fun stuff I have to present. Thanks and stay tuned after these messages.
Rm Link of the post: Spriter's Resource
Sounds like you're gonna be kept busy and active for awhile! (Me too, though, working on my own game, AMG, very time-consuming getting things just right at the moment, but hoping to have something concrete - a demo - soon!)
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