Another abandoned gas station concept.
This one was constructed from a plan and a side elevation using a perspective technique that, through the magic of a bazillion straight lines, projects these 2D renderings into a 3D space and this is now my favourite drawing thing ever.
Adventure Games
Another Gas Station Concept
It’s been a long time since I posted any drawings which is weird because of how quiet and uneventful 2020 was. You’d think with basically nothing going on I’d have got more done. 🤔
Drafting a Puzzle Document: Drawing the Room Layout and Puzzle Structure
I’m using Scrivener to draft the puzzle document for my first adventure game and I’m using Grim Fandango’s document as a template.
Initially, I created the room layout in Affinity Designer on the iPad and exported it as an image which was then embedded into a Scrivener document.
Sam and Max Hit the Road
As always, this is full of spoilers!
I think about this game a lot.
I think about how it starts with a woman trying to talk calmly to a man who has tied her up and is threatening to kill her just because she had the temerity to say no and how that’s even more relevant and relatable 26 years later.
Creating Xcode-ready Assets on iOS
Now that I’ve resigned myself to creating assets for all the different devices, I am looking for ways to automate this process as much as possible.
Photoshop has a number of different asset generation options, so that’s easy enough.
However, I do a lot of drawings and design on my iPad using apps like Procreate and Affinity Designer.
Developing a Reusable Instruction System
I have been working on a library of basic components that is designed to work for many different types of game. It abstracts away platform-specific inputs, converting them into platform-agnostic interactions.
Taking this a step further, I have expanded this into an instruction system that takes advantage of Swift’s features to create an Instruction struct. This struct uses pseudo-English formatting that makes adding actions to entities simple and easy to read:
Gas Station Bathroom Thumbnails
Concept thumbnails of a scene from my adventure game. Going for a beat up old bathroom out the back of a rural gas station. The kind of place where you only pee if you’re really, *really* desperate.
Refactoring Components in SpriteKit
As I’ve been working with Entity Component Systems in SpriteKit, I’ve come to realise that Apple’s implementation of the pattern is subtly different to what I understand is the ‘pure’ form of this pattern.
Environment Practice: Balcony in Vieste, Puglia
Our man (and the potential protagonist for my first adventure game) taking a break on a balcony that looks very much like the one we have here in Veste, Italy.
Useful Adventure Game Resources: Puzzle Documents
Since I started my series about handling movement, I’ve learned a lot more about Entity Component Systems and I’m changing the way my engine is structured to reflect this.
While this sounds like a Typical Simon Rabbit Hole, it has fundamentally changed how I approach game engine development and I have made some huge strides with very minimal effort. Thanks to the advantages of ECS, some features that I thought would have to wait for many versions down the line have become trivially easy to implement.