Hi every one,
my name is Riccardo Caprari, "Capro" in short, and I just recently joined the site to share my game "Syzygy" with you all.
I started this project in 2015 after a few months of closely following Handmade Hero and I have been working on it in my spare time ever since. I am mostly a solo developer: I also worked on the game's design and art assets, while a friend of mine provided the music.
The game is complete and only a little bit of work on the portings is still needed. Hopefully I will be able to release it sometime later this year.
Although never being an active member of the community, I have been following Handmade Network since day one and I have found great insights and help reading through the forum's discussions. Furthermore, my debt towards Casey's Handmade Hero is impossible to overestimate: everything I know about how to program joyfully and efficiently, I owe it to him.
I firmly believe in the handmade way of doing things, not just in programming but in life in general; I am sharing my project with you as a testimony of this belief and in the hope that it will help inspire others, as I was inspired when first watching Handmade Hero five years ago.
That said, I would like to write some blog posts about the game but I am struggling a little bit in choosing interesting topics to write about. If there is anything you are interested in, not just programming-wise but also in terms of game design or something else, let me know and I'll try to create a worthwhile article about it.
PS: As you might have noticed, I transferred the last part of the project description in this post as the central paragraph. It felt more like a timely self-presentation than something about Syzygy itself.
my name is Riccardo Caprari, "Capro" in short, and I just recently joined the site to share my game "Syzygy" with you all.
I started this project in 2015 after a few months of closely following Handmade Hero and I have been working on it in my spare time ever since. I am mostly a solo developer: I also worked on the game's design and art assets, while a friend of mine provided the music.
The game is complete and only a little bit of work on the portings is still needed. Hopefully I will be able to release it sometime later this year.
Although never being an active member of the community, I have been following Handmade Network since day one and I have found great insights and help reading through the forum's discussions. Furthermore, my debt towards Casey's Handmade Hero is impossible to overestimate: everything I know about how to program joyfully and efficiently, I owe it to him.
I firmly believe in the handmade way of doing things, not just in programming but in life in general; I am sharing my project with you as a testimony of this belief and in the hope that it will help inspire others, as I was inspired when first watching Handmade Hero five years ago.
That said, I would like to write some blog posts about the game but I am struggling a little bit in choosing interesting topics to write about. If there is anything you are interested in, not just programming-wise but also in terms of game design or something else, let me know and I'll try to create a worthwhile article about it.
PS: As you might have noticed, I transferred the last part of the project description in this post as the central paragraph. It felt more like a timely self-presentation than something about Syzygy itself.
Edited by Riccardo Caprari
on
Reason: Added trailer embedding to make it easier to find
Welcome.
You should add the steam video on the project page so that we can see what's the game about, because without it I don't think the description conveys the game mechanic.
I was going to say the font looks weird until I saw it was changing based on the tile shapes. Then I was going to say it's weird that sprites stretch when you change the tile shape. And noticed that in fact everything is drawn based on the selected tile shape. And that seems great.
But the reason I didn't saw that right away is that if the video or screenshot is not big enough or in it's original size, those details are "filtered off", and look a bit off putting.
The tiles you walk on seem a bit off in my opinion, as they don't look "pixel art" like the sprites. Could they be made of many little "pixels" ? Like the "flowers" drawn on them with maybe some color variation between the pixels ?
I would be interested to know about the rendering. Do you use the same assets and render them differently or have separate assets for the different tile shapes ?
You should add the steam video on the project page so that we can see what's the game about, because without it I don't think the description conveys the game mechanic.
I was going to say the font looks weird until I saw it was changing based on the tile shapes. Then I was going to say it's weird that sprites stretch when you change the tile shape. And noticed that in fact everything is drawn based on the selected tile shape. And that seems great.
But the reason I didn't saw that right away is that if the video or screenshot is not big enough or in it's original size, those details are "filtered off", and look a bit off putting.
The tiles you walk on seem a bit off in my opinion, as they don't look "pixel art" like the sprites. Could they be made of many little "pixels" ? Like the "flowers" drawn on them with maybe some color variation between the pixels ?
I would be interested to know about the rendering. Do you use the same assets and render them differently or have separate assets for the different tile shapes ?
mrmixer
You should add the steam video on the project page so that we can see what's the game about, because without it I don't think the description conveys the game mechanic.
Thanks, it's a good idea but I haven't really found a way to do that.
I added the trailer in the link section and I also embedded it in my first post.
I hope it's good enough.
mrmixer
I was going to say the font looks weird until I saw it was changing based on the tile shapes. Then I was going to say it's weird that sprites stretch when you change the tile shape. And noticed that in fact everything is drawn based on the selected tile shape. And that seems great.
But the reason I didn't saw that right away is that if the video or screenshot is not big enough or in it's original size, those details are "filtered off", and look a bit off putting.
Thanks for the feedback. If I zoom in the trailer too much it would probably become unreadable, but I should be able to produce some nice screenshots in which the shapes are clearly visible. I'll try that!
mrmixer
The tiles you walk on seem a bit off in my opinion, as they don't look "pixel art" like the sprites. Could they be made of many little "pixels" ? Like the "flowers" drawn on them with maybe some color variation between the pixels ?
Yes, this problem has been on my mind for a long time and I never really found a solution. What you suggest is certainly possible programming-wise, but there are various game design reasons why I cannot do that. It's a trade-off really and I decided to prefer solid design against a better graphical aesthetics.
mrmixer
I would be interested to know about the rendering. Do you use the same assets and render them differently or have separate assets for the different tile shapes ?
This is certainly a question I could write a blog post about.
Meanwhile, the short answer is that the assets are the same and I draw them differently for every shape, lerping between the various methods during shape changes.