Posts tagged Gremmie

Let me be the first to tell you, as a producer my job never gets old. Keeping track of everything is hard. One of the big things we are moving toward right now is StoryTeller. StoryTeller, you might remember is our tool which is used for building Emerald Kingdom. It becomes more and more usable every day. But even if it were 100% usable and bug free tomorrow, we would still need assets to plug into it. Things like gamesprites, objects, tiles, etc. One of the things you have to do before you even get to creating these things is having a discussion about scale.

Scaling may sound easy. But it’s not. There is some math involved to make sure the proportions are correct, at least in terms of tile space. It gets ever more complex when you are working isometrically. Fortunately, we have some awesome folks like Uriel, Samael, and Sandalphon, who’s job it is to get it looking right. Over the last four days, one of the main things that has happened with StoryTeller is, we have changed some of the behavior in terms of how layers work, (tile, object, border) and we have added some dummy models to the object list to start getting ideas about scale…

Scaling test in StoryTeller. Gremmies everywhere! Also interesting to note: we have border painting. Gotta have a way to define walls!

Samael worked on figuring out a new and better system of working with layers. While that happened Uriel collaborated off and on with both Samael and Sandalphon to get the exact proportions needed. This was all necessary legwork: Sandalphon cant make anything move until she knows what sizes she’s dealing with. Lot’s of back and forth involved. Even I got involved, because well…everyone wanted to know what kind of quality I expected. What we wound up settling on is roughly 100px in height, and about half the width. I wont bore you with the actual math. If Uriel or Samael wants to, they can fill in the details separately.

With the scale problem out of the way, now Uriel can make base model parts, Sandalphon can breathe life into them, and Samael can add the gamesprite functionality into StoryTeller. Not bad for a days work! All that happened on Friday, here on Monday…the producer tests the newest build. Everyone is a happy camper!

Of course, it does not end there. Lots more to do. But I like to keep you readers updated with where we are, and how we’re moving along. =)