K… well.

That game I'm working on is going kinda smoothly.

Still kinda patchy on development, still running in to continuity errors with the environments but I have an idea that should fix that, which I'm going to go with.

So, more graphics stuff, added some tiles with pre-rendered light effects and all, turned out looking nice in context. Won't be used often, just to make certain areas pop and stuff, you know.

So… screens. again. I think it's best in the bottom screens. Adds to the ambiance.

Made a ton of tiles for the architecture to add more variety to the look of the place. I figured it'd be a good goal to make each room visually unique in some way. Add landmarks if you will to keep the environments from feeling monotonous. This may sound like a purely aesthetic decision but really, making the environments feel less monotonous adds to the experience of playing the game. It's more engaging, and that's more an aspect of game-play, don't you think?

Anyway, This game is getting boring to work on but at the same time I'm more ready to finish it.

I've come to realize I just want it done or I'll lose interest eventually and I'll regret not releasing it. So… yea.

Also, I'm improving the enemies, stress-testing them for bugs and fixing them. I'm also trying to add more enemies to the environments, sooo… yea.

Oh, to answer Rob's question:

For more complex tiles I pixel them starting black and white often, then color them in Photoshop, adding shadows and lighting effects. I blend, combine, or duplicate and edit pre-existing tiles for continuity. On top of that, there are objects that cast ever changing patchy substractive shadows. To further add atmosphere, there's usually different lighting effects on the screen. For example in these screens, there's a yellow additive haze on the top and bottom of the view, but fades to transparency in the middle. However, without Photoshop I couldn't produce anything near these kinds of graphics.

The first screen is in-game, the second is the exact same place as it appears in Game Maker.