Whelp… I’m late on this August’s progress report (and after doing so well lately). The team has been working full-tilt as I finally set some internal deadlines for us to hit. So far we’re actually ahead of schedule. Let’s hope we can keep that up!

Here are some quick updates on what we’ve been up to:

Let’s start with a biggie – we have a new system for doing the player’s animations. We’ve changed from frame-by-frame animations to a custom bone system utilizing forward and inverse kinematics. While there are some animations that won’t translate 1:1, overall this new system will allow us to do a lot of cool things.  First, adding new animations is now a breeze. We’ll be able to do some custom animations for cut-scenes, for example. We can also do things like change the character’s expression on the fly. So when health is low we can have a concerned expression or when enemies are near, an angry face. The player’s head can also now turn to look at important objects or enemies, which will help give clues for puzzles and add more life to the character. There’s even more exciting things we can do with this system, but we’re going to wait to share that when we have more to show. We also still want to make some general improvements to the system before launch.

Speaking of animations – We’re not changing the way we do ALL animations in the game. Most NPCs and enemies are still animated the “old-school” way and Christine has been hard at work doing animations for some of my favorite character’s in the game: Roelof and Lugus the bumbling pirates. Here are some sketches and early line-drawn animation cycles.

Now that we’ve moved passed the Jungle area levels we’re on to building content for Daunasal City, which includes a lot of fun areas like the Library, Arcade and, of course, GloboCorp Headquarters & Factory. If you’ve played TAG you’ll remember the city was home to a mini-game known as Breakrys. For TAW we’ve decided the game was ready for a sequel. I present: Breakrys 2! The premise is the same (basically a breakout clone) but there are now 3 playable characters, powerups, new SFX and a CRT-style shader effect.

As soon as Christine finishes up with the pirate’s animations she’ll be drawing Daunasal City-specific tiles and props. But in the meantime I’ve been building out the levels that re-use assets from other areas. Here’s a quick preview of some of those levels.

And we can’t forget about the great work that Robert has been doing with the game’s sound-design. He’s been replacing a lot of the stock sounds I use as placeholders with custom-recorded sounds he’s made himself. Here’s just a sample of the sounds he’s produced lately.

Let me just reiterate that the whole team thanks you for your continued support. We know that the progress on this game has taken much longer than originally anticipated but you fans have been very understanding and supportive and we truly appreciate it!

Until next time.