Alex Lemley (Rocketlex)
@rocketlex
Writer and game designer. Working on all sorts of stuff. Current projects: 🍔New Meat ( 🌐Complexity Mode ( Check out all that stuff and more at alexlemley.com
Spellwand Update: I improved the way the wand tracks the enemy so it's a dynamic rotation and not just snapped to the proper angle. This lets me do stuff like add a "kickback" to spells, as seen here, or buff/debuff the player's enemy-tracking speed. #indiedev
Then out of nowhere it hits me with this scene and I'm helpless with laughter for fifteen minutes.
I downloaded Paper Animal Adventure, a cute dungeon-crawl roguelike thing about cuddly animals going on a quest to find their king. It's got a bit of a Toejam and Earl vibe to its dungeoneering. Pretty easy and simple but with a lot of stuff to see. But...
Been trying for a while to add damage popups to Spellwand and- Yeah, it's going great. I totally know what I'm doing. #indiedev
You can’t convince me these are real. These are the most made-up looking games I’ve ever seen.
Spellwand Update: Okay, here it is, the core mechanic of Spellwand in its minimum form. During gameplay, you can pause and type something. This will dynamically change the properties of your attack based on what you type. How? You need to experiment to figure it out. #indiegame
A reminder that my roguelike #indiegame New Meat is 80% off on Steam! I just got this email from someone looking to buy the license for $100, so it would be really, really funny if a hundred of you bought the game while it's currently a dollar instead. store.steampowered.com/app/3458540/...
Addendum: Okay, now we've got a little spice on that hit animation. THIS is more what I was going for.
Spellwand Update: Okay, so this...doesn't exactly look impressive but this is the end result of me learning a LOT about the Godot engine through hours of trial-and-error. What's happening here has actual RPG mechanics and not fake ones like the tutorial video taught me. #indiedev
The infrastructure for this already exists in the Steam Inventory system and no one uses it but TF2. PS4 also had a similar inventory system for the exact same purpose and I’m pretty sure no one used it but Knack.
OH MY GOD! Okay, so I've had an idea for what I wanted my first Godot game to be, and I just found out something about GDScript that's going to make my idea SO MUCH EASIER! (Also, so this is how games do those clicky-letter textboxes. Huh.)
Tomorrow, my Godot Journey begins. For five full days I'm going to lock-in on Godot tutorials and learn enough to start my first Godot project. I've never done anything like this before. I'm honestly pretty nervous if it will even work. But I've at least gotta try. #indiedev
"Hmmm, why don't you try pressing the spacebar and see what happens?"
More sprite experiments in preparation for my Godot Journey. This floating face is here to give you a quick tutorial. Don't worry, it's a pretty simple game. #indiedev
From a pure art standpoint, this is my favorite frame in Digital Circus. This is, like, the one moment I wished I'd seen in an actual theater.
Figured I'd probably want some sprites to work with so... Meet Tester the Jester! His walk cycle doubles as a little dance!
But in the last 20 year, 3D animators have learned a lot about how to "cheat" 3D models to the camera, breaking them in ways that let them impart more of that hand-drawn cartoon zaniness to 3D animation. And that's the real difference with Shrek 5. It moves more like a cartoon, now.
I think the most noticeable difference here isn't the art style but the direction. Early 3D animation used cinematography closer to live-action movies, given that early 3D demanded you move the camera to suit the character models, just as though you were filming a real person in a real space.
If this was a massive shift of art style like…I dunno, that recent Ninja Turtles movie I’d understand the backlash, but this just looks like Shrek made with modern tools and 20 more years of 3D animation know-how.
"Aren't you tired of all these AI slop games popping up in your Steam recommends?" Buddy, I've taken my Steam recommendation algorithm to places you couldn't even imagine.