Art and Code

I've spent a lot of time since the last post working on level art for Amoeba. This has been both rewarding and frustrating. My background is technical: mechanical and industrial engineering. This has strongly influenced my approach to game development, not always for the better.

Video games are an interactive audio/visual art form, but because they are also complex logical and mathematical systems it's easy to forget that they're art when deep in the code. In many ways a developer can focus on purely technical details of a game and put off worrying about visual style, sound design, or music until the software skeleton is in place. This is how I've always approached the problem. I use placeholders for everything to make sure things work, then worry about replacing placeholders with actual game assets.

The advantage of this approach is that it allows me to focus on technical details without getting spread too thin working on too many parts of the project at once. The downside is that it's very easy to forget that you are creating an audio/visual work of art. You might be able to create a technical masterpiece, but nobody will appreciate it as a game if it doesn't also have beautiful art, fun gameplay, and a compelling story.

With Amoeba, I am trying to parallel my work on the technical systems and the art side. This is actually proving to be far more inspiring than I thought it would. I'm discovering a nice iterative interplay between searching for a visual style and deciding what elements of gameplay are going to be fun or interesting.

Tileset feels much improved, but lacks lighting effects to set the mood.

Here is a small sample of the current tileset. I'm getting much closer to the look and feel I had in my mind at the beginning of this project, but I have a long ways to go yet. The lighting is an obvious aspect that needs work, and one that requires a fair bit of programming as well.

I'm still plugging away at getting my environmental objects filled out; doors and switches are what I'm working on now.