Zity - Tile Art

This week's post isn't going to be about Zity but rather about a free art program I recently discovered and will be using for Zity (unless I hire an artist of course).

Krita

There's a lot you can find out about Krita on their website here, but I'll give you an overview.

Krita is a free digital painting program. You can think of it like photoshop with more of a focus on painting and less focus on photos, and of course it's free. Krita uses a complex brush engine system that is very flexible and allows you to create the kind of brush you need. It also works with layers, color pallets, shape tools, gradients, and pretty much anything else you could want. Krita is also consistently updated with bugfixes and new features so there are no worries of using an outdated, glitchy program. It's basically wonderful and anyone interested in doing digital painting/art should seriously check it out.

Zity - of Problems and Setbacks

This post doesn't have too much to do with anything recent but I thought I'd pass along some information and all the things that a game programmer starting out would want to know before they find out for themselves.

Zity has been in serious development for over a year now, but if I'm honest... I've been working on Zity for something more like two years. It started out as an idea and it went through several iterations before any sort of actual game was fleshed out. During those iterations a lot of trial and error, research, and improvements were made, and while these were all necessary at the time I would not want to repeat them again.

Some things to watch out for:

Often times as a game developer I overlook aspects of the game that I assume would be easy. They never are. In order to avoid the continuous cycle of overlooking something and then having to go back and alter everything I've had to really force myself to dig deep into the systems that make up Zity and make solid decisions on the game.

A List:

Zity - Lighting Revisited

If you ever played a game with really good lighting you probably noticed it. The way the shadows were cast and the illumination of objects helps to set the mood of the player and even can fuel the gameplay in certain genres. Horror games use lighting to limit the player, making him afraid of what he can't see. Action games use lighting to heighten the thrill and intensity. Strategy games can use light to convey time of day or weather. In any genre lighting can be a tool well worth polishing in order to get the most out of the game.

So it's no surprise that Zity will be heavily investing in a good lighting technique. Zity is all about tension and suspense and even sometimes the peace of being away from the tension. To help convey that feeling I will use lighting.

There's several different lighting techniques and methods to choose from when creating a 2D game. It's easy to see in games like Terraria where you can alter the lighting in the settings and see the various effects. But before even diving into techniques I'll give a brief overview of some options.

Zity - Components

This is my second post about the current state of Zity, following my initial one that outlined the new editor.

I've switched Zity from using OOP and inheritance to a component based architecture. This means that there hasn't been a whole lot of new content, but a lot has gone on under the hood with how Zity is programmed. Basically I've been working my way BACK to where I was a month ago using this new architecture and thought it's been quick, I don't have much to show yet. What I can do, however, is explain OOP and components in case anyone is interested.

Allow me to shed some light on the subject.

Object Oriented Programming (OOP)

OOP is a programming methodology (rules basically) based around this concept of objects. An object can be anything in your game/program that exists by itself. For instance in a game like Zity I would have Car, Player, Zombie, Gun, and Bullet objects. Each of these self-contained 'things' is an object and would like this in code:

Zity - The Editor

Hey Everyone, here's the deal:

The Blog - I've decided to start writing up new posts EVERY week instead of whenever I feel like it. Hopefully it'll both help me stay motivated, and help promote/push information to you (the reader). So this should be the first of a weekly series highlighting my blog.

The Game - A lot has happened since my last update, sadly a lot of it isn't very noticeable. I built and rebuilt an editor, did a LOT of research and theory pertaining to programming Zity, and spent a lot of time with friends/family (not programming).

The most noticeable addition has been the Semi-Block Editor. This editor will be used to create pre-made sections of the city that will be used in the pseudo-random generation.

Let me explain -

The map in Zity has gone through a few changes in how it will be generated. From my first idea of complete procedural island/city/building/room generation I've come to realize that procedural generation is HARD. Seriously if anyone reading this has ideas about a procedural game then they need to be SURE that they have a plausible, simple, straight-forward idea about how to generate it.

My new way of generating the city combines random elements with preset elements: