Development Video #15

It’s video time again!

Watch it in HD!

New stuff in this video:

• Finished the in-game interface
• Almost finished the menus
• Tied player actions to noise and suspicion generation
• Particle effects to show characters growing suspicious
• Added pauses to character dialogue
• Resolution can now be changed in-game
• Added small thumbnail images for saved games

I’ve also almost finished work on doubling the directions for the male aiming and shooting animations (from 8 to 16 directions). After that, I’ll make the missing sprites for female characters (aiming, shooting, hit, and fall/die). There’s also still a bunch of minor things, bug fixes, optimizations and tune-ups.

When all that’s done, I think I’ll begin working on the AI, since that’s the biggest component missing before I can really start playing around with actual gameplay — and not just building the surrounding framework. I’m really looking forward to create a simple mission where you have to sneak past patrolling guards or get in a firefight. That’s when all this stuff will hopefully come together and be an actual game! After that, a release of the first pre-alpha version shouldn’t be far behind. Stay tuned!

What’s on the menu?

It’s a new year, so here’s a new blog post!

Even though it’s a bit too early in the development cycle to worry about them, I’ve been working on the game’s menus. When I get fed up with a particular part of the game that’s hard to figure out, instead of taking a break completely from the game, I just shift to something easier and more rewarding, which will eventually energize me to continue work on the original part. So that’s what caused me to make the menus, as they’re quite easy to program.

Here’s the main menu screen:

The smoke is animated, which you’ll see in the next development video I plan on releasing in a few days, and when I’ve scripted out the game’s story and universe in more detail, there will be fiction related stuff (newspaper clippings and photos) fading in and out where the logo currently is.

And this is what the load/save game menu looks like:

I always loved the little thumbnail images that each savegame had in Fallout, so I’ve borrowed that for Hostile Takeover. I’m currently working on the options menu (mostly screen resolution settings, fullscreen/window mode, toggling some visual effects off on older computers) and then I’ll return to the main game itself.

Anyway, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The past year saw excellent forward momentum on the development of Hostile Takeover and that will continue in the new year with the first playable pre-alpha demo being released sometime in 2012, preferably in the first half of the year.