Gary's Blog

Gary here. The game looks like this now: Fig.1 - Progress  I'm very happy with how Europa has turned out, though the character obviously still needs work. My final addition to Europa's look was another creature flying through the background - it's carrying one of the birds it's captured back to it's nest to eat. Fig.2 - Exotic alien I liked the idea of the creature and figured one of the exotic aliens could be based on it. This alien is tamed by bringing another alien to it, whereupon the exotic alien will eat the other! Fig.3 - Food item I also remade the look of the food item, as before it didn't remotely resemble food, which feedback from peers and my supervisor said to change. Finally, I made a pen for aliens to be stored in - you can only store one of each kind of alien, and you have to store one of each to beat the game. Fig.4 - Pen This coming week I will create the final farm assets (the machine that grinds up aliens

Gary here. This week I decided I just didn't like how the game looked - too much odd and empty space. The depth effect caused trees to clip into each other, meaning they had to be few and far between. I thus removed the depth effect from trees, to place them on the same level as the player; this looks much better I feel, and now I just need to work on the mountains in the background. Fig.1 - Progress I made a couple of new trees - the below one has a little bird atop it, guarding an egg. Fig.2 - New tree The same birds can be spotted in the background, flying through the sky (figure 1). I also completed a new alien, which hangs as an egg from a tree at first. Fig.3 - Alien egg Next week I will make the sprites needed for the farm, and after just work on new alien mechanics. See you then!

Fig.1 - Progress This week I did my progress review, which I feel went well. I made mountains for the background of the level, which ties the look of the setting together. As with most things in the game, they'll look different every morning for a unique setting. The setting definitely needs work however, as it looks much too sparse and a little odd. Fig.2 - Alien Grove I also made an 'alien grove', which is where aliens spawn at - it's like their own little house! Fig.3 - Improved fireflies I also worked on the 'fireflies' further... they now spawn close to the camera, and look better as a result. I also worked on designing several new aliens, and fine tuning some existing mechanics. Next week I'm going to apply some randomness to Jupiter - different moons will be orbiting the planet every morning. I will also make two new trees, which will finally complete Europa's look. See you then!

Fig.1 - World resetting at night (sun sped up) Gary here. This week the university was closed due to the snow (in real life, not the game's), meaning the amount of work I could do was limited. I was able to still make the sun, which lights up the world when it rises and turns the world a burnt orange in the evening before setting, and resetting the world. Fig.2 - Glowing bugs I started messing with possible additional light sources, such as little bugs that light up an area around them. Fig.3 - New alien mechanic (Alien 01 sprite) Finally, I started a new alien whose plates must be activated with bait in a specific order. Besides starting my presentation for the progress review (which was delayed to next week due to the university closure) I wasn't able to do much else besides various bug fixes, improving the snow particle effect, etc. Fig.4 - Presentation opening slide Next week I will be playing catch up and making mountains for the background, add