Monday, May 6, 2013

Lost in Translation

Every now and then (ok, it's extremely common) I come across things I think would be great in a game.  For instance, I'm still working on Fungicide, and I thought it would be a neat idea to base a boss off of Pride from Fullmetal Alchemist.  If you don't have any idea what that is, it's an anime series. Look it up, you'll find plenty.

Anyway, the whole, tentacle knife thing he's got going on with his shadows is something I've been trying to replicate in an enemy.  It seemed simple enough at first, but as I dug into the mechanics of it, a lot of roadblocks started popping up.  Mainly in the art area.

This kind of thing happens a lot.  The thing you want to do seems simple enough at first, and it worked really well in it's original form, but translating it to a game brings a host of new problems that the source material didn't need to deal with.

Situations in games are fluid, you have to account for many different possibilities and the actions of the player.  It can be hard to plan things too in depth without heavily restricting the player.

Of course, you want to limit such restriction as much as possible, so you tweak the source until it becomes something you didn't even expect, but still works.

At least there's that much.