Tag Archives: platformer

Oblong Conglomerate: Maps

Spent some time drawing tile sets and designing prototype maps for this month’s project, The Quest for the Oblong Conglomerate. So far, I’ve got a town exterior and three wilderness/cave maps.

Stage 1 - Actual size

Yes, those are 4×4 pixel tiles. Suffice to say, aesthetics are not among my top priorities for this project. Still, I think they look decent enough for now, with the possible exception of the town.

Town

Of course, I expect to have to tweak the maps a bit once they’re in the actual game—I can’t even vouch for their playability at this point.

Stage 3Stage 2

As prototypes go, they will suffice for now. This leaves the town interior, but I’ll do that later. I haven’t even figured out what purpose the town will serve, yet.

I’m using Grafx2 for the tilesets and Tiled to turn them into maps.

Project: Oblong Conglomerate

So I’ve decided to join the One Game a Month challenge. I figure it will make for a good excuse to explore some of the stupid ideas starting to pile up in my Google Keep, and to try out some new tools and frameworks.

My problem when it comes to game design—and just about every other creative endeavour—has always been that my projects grow too large, causing me to lose interest before ever finishing anything. To combat this tendency, I have begun experimenting with self-imposed, arbitrary restraints to keep myself in line: a limit of five game screens, for instance, or monochrome 16×16 pixel character sprites. Unfortunately, that plan hasn’t worked as intended; where I used to have too large and unwieldy projects, I have now become plagued with too many small ones, with no good way of choosing between them.

So, forcing myself to finish one game a month seems like an interesting approach to striking some of those projects off my list. It’s worth a shot, at least.

Oblong Conglomerate

With the first half of January (and then some) having already passed, I am left with precious little time to finish my first game. As such, my goal for January is simply this: Make something playable.

The project name is Oblong Conglomerate, and the finished product will have a slightly longer title: The Quest for the Oblong Conglomerate.

I will write the game in python, using pyglet and possibly Rabbyt. Exploring other frameworks is one of my goals this year, but… not this month.

It will be a simple platformer with a short, somewhat absurd plot about self-discovery and heroic deeds. There will be no cut scenes, but character interactions and story elements will be presented as text and a few static images.

The player character’s capabilities will be limited to running and jumping. Opponents will be evaded rather than fought.

The game world will consist of a town (interior and exterior) and three unique stages. However, the player will visit some areas more than once.

There will be one player character, two unique enemy types and two NPC types, though I may add recoloured versions of the above as needed.

Everything about the game will be tiny, with 8×8 pixel character sprites and 4×4 pixel background tiles. If I choose to add a soundtrack, it will be a simple loop no longer than 20 seconds or so.

Anything beyond that is for version 2.0.