Mace Motion Map

Our coder was over the other day, with news on the video game front- the ground-up physics engine is virtually complete.    I realized that I'd only animated one run cycle for one character, Mace, in the past couple years.   And we needed to start developing the range of character motion before we could start experimenting with gameplay effectively.  Level design can't be done in a vacuum, it has to complement precisely player capabilities- which means those must be quantified.

So rather than bottleneck the entire project waiting for polished art, we jumped ahead and decided to implement concept sketches of Mace into the game engine.    (I hear this is called 'grayboxing.') Just a couple days of doodling, and we now have a full range of motion to play with for Mace.

And making such loose art is extremely fast- it will be easy to try out new brainstorms and ideas, in case playtesting sheds light on new possibilities.   

Plus, from an aesthetic point of view, I like the idea of the game tests being done with literal concept art.   It just seems fitting that the initial sketch of the game itself be populated with sketches.

Now, our plate is currently crammed full with Skirmish, Volume 5, and Prelude- so I can't invest much time into the video game.   

But when two days of doodling can free up a year's worth of the coder being able to build and playtest the gameplay, that seems like a solid strategic time investment.  

And if the whole game can be developed in a more sketched-out version, that will make it easy to determine how much art is needed to realize the polished version, and therefore estimate a realistic production budget.   

But, for now, I'm massively looking forward to running around with sketch-version Mace.  E )     I'll see if my partner is open to sharing early tests with Patrons or not- can't guarantee anything, but we might be able to toy with some of the early stuff together.