Ectolibrium Prototypes
While attending grad school I worked on a few more prototypes. This started as more Foothold stuff -- a 2D platformer version of the previous project -- but gradually built into something called Ectolibrium.
An abstract environment with a unique visual style
Goals
Adapt previous project's mechanics to a side-scroller
- The previous project had disorienting flight. Confinement to a 2D plane removed this problem.
- I liked the player's ability to fly to their power level. This change added more diversity in movement styles -- hopping/clinging as well as flying.
- Gravity makes traversal far more interesting than in original top-down prototypes.
Decouple programming/design work from artwork
- I wasn't sure whether I would have other people working with me on this project, and wanted to be able to finish it independently if needed.
- I made placeholder art which looked passable to me, or which I could conceivably finish without a total overhaul.
Increase project organization
- I applied lessons learned from the old Unity prototypes.
- I wrote clearer code, made better use of class inheritance, interfaces and components.
- This project had better asset organization, conventions, and efficient use of prefabs.
- There were a number of other optimizations like material sharing for draw call batching, object pooling for frequently created and destroyed content, etc.
Sequence of levels each introducing new gameplay
Menu with standard functionality
Where it left me
All of this started well enough, and progress on these early iterations was rapid... but eventually I became tempted to move beyond my programmer art push for a full artistic rendition of these concepts -- a decision which to a certain extent I regret, knowing how much it slowed this project down. I don't believe every game needs representational art.