These are always changing, but I thought it was important for the 4 people who've been really following the game's progress to see what I've been up to finally.
You're right! I started by using the H1 shark's template but ended up pretty much tossing them out. These are actually bigger than those sharks, which would mean the sharks for this game would be.... (suspense!)
Looks really awesome! I wanna play it
Me too! As much as I've completed my estimate is still only about 40%. Most of that time was trying to fix the problems of my H1 engine, porting the thing over from MMF1.5 (which caused the game to not work anymore in a lot of places), the armor / weapon sprite animations and etc.
Oh my your graphics have improved, which is saying a lot O_O
Thanks The good thing about the new way I'm making this is that I never work on it anymore unless I really want to. Good point: It's always fun, which usually brings about better work and I won't be the wreck working on the first game made me. Bad point: It takes FOREVER to make. For example the armor redraws / recolors for the Rovert sprites I did by hand and took almost a solid 4 months. Holy shit can you say carpal tunnel!? It wasn't until much later did I learn of MMF2's color replacer. Damn that was a mother but I'm so glad I didn't take the lazy way out like a lot of games that don't show what armor or helmet you're wearing. NES Ironsword was a big inspiration as far as this part goes.
I know what you mean >_< Encouraging feedback really helps, although in the end I like to keep my projects secret until I release. It's hard though
That's what I've been doing since Dec '07, keeping it mostly a secret. It was really hard because I've never done that before. The only times I ever got sidetracked was when I made the Neil Peart game and before that a Western-themed mini-Diablo which will likely never see the light of day. That western somehow charged me up to continue H2 though.
I would also like to keep an eye on this potential beaut!
You just keep your eyes on finishing Tormishire, Dr. James!
I can't explain why but I really like the graphics style. It's got an almost retro splash to it but it's still modern enough to please the graphically spoiled eye.
I have only one real criticism... constructive, of course. The screenshot of the underwater area looks a lot more lazily tiled than the rest of the screens (although the seaweed, coral, etc. in the background look good). The screenshot before it (in the cave) has pretty much the same platform layout but you've taken the extra time to give the terrain some irregularity that makes it look all the more natural, and the result is a far more pleasing, far less boxy effect. To make the underwater area look really polished and keep the same quality as the rest of these areas, I suggest you do the same as with the cave.
The brown brick area where the player is attacking a bat also looks obviously tiled, but brick structures typically are squared-off, so it's not really an issue. If I may though, I'll suggest perhaps the odd crumbling foreground brick, as the area looks like it's been overtaken by vines and the like, and the bricks look to be almost too pristine when compared to the condition of the ones in the background.
These are only minor issues (if you'd even call them issues) but you can never have too many thoughtful, constructive suggestions. You did say that the screenshots are ever-changing so for all I know you've already done what I suggested. Anyway, I can tell you've put quite a lot of effort into the appearance so far, so nice work. I look forward to the final product.
One last thing before I end this comment, though... would you mind writing a little about the game? It's quite obviously by and large a platformer, and looks to have RPG elements, but I can also see by the space screenshot that there is more to the game than meets the eye. I'm interested in what sort of gimmicks or mechanisms this game has that makes it stand alone. I haven't played or even heard of the first one before now, so I have no idea what to expect from this. Thanks in advance! And keep up the good work!
[EDIT] So I just realized that the front page news linked directly to the screenshot comments instead of the actual project page, so I didn't realize until now that you had already described your game to some extent. Until I noticed I thought that the screenshots were all that you'd posted. Still, if you'd care to shed any more light on the game I'd be happy to devour it. I'm extremely curious about this game.
Comment edited by Rick (AntiMatter Entertainment) on 8/13/2009
By the way, I just took a look at your TDC account page and for some reason I've missed pretty much all of your previous releases! The only one I've seen before is the Neil Peart one, which I didn't like very much (I left a comment about it, if I remember correctly). The rest look great, though! I just downloaded the first Hasslevania, Captain of the Guard, Equin Adventures, and I also bought the full version of Equin Village (a more than reasonable price for something that's had so much work put into it, I might add). Should keep me busy for a while!
I have only one real criticism... constructive, of course. The screenshot of the underwater area looks a lot more lazily tiled than the rest of the screens (although the seaweed, coral, etc. in the background look good). The screenshot before it (in the cave) has pretty much the same platform layout but you've taken the extra time to give the terrain some irregularity that makes it look all the more natural, and the result is a far more pleasing, far less boxy effect. To make the underwater area look really polished and keep the same quality as the rest of these areas, I suggest you do the same as with the cave.
Rick, I'm glad you said this because this bothers me too. The problem is that the water is all on active that goes over the background. On the background, there IS irregularity but you don't see it enough like you do everywhere else. I was thinking about going back and cloning the backgrounds I already have, erasing everything out except the dirt and edges, then slapping that onto a layer in front of the water. It'll be tedious but that would make it look 100% better IMO.
Now that I know it's not just me I'll hop to it!
Oh the area w/ the brown brick doesn't look like that anymore. I put a lot more plants and stuff to make it look "older". I'll whip up something for crumbling too, you're right about that as well.
As for my older games they have their moments but I think I've improved a lot since the beginning (Neil Peart's dialogue speed mess notwithstanding). There's a lot of content in Equin Village- THANK YOU, by the way, that rules you wanted the whole thing - but some might see the unanimated main heroes and stuff as a turn-off. Some of VB6's limitations are what led me to try out MMF in the first place and I'm glad that I did!
I'm trying to be discreet about the actual story but believe it or not there's a lot of screenshots for conversations or scenes that are completely different than those above that I want to hang onto for awhile. I'm actually surprised nobody's noticed that Rovert's purple yet lol.
I'd update my H2 sitesled page but they seem to have issues with not recognizing legitimate people who have sites there and we can't log in to update yet. I'll try again in a bit to see if their forums are still down.
Why don't more people comment and give feedback to other projects? Like Del said, it really gives people the gas to keep working on their projects.
Actually, I'm on a hell of a roll since making this public. In about 2 days' time I've made some pretty big rooms for the latest area and a new type of enemy which should have people pulling their hair out in frustation everywhere*
*The good kind of frustation I suppose you could say
Looks great, btw
Thank you, I'm trying!
EDIT: Oh one more thing, nothing in the game is tiled at all. I have to build each room separately. It's a weird process but I'm so used to doing it it's no big deal anymore. One of these days I want to make a level editor or whatever so I can actually tile my areas and save a ton of time but that'll have to wait until later.
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Del Duio 
I really like the mountain backdrop in the first frame.
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