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Old 06-10-2007, 07:15 AM   #35
Enter the Story
I turn novels into games
 
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Scotland
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilMulder View Post
What's holding you back from just throwing the minimalist style in the mix you already have? Wouldn't that be the ideal solution?
The main reason for all this is that, based on everything I can discover, non-adventure gamers like polish and consistency. And non-adventure gamers are in the vast majority. Even if all the new stuff I added was minimalist, more than half of the game would appear unpolished and inconsistent.

I'd also need a completely new set of sprites and new work patterns for the minimalist sections, and if I'm going to all that trouble then it's not a great leap to just make everything minimalist and be done with it.

Having said that, if the new art gores down like a lead balloon then I'll have to try plan "C." One person suggested that I keep the existing art but shrink it down and design the game so all that stuff happens inside a window. Like maybe you take a book off the shelf, and each book opens ot become a window on another world, with its own distinctive art style. Shrinking the art into a window-within-the-game would make the quality look better. (But it would also make floors into a nightmare! Sludge doesn't like narrow floors, and many of mine are already very narrow indeed). So that's the fallback position.

If it turns out that most people like the new style, then fear not, the existing animations and stuff won't be wasted. I'll probably create an archive of free Sludge resources so anyone can use them to make their own Sludge game. Or donate them all to Squinky. There's a couple of very nice animations that nobody's seen yet (ideal for a mind-blowing sci fi story), so it would be a shame to lose them completely.
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