End of February Already!?

Well, I hoped to have that recently mentioned game out by the end of February but some big bugs popped up and it's just not going to happen.

So, while I work on getting everything working smoothly so I can release, I will post for you a post about drawing. Specifically, drawing practice.

Which is what I am actually doing now, with this post right here which presumably you are reading.

Drawing adventure game mockups is something I love to do - I can create a scene and some characters without having to give them stories or puzzles or anything - I can just draw for the fun of it. Drawing backgrounds is not as fun as characters, but once I get a palette sorted it's usually a little easier. Practicing is quite useful; it allows you to experiment with your style to push yourself, it allows you to improve what you can already do and you can create a setting which may even inspire a story. Annie Android started out as a few characters I'd done just for practice :).

Lately I've been drawing a lot of quite low res stuff, mostly backgrounds of 320x144 (leaving space for a SCUMM style gui), mainly because I find backgrounds easier to do when they're wide. I usually draw a few characters and then using the palette I used for the characters I go and draw a simple background. Here's an example:


Pretty simple, detail free background, but I am in a bad habit of just drawing 'characters on blank space' and I feel that is a habit that needs breaking.

Oh, and you probably won't see these characters in a game any time, but then, the same was once true for Annie Android's characters until enough people convinced me to turn them into a game :P.

Coming SOON

Dear readers of The Number of the Ben,

I would like to apologize for not posting in a while. Why didn't I post last month? Well, Sebastian and I were real busy working on a little game called Annie Android: Automated Affection, which has now been out a few weeks and has done pretty well. If you haven't played it and would like to, you can check it out here.

Why is this the first post all month for February?

Well again, we've been real busy working on a slightly bigger game. And it's almost done. In fact, you should expect to see it released in a couple of days (if all goes well).

Here is a taste of things to come:




So.... see you on the other side!