ID:116143
 
Screen shot after four hours of work this evening (involving no little amount of repurposing of code and concepts from other aborted projects):




I was going to make a detailed write-up of everything that's going on in the picture, but for now I think I'll let it stand for itself, as right now I have more of a proof of concepts demo than a game.

The graphics should be considered placeholders. The water and grass I think I have just about nailed but I'm less happy with the mountains and the trees. They are crappy and pixelated but they look too new. They look like someone trying to imitate newer games with older technology rather than the other way around. I need to look at some screenshots from some CGA-era games, I think.

The character icon I think will end up getting something a bit snazzier. I need to brush up on my overlays. Even with just a couple of weapons and hats drawn, I've decided that trying to fit them into the 16x16 icon isn't a going proposition so the natural answer is for them to be offset.

In the first iteration of RQ I would have considered breaking the bounds of the tile to be sacrilege to the higher concept of the game (I also had all the smooth scrolling/animation turned off), but my sensibilities have evolved somewhat over the years. Playing Terraria and seeing what it was like to play what looked a lot like a SNES game with keyboard and mouse was a huge influence in getting me to come back and give this a try.

On that note, there's a mouse-driven interface. No verb/pane stuff at all. Left click on things to do the most intuitive interaction (open the door, eat the food, get the item, KILL THEM ALL), right click for alternate interactions. Manipulate your inventory by clicking and dragging. The inventory stuff I lifted from my last graphical attempt at Hedgerow Hall, and I am pretty well-satisfied with it.

On a semi-related note, I can't decide if the pet badger is my favorite thing I've drawn or my least favorite. I love the head. The rest needs work.
Greeeeeen.
SilencedWhisper wrote:
Greeeeeen.

moar greeen!
Holy crap Lexi, I love that you're bringing this back! I only got to play RQ once (also Arpeji and a number of other awesome games you did) and it was freaking brilliant.

It sounds like your interface concept will work very well with our Flash setup.

Ahhhh, Arpeji! Thank you, I couldn't remember the name of that one... which is kind of funny to me now that I see what it was. I think I'm going to have incorporate that into RetroQuest as a place name or something. Or maybe one of the ancient wizards whose name is on items.

Yeah, this is actually shaping up to be sort of a mash-up of those two games. One of the reasons I tried making Arpeji in the first place was that there were elements I wanted to play with that I didn't think would fit RetroQuest, so I got as many generic/free fantasy icons as I could and tried to make a GMUD with them.

This is going to be a lot less "pure" in its adherence to the most obvious source material than the original RQ was, which allows me to incorporate more modern game elements (arguably this includes the pets... though they have a pedgree dating back to NetHack, at least.)