I suppose the first thing to do would be to introduce you all to our "team." There are three of us working on Swamplands... two artists, a writer, a programmer, a composer, three designers, a sound engineer, and a level designer. You will notice that I listed more than three, there. That's because the three of us are all having to do multiple jobs, as is the custom for indie "studios" of this type. I should also mention that Swamplands is being developed using the Gamemaker 8.1 toolset. It just makes it easier for me, a decidedly right-brained programmer, to deal with all those frustrating details that emerge when you try to code a game from scratch.
David "jefequeso" Szymanski (lead designer, composer, sound engineer, programmer, and level designer) - That would be me. Swamplands is a project that I've done work on for...oh, probably about 4 years now. I actually completed two different versions of the game, but never released either of them due to the fact that they looked like crap, sounded like crap, and often played like crap. Most of you probably know me from GOG.com. Or, perhaps you've played my previous little game Pit: The Bite-Sized Shooter. I've done other things, but I doubt you've heard of them. Since this is primarily my project, I'm in charge of most everything that doesn't involve letters or pixels.
Benji Cook (lead artist, assistant overall design) - Benji's job is basically to make sure that Swamplands doesn't look like something done in MS Paint. He's in charge of practically all the spritework, texturing, and animation, but also gives some input into other aspects of the game. We found him on yoyogames.com begging for alms, his artistic talent woefully under-appreciated. So naturally, we felt sorry for him and offered him a place here out of charity. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he can sprite circles around the rest of us. Nothing at all...
Evan Szymanski (lead art design, writer, assistant overall design) - Yup... that would be my brother. Evan makes up for his lack of programming knowledge with a keen eye and a talent for storytelling. Although Swamplands is technically my project, he's involved with its design almost as much as I am, and keeps me from BSing those little unimportant details like story and UI. Not sure why you need those... He's also the leading force behind the Wiggle Ninja's hit (read: watched by nobody) youtube series, "Time Lapse."
At this particular moment, most of the core mechanics of Swamplands have been implemented (the two big ones that still need added are enemy AI and a system for handling containers. Which I am not looking forward to doing :P). However, we haven't really done much with any of them yet. There are only a few objects, a few textures, and a collection of complicated variables and declarations for things like room transitions, combining, physics, etc. Since this is basically a non-linear, emergent sandbox--and one with about double the content of any game I've ever worked on before--it's very important to get a solid core before starting to add tons of stuff. So actually, the game is pretty far along, apart from the fact that we have barely started building the game world. Unfortunately, this means that there's not much to show in the way of screenshots. However, in the interest of showing something, here's a "palette example" screenshot that gives a good idea of the basic look of the game (minus any lighting or tile variation).
We haven't done much with any of the junk and rusted machinery that's scattered around The Swamplands, so what you see here is basically just the "natural" side of things.
On my end, I'm doing the always-arduous coding of enemy AI. In previous games like Pit, I could get away with pretty simple routines for pathfinding and decision-making. Because NPCs didn't have to do all that much. They shot at you, and they moved around. Here, they need to hunt you, go after food, and run from predator NPCs, as well as attack and navigate the world. Which all sounds fairly simple, but that's the thing about AI... it's easy to understand what it needs to do, but it's exponentially harder to do it.
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