Work in progress...

Just a few lines, to make you know that R.A.I.N. is still under development, even if this blog is not often updated.
Our "pixel artist" is now busy with PhD thesis and, as you may know, pixel art *is* time consuming. He is thinking about a way to create fast graphic prototypes, instead of drawing sketches in pixel art from scratch each time.
I'm currently refactoring the level editor because it looks too much like spaghetti-code right now and because I made some (really) bad decisions in the past which in turn make hard adding new features, like zooming for example.
Finally, our main developer is having fun with the cool stuff, like testing new gameplay styles, adding graphic effects (like swings) and making the game fun to play.

Generally we talk a lot about this game and there is always a huge amount of brainstorming about gameplay, but we are just not at the point where we can begin planning plot twists or testing RPG elements and skill trees.

While you are waiting for this great game to be delivered, you could take a look the the huge Steampunk exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford. Since I assume that if you are reading this, you are at least a great steampunk fan :)

It's raining...

This is my first post in this blog, so i should present myself. I'm 3px, I'm involved in the code development of the project and currently i'm the lead programmer of the game engine. The other components of the RAIN developing team are HappyEmi that is in charge of the levels editor programming and is working with audio too (see previous post) and GS that is the pixel artist of the group.
I take this occasion to post here a short low resolution video of what's current development. As you could see both player and enemies animations are not refined. Also the weapon power and game's items are to be defined. So take this video as a simple introduction on what the game could be.

What do you think of the rain effect during game?

In the next posts we'll introduce the main characters, the story , enemies and what else we want to realease on the game.

See you.

Welcome

Hi and welcome to RAIN development blog.
Let's start from the beginning: what is RAIN? Well it's basically an old-school steampunk platform game, currently in pre-pre-pre-alpha development stage.
It will feature:

• Classic 2D scrolling platform game.
  
• Steampunk theme.
  
• Different playable characters, each one coming with a different skill tree and ability set.
• A few RPG elements, just to allow players to customize their gameplay.

At present the software is under heavy development and even game design ideas are not written in stone, yet. We have a good 2D engine which we use to test different gameplays and see which one works better; in other words we don't have a real picture of what this game will be once ended.

We are also developing a map editor. It will be part of the distribution and will allow players to create their own levels and stories.

Current dependencies are:

• Python 2.5
• pygame (any version should work)
• wxPython (used by the editor)
• numpy