Monaco Devlog #2 - Art and Mechanics

Monaco Vlog #2, in which I talk about the interaction of art and game mechanics

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• monaco
• stealth
• video games
• games
• igf

[thkruege]

I don't know if this has come up, but I really hope you are building your game on portable libraries like... dunno... libsdl, ogre, openal and suchlike.

I would really love to see OS X and Linux versions of your game because a) it is awesome and b) I would only buy a Linux version. (Did that before with World of Goo, flawless experience but I am not sure on what the implementation is based on.)

What ARE you using if I might be so bold as to ask?

[ajschatz0]

@thkruege I'm using XNA, which obviously isn't natively portable to Linux/OSX, but I've heard there's actually a cross-platform XNA implementation out there that could do the trick.

[Mahkia]

Very much enjoying these videos, and I'm REALLY looking forward to interviewing you, when you aren't so swamped. :)

~@Mahkia

[ajschatz0]

@Mahkia Looking forward to it as well!

[InfiniteStateMachine]

how did you film that without falling down?

[ajschatz0]

@InfiniteStateMachine hahaha, That's probably why I'm always looking at the ground :)

[leakingpear]

It's always interesting to see the level of design research and thinking going into the top flight indie games, from Jon Blow to Chris Hecker to 2D Boy, everyone seems to be approaching design in a much more all encompassing manner. I mean it's one thing to have an art style that ties in the game mechanics with the audio and input, but to approach game design as an artform itself is surprisingly refreshing.

[WillP999]

Nice! :D

[ajschatz0]

@InfiniteStateMachine This is actually a comment I've gotten quite frequently and is something I'm considering doing. I think that it will likely make things clearer, but it does break from the concept of everything in the game being based on the tiles. Once I change lighting and visibility over to vectors rather than tiles, I'm worried that I will end up reinventing lots more elements of gameplay. I'm not sure how deep that well goes.

[ajschatz0]

@WillP999 It is actually :) Interesting that you noticed. It's on the way back from the grocery store and the post office. I already had a droid, so I was at the post office sending the free droid we got at GDC off to a buddy of mine.

[ajschatz0]

@WillP999 It's a good point, actually.  I originally made the guards white and grey, since the player characters are all colored (there are eight), but maybe just giving them more detail would help a lot.