Lanturn Turns Direction

Resistance almost got me this morning; I went to bed late and had difficulty dragging myself out of bed. Poking around the code I felt the weight of the schedule bearing down on the project: a week left and that's it. Anything I do beyond that is next month and I knew I could not finish within that allotment, even if getting up every morning. Still, I kept grinding with little success and the minutes ticked by until I halted completely so as to decide how to cut this thing down. And I did!

I have already dropped the esoteric parts of the game, for good reason, such as the mystery of how to survive the sunrise (pass vampirism on). I dropped the different forest animals, the props, the wandering, the friend, etc. Now I went for the gusto and cut the vampiric aspect altogether. This was adding a lot of complexity in logic, sprite counts, sprite detail, player instruction, controls, etc. etc. The list went on and on. So I just dropped the whole thing based entirely on how I was playing the rough prototype I have.

"Survive the night" is still the motto, but the foils are merely wolves driven by the hunter moon. You are out with a lantern, your only way of scaring them off, and it's running low on fuel. Wolves attack in increasing frequency as the moon moves across the horizon and you must simply not be torn to pieces.

Wolves launch at varying speeds from the left or right side of the screen and you can move only barely, whereas the true "control" is just raising or lowering your lantern. There are only one type of wolf and their animation will simply be 2 frames of running, flipped left/right, and 2 frames for "attacking". The player is similar: 2 frames walking (one used for standing), 1 lantern "raised" sprite, and 2 frames "being attacked" (you can't move while being attacked).

The rest is basically all art and effects: some blood splatter, the moon needs to be fixed so that it goes "behind" black pixels so I can draw trees, the color palette will be decided, the light blob drawn, etc. etc. There will be music or a heartbeat noise like in Space Escape and I need "cards" for title, death, and winning.

All this has to be done in a week so obviously the effects will come last. First I need the main logic and the sprites. Anyway, I've gotta head to my day job so I'm cutting this off until the next time ...