I thought it would be a good time to post an update for Bugs as I'm waiting for kids to knock on my door for candy.  I've decided to try for one Bugs update per month.  I think this will help me keep on track and also be a good review of the progress I've made each month.  We'll see how long I can stay with it.

I spent a lot of time building out the world.  Unfortunately, I started out in a different direction than I ended up at, but it turned out for the better.  At first I played around with having each level be one screen with no camera movement.  Some screens would be zoomed out pretty far, and others zoomed in really close which worked well if there was a point of interest, I could focus directly on it.  It looked good and it was really easy to create levels  since everything was contained on a single screen.  After a few tests though, it didn't play as well as I thought it would.  Jumping around and shooting weren't as fun and it just lost a lot of the exploration feeling.  I went back to square one and decided to go with large levels that were fun to explore.  Click the image for a large picture

To get an idea of how big a screen will be, the image below is a portion of the map for the Bugs world.  Each blue grid represents one screen which is an area of 8,192 pixels with the player at about 186 pixels tall.  It takes about 3 hours to create all of the collision and game objects (doorways, floors, spawn points, etc.) for one grid area.  Then it takes about 2-3 days to place all of the texture sprites (the grass, rocks, clouds , etc.).  It's a lot more work than the one screen approach, but much more fun in the end.

For next month I'm planning to get more of the world fleshed out and hopefully get an idea for how big the whole Bugs game will be.  I'd also like to get Xbox 360 controller support in if there's time.  That's it for now, Happy Halloween!