PETSCII processes

Looking at my stash of unfinished and experimental PETSCII character art files, I found some Digiloi work-in-progress materials I had forgotten.

Here's a screen where the main character was fleshed out:

The nice thing about this image is that I've collected the versions in a chronological order, from left to right.

As can be seen, the first attempt is ridiculously stupid and a 1980s BASIC game might have been forgiven for having such a crude shape in it.

I guess the solitary guy is the one where I felt I'd "got it", although as can be seen it's still some way off. Note also the sketching of background graphics.

This is a frame from an animation where I drew the running frames over a scrolling floor. Using Marq's PETSCII editor it's quite easy to do animation.

Not sure if I ever planned to do a scrolling game, it may simply be the animation loop was easier to test this way.

I also can't remember if the one in the middle is an alternative design based on the one on the left, or the other way round.

That laser shape was on for quite a while before I saw it would not work over a background.

I think the huge gun finishes the character, it's part of the character really. Parts of the previous designs went into the bad guy graphics.

Here are the original "sprites" for the main character, which I thought were finished. In the end I never used a "stand-still" frame in the game.

However, testing the player character over a background, it did not quite work. I changed the colour to green which stands out better against a dark-ish background. Then the tiny details and rounding had to go too, because they would generate ugly black outlines.

This snapshot from an early build shows the problem. Even the finished game has some black outlines.

I also found some extra background tiles, most of which did not find their place in the game:

Another background-related image shows the "running in a dark forest" idea that sort of defines the first moments of the game.

As this is an early build, the graphics routines are tested over a static PETSCII drawing. When I moved over to tile-based rooms, I had to compromise with the trees and the style became quite different.

Although this is just a test, I also toyed with the idea of beginning the game with a bunch of these guys running alongside the player, then disappearing "somewhere." I guess it would have been simply confusing.

So there it is, everything I could find!