by Matt Mirrorfish -

Pollen: Snow Forest Screenshots

hey guys,

Here’s another level environment with a different feel. I’ve been experimenting with randomly placing large low poly objects to give the levels more visual interest. In this case it’s this funky looking cube tree. Like in the Blue Sky City level I’d like to go a little deeper with procedural generation and give these some more variation at runtime but for now they’re just randomly placed and scaled. I think it actually works pretty well. I also added some square snow particles for you to fly around in.

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by Matt Mirrorfish -

Pollen Screenshots September

It’s been quite a bit of time without an update, I’ve been pretty busy with a bunch of other stuff but I’ve continued to work on Pollen, including adding some different level designs and looks. I’m starting to work in more color and other geometric forms so we’re not just constantly in that grey foggy space I’ve been using so far. I’ve also made some pretty big changes to the design which seem to be working better. I’ve created a level transition condition which is based on collecting a set number of pollen objects. These come from shooting the glowing green plant spheres that you can see in the screenshots. When you collect enough, a gate spawns and that takes you to the next level. I’m going to be showing the game here at the New York Unity Study Group in about three weeks so I’ve been pushing hard to get it into some kind of showable shape. Any NYC area peeps come out! I’d love to meet up and get some food or drinks afterward with some local dev folks. There’s a good ramen spot near Microsoft where the event is.

Here are the new screenies, click for larger size:




by Matt Mirrorfish -

Pollen Video DevBlog 1: Procedural Levels, Randomized Powerups, Music, Sound Effects

In this video devblog I show five minutes of game play including procedural level generation, randomized powerups, some new sound effects, new lighting and the current state of game play. I’m getting a decent feel for the major systems in the game. Some of the roguelike elements are getting more fully realized including level geometry randomization and randomized powerup progression. Still a ton of content, weapons, items, powerups to add but most of the core mechanics are more or less in place. Having added in a few more sound effects, some better lighting and music I’m also much more happy with the way things look and feel at the moment. Slowly but surely making progress.