{"id":241,"date":"2013-12-19T21:19:59","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T21:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/?p=241"},"modified":"2013-12-19T21:19:59","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T21:19:59","slug":"the-death-of-minimalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/the-death-of-minimalism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Death of Minimalism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noted last week that, unlike the rest of the game, Another Star<\/cite>‘s soundtrack had very little to do with the theme of “minimalism”<\/a>. The track count continues to grow, by the way, now standing at 34 tracks with more on the way as I go back over and polish everything. But as the soundtrack balloons, the graphics are quickly getting left behind. The more music that gets added to the game, the more the 256 tile limit sticks out like a sore thumb.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now I’m wondering if I should just abolish the tile limit altogether.<\/strong> I don’t really want to do this. I’m proud of the fact I fit so much\u2014an entire game, with a sizable overworld and eleven dungeons, and all the enemies to fill them\u2014into a mere 256 tiles! It’s actually quite amazing the ways I came up with to manipulate tiles to create so many different and distinct locations.<\/p>\n

But at the end of the day, does anybody really care if I managed to create a game in just 256 tiles<\/strong>? Does the tile limit actually add anything to the game? I’m highly suspicious that the answer to that question is a resounding “NO”.<\/p>\n

Now, I suppose I should clarify a few things. Supposing the tile limit does get dropped, the graphics would still adhere to the 8-bit limitations of systems past, but I’d be able to switch between tile sets (like on actual hardware).<\/strong> Furthermore, most of the major scripting on the game is done so I’m not going to completely rewrite the game. I’d probably add frames for NPCs to face directions other than straight down, but they’d still be rooted in position, and cut scenes would still be pretty static. The maps themselves would be a lot more pretty and nice to look at, though, and enemies would also be bigger and more diverse.<\/p>\n

I think I’ll sleep on it before I decide what to do. What are your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noted last week that, unlike the rest of the game, Another Star‘s soundtrack had very little to do with the theme of “minimalism”. The track count continues to grow, by the way, now standing at 34 tracks with more on the way as I go back over and polish everything. But as the soundtrack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aetherfall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visionriders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}