I decided before hand that I really liked the idea of putting the game setting in a microbial environment, and generating the graphics procedurally — using bitmaps as little as possible.  I think I’d like something like a simple 2D version of the tidepool phase of Spore, with the Chain Reaction theme in place.  I think the player will play the part of the single celled organizm that progressively grows and gets more complex by either gathering protien chains, which (when you have enough) react and make a more complex creature…  I’m not sure if this will also involve ‘mating’ with other similar looking creatures.

So far I have the initial cell body done with the shading.  So far both the shape and colour are functionally generated with alpha blending.  I hope to add some organelles (sp?) and other such things tomorrow, as well as some other shapes for the other microbes that you coexist with.  Since the shape and everything is generated through a function, the entire cell is animated quite easily and gives a ’squishing itself through the water’ look as it progresses through the animation sequence. 

This is a kinda neat experiment, so far.  I’m usng Visual C++ 6.0 and DirectX 8.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 at 12:53 am and is filed under LD #10 - Chain Reaction - 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.