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The Cluster: Video of New Environments

Aug 15, 2011 in , , , ,
This post is about The Cluster, my 2.5D platform game under development with focus on non-linear exploration, set in a big, continuous world. You can read all the posts about The Cluster here.

In the last post I wrote about how I've improved the edges in the environment generation of The Cluster. But the background scenery was basically just parts of the foreground extended far into the distance which was not terribly interesting to look at.

Since then I've implemented generation of more interesting backgrounds with hills and cliffs and forests. The background scenery can be seen in the first half of the video here. The video shows a green hilly environment and an underground dungeon style environment. There's no enemies in this demo and many objects are still placeholders - the focus is on the terrain itself.

The background is somewhat faint (due to aerial perspective) and blurry and isn't meant to steal the attention away from what's happening in the foreground, but having interesting detail in it can nevertheless add a lot to the overall feel.

Another thing to note in the video is the dynamic camera framing. It zooms the view in and out and places the player nearer the top or bottom of the screen as necessary based on the surroundings. It's something I may go into more detail with in a future post.

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