Campervan

This sprite was created for parking road-side on the mountain ascents. I could have made my job easier for myself by creating the sprite on the flat and rotating it in code, but the results would not have been the same.

Scenery : Clouds

Worked on a basic sky background tile. Below, you can see simple blocked out areas of blue to create depth on the left. And then the same tile after a level of detail has been added on the right.

Scenery : Waterfall

Spent a few hours animating a waterfall tile. This is a simple 8 frame animation. The effect could have easily been created using a particle effect, but I don't think it would have been in keeping with the art style. I'll always try to create the animation in artwork first.

Character v2

Much happier with the lead character now.  The larger head gives much more room for characterisations. The intention is to have many weird and varied characters in this game.

Scenery : Sunflowers

More work was done today on the tile-set. Every classic rural French scene needs sunflowers. Especially where a Grand Tour is concerned.

Scenery : Bridge

Onto some more scenery tiles. As the game uses tile-sets, it's a very quick, easy and efficient way of creating huge maps with very little effort.

So that the riders will pass over the bridge with the near supports in front of them. careful planning had to go into creating the correct layer orders.

Notice the marker on the bridge going between the front and rear bridge supports.

Radar : Stage Profile

Progressed onto the in-game UI and wanted to solve the problem of showing the profile of the stage. As this game is going to be predominately about strategy, knowing where you are on the stage is very important.

I wanted to have the profile generated automatically from the stage itself, so that I could modify and tweak the stages, and the profile would simply update itself.

The stage artwork uses a tile-set to create the hills and descents. Alongside these tiles are markers (invisible to the player) which mark out the flat areas, the climbs and the descents. The profile is drawn by sampling the stage, looking for markers, and drawing a section of line depending on what the stage is doing. It's a simple solution, but works a treat.

User Interface

For the user interface (UI), I wanted to mimic the styles used by certain TV companies. This will be the 'lozenge' used to display the km remaining.

Character v1

Every game needs a lead character. Here are some ideas I have been playing around with and developing. This strip shows the evolution, from place-holder to something I'm happy with. ish.

Items : more scribbles

Scribbles of random ideas and stuff. Browsing my cycling mags, making notes of what's required for sprites and tiles. Ideally, I want the individual stages to feel very different. Some in rural areas. Some in towns. Some up in the mountains.

Terrain System

Some scribbles relating to the terrain system. The terrain is going to be key to the design. Road races take part over long distances, over undulating and varying terrain. I will need a solution to come up a way of easily creating multiple stages with varying profiles.

First Concept Scribble

Every game needs a concept scribble. Here it is. Wonder at the artwork. Feel the speed.