Tidy Bush

Ok. I now think I'm getting somewhere with the rural countryside. A simple bush sprite has created a nice backdrop and make the terrain tiles appear more 'random'.

I think I now need to start focusing on the more urban areas. I think the biggest issue I can see is how to go about creating the transition tiles between rural areas and urban areas.

The Birds

Small details here, but I've added a new instance for a bird. The instance (initially on the ground) gets triggered after a proximity check with the rider. This allows the birds to take flight once the rider gets near giving a nice bit of interaction with the environment.

Windmill

I had a bit of a late night so I could tinker with the game. I'm still focusing on the environment, and I wanted to create more movement as it feels very dead at the moment. The cliche windmill. Very simple to program. Each instance of the windmill has a random rotation speed for the blades so no two are the same.

Cobbles

I have now got different surface types in the game. This was important so that I can have tarmac sections followed by sections on cobbles. Those into cycling will understand the relevance of this. At the moment there is simply a collision check to see what surface type each rider is on, which then sets a variable. At the moment, this variable is only used to create the particle effects for the dust seen in the screen-shots. However in the future, this variable can also be tied into the game engine affecting stamina, comfort etc for each rider in turn.

Watermark

I have created a simple watermark, which will appear in the bottom right of screen-shots from this point onwards. I think there's nothing more frustrating than discovering a screenshot on the web and not knowing where it came from.

Mountain top Chalet

More work done on the housing last night. This time a mountain top Chalet. "Afro-boy takes to the descent with hair-a-wobbling".

That's just reminded me, all riders will have a flapping/wobbling animation triggered on the descents. I tried it without, and it was clear it just didn't feel thrilling enough.

Mountain Backdrop

Created a snowy mountain backdrop for the mountain stages. Also started on small details such as signposts and armco safety barrier as can be seen here. In this shot we have 3 layers. The clouds in the background, the mountains in the middle-ground and the road in the foreground. All move at different speeds, giving a nice parallax effect.

Finish Kite Animation

Another simple 6-frame animation. I remember seeing the energy sponsor "E.ON" on a kite once at the Tour of Britain. Thought I'd play with that idea and swap for "FIN". Not entirely sure why it's moving in the wind so much, as the rest of the game has no wind effects. Balls. I may have to re-look at it, but again for now it'll do. Actually quite pleased with how it turned out.

Waterfall Animation

I created this simple 8-frame animation in Photoshop. I'm still not happy with it (the top water surface for example has noticeable frame jumping), but it will go in for now, and I may revisit it at some point.

Mountain Pass Screenshot

So after a late night session on the environment tile-set last night, here is a screenshot to show how the visuals are progressing. I never had any clear vision for how this game was going to look. I wanted it to very dynamic in the way it progressed and evolved. It's nice not to be constrained to time scales, briefs and schedules. I am doing this for fun remember.

Characters

I've worked on creating more variety in the characters. I've created each character by rendering a sprite for the bike/torso and a sprite for the head. This way I can randomize the characters creating more combinations than hand drawing each variant.

French Town Buildings

I want the stages in the races to feel like they are travelling through a landscape; through towns and out through rural areas. I've now turned to creating more tile-sets, this time for the town areas. I'll create simple block housing, and look into creating distant housing to give a nice dense feel to the town. Should create a nice parallax effect too.

Currently, the landscape has a French flavour.