New Cafe

There is a new website called Patisserie Cyclisme which combines cycling and the even more important cafes and cakes. The site already features many cafe reviews, and even allows you to upload your own cafe review, thus providing an ever growing database of cycling friendly cafes. This is a great idea.

This inspired me to create the cafe for real in the game :) I've therefore updated my buildings tile-set to include a new cafe called "Patisserie Cyclisme".

The Patisserie Cyclisme logo was used with permission from the owners.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.