Pig Eat Ball Editor Begins

We've not formally announced our next game Pig Eat Ball because I'm still figuring out what the heck it is exactly! I've had it in 'prototype mode' for a while now, but fortunately it's shaped up in recent months and things are starting to come together. I hope soon to have some interesting to stuff to show off, like some varied screenshots and a nice video--enough that we could call it a "real announcement".

In the meantime you should know that the game is basically about controlling strange flying-pig creatures in outer space, as they eat tennis balls and deal with each other. The core gameplay is unusual in that the pigs get bigger as they eat things. Their size is used in the collision in the levels. This alters the way the player has to think about moving around the level.

There's no gore, and some unusual gameplay features that make the basis for a new, action-puzzler. It's suitable for kids but is original, and not super-kiddy in the traditional sense. Basically I wanted something I really liked playing, but could show to other people and not have to explain why there's bloody intestines everywhere (our other games are bloody--and I love them dearly--but I figured I'd try something different).

Speaking of levels, we now have a dedicated person, Matthew Barnes, working on the new, visual level editor! He is a coop student from the nearby University of Louisville's School of Engineering. A new editor will assist in making much more interesting, more intricate levels than I've made previously.


Here's the current level "editor" for Pig Eat Ball:

 
Bahah--Yes! That's just some ASCII characters I arranged by hand to then interpret as a level.
And here's a level generated from that ASCII code. It's already really fun but could use some sprucing up.

And now that the game seems up to snuff, we've started working on a visual editor!

Okay, that's not really impressive at all, but stay with me. There's some menus and buttons working, you can add some debug-draw objects, we're working on selection, deleting, rotation, and more! All this means our new coop programmer is moving along on the editor, and can start making some real progress.

The reason for the editor now, is to be able to add more details to the levels themselves. The yin-yang level from above is already cool, but I'd like to add more decorations to it, add layers of details perhaps in the foreground, and background, and make connections between some specialty objects that will give us more interesting gameplay. All of this is much easier to do in a visual level editor rather than ASCII.

So for now it's time to hunker down and get coding on this level editor!