First glance at Kill Catalyst
The idea for this game dates back to when I first started messing around with game maker, and I shall be explaining more about it in future posts. In a nutshell, its an overhead ‘tactical’ shooter with heavy emphasis on light as a gameplay element. Some enemies will lurk in the dark waiting for you to stray from the illuminated areas, others will set up a perimiter and have you lurking in the dark to get an advantage.
As I wrote earlier, I’ve chosen to go with a deferred rendering approach to handle the number of lights required for this idea. The above screenshot is the current lighting testbed, and its getting close to what I imagined the game to look like. The challenge is going to be to push as many dynamic shadow casting lights as possible. Given the overhead camera view I’m sure there are some speed-boosting constraints I can impose on how shadows are done, but I haven’t thought of anything yet.
PS: WT has put up a page for his ongoing art practice. As I understand it, the idea is to spend 90 minutes a day every day to draw pictures inspired by random ideas. Be sure to check it out, link is at the top.
Tags: kill catalyst, Projects, XNA