True story: when I took the SAT—the big important high school test here in the US that determines one’s college-worthiness—I didn’t read the instructions, so I didn’t know that answering wrongly deducted points while leaving a question blank didn’t. I still scored 760/800 on the writing section, but I took what I’m assuming was a substantial hit in the math section, where I distinctly remember filling in random numbers to a few questions that were beyond my level. I got 620/800, so according to the scoring system used in my time my overall score still landed upwards of the 93 percentile.

Here in the indie game development world, however, reading the instructions is apparently compulsory! Now that I’ve finally listened to what some might consider common sense and looked more deeply into ORK tutorials, I’ve gotten my scene transitions going (i.e. stepping onto an overworld cave to leave the overworld and appear in the cave) and I’m decently underway with dialogue. The ORK directions are aimed at 3D games, so I do have to adjust as I go, but the sense of progress is palpable. =) After these things comes the undertaking of translating the battle system into 2D—much more interesting to me than dialogue and slightly more interesting to me than exploration, to be sure, but everything has a proper order to it.

Equally as good (or maybe even better yet), pixel artistry is moving along and I just received some wonderfully exciting early stuff this morning! :D The fundamentals like floors and walls are now in play for two of the earliest areas (they share most of the same tile set) and the fine details are up next, like stuff that breaks up the repeatable tiles and gives visual variety to the ground. I do love seeing other people’s pretty pixel art during #screenshotsaturday on Twitter, but I’m looking really forward to being able to participate myself. =)