The progress - part 2

For this blog we thought it would be a good idea to tell something about the origin of our name “Timeous Tranquility Games”, or TTGames in short. After that we will talk a little bit about the art of the rats and decoration objects. Finally, there is something to read about the more technical side of the decoration objects and what we are going to do in the near future.

Before we even made the official project groups, a couple of us already had an idea of who to group up with. Due to some issues with balance, however, that group got split up. That old group consisted of Sander, Rowan, Jeremy and some other guys and was called Crepe Games. When we got split in two separate groups, we had to decide which group got the name and which one got the game to make. Obviously we got the game and the others continued as Crepe Games. There was a bit of trouble since we did not have that much time left to come up with a name. Of course there was some fun in coming up with one and after a while we came up with DoubleTGames and TTGames. Despite knowing that people might say ‘titty games’ instead of pronouncing is as ‘tee tee games’, we still thought TTGames sounded a lot better and went with that.

The only problem left was that we had to find something that TT could stand for. We were looking for something that reflects our group and sounded a bit intelligent as well. We were pretty much all very relaxed and a bit lazy at times, so we wanted something like ‘rest’. Obviously that does not start with a T, so the word we came up with was tranquility. Then we still had to put a word starting with a T in front of that. So we had to find an adjective that fits with tranquility. We started thinking about something like ‘time’ or ‘timed’ and after a little bit of thinking we decided that timeous was the right word. It fits very well with most of us; being relaxed for the most part, but work hard from time to time. For example the day(s) before a deadline. That fits perfectly with our name, so the decision was made and we became Timeous Tranquility Games.

Sander, our most skillful programmer thanks to his pre-knowledge which he acquired through a course he followed in highschool, also likes to do a bit of artwork. And since we're making ''naked molerats'' he was drawing out his naked molerats. Needless to say, these things were hilariously drawn, the shape and the sheer ugliness caused a lot of laughter in the team. We decided that this cannot be in the final product, so he made another version. In that version the molerats still looked absolutely hideous, but not quite as before. Now we're using sprites that are more humanlike but still resemble the essence of a naked molerat, which is what most of us had in mind in the first place. The rest of the art he has done looked okay for an early version of the game, but probably need to be polished a bit more. By the way, the reason that Sander did a lot of the art us because he has tablet on which he can make drawings quickly.

A problem that we are currently facing is walking over terrain decorations. Walking over terrain is working fine, but the decorations make things a lot harder. These decorations make the game more fun, but maybe we should focus on other aspects of the game before putting many hours into this problem. The game is still playable if we make the molerats just ignore the decorations, so it may very well be a better option to leave that as it is until we have done some more important stuff. Speaking of more important stuff, we still need to start working on the modding system. We have got pretty much everything planned out, now we just need to program the whole thing. Which is going to be a close call considering how much time we have left. As our name suggests though, now is the time to stop resting and work much more on the game.

This was this week’s blog post. Apologies for the late posting time. Our next and probably last update will be about our final product and things we will add over the course of the next two weeks. Though we will probably do some tweaking here and there over in the weekend after.

- TTGames