I definitely like the look of this game. and I'm a big fan of similar games. I wasn't so put off by the control scheme, more just the physics, it felt like it should be a little more responsive/arcade-like. And the land is quite distracting, everything looks so smooth and clean then you have these big squares of land. But, it definitely feels like a base for something greater. And I remember a post of yours on Twitter regarding layered sprites? The effect works really well and I'd like to know more about your method (or should I just Google, lol?)
Viewing post in Merchant of Nevis jam comments
Yeah, I actually made the ship specifically slow to manoeuvre in some, possibly misguided, quest for accuracy when I first started development and I probably should've dropped that feature! I entirely agree that the land is terrible, truth be told I ran out of time to do anything more than that unfortunately. Regarding the ships, it's pretty simple really. You draw a set of top-down sprites that represent slices through the object, then offset each slice from the bottom up by -1 in the Y direction. You then just have them maintain their relative position to each other and rotate together. That's probably a terrible explanation! I've pointed people in the direction of this tutorial before, it's specific to gamemaker though (which I don't actually use) but might be helpful: http://www.like100bears.com/writing/2d-3d-in-gamemaker-studio :) Thanks for playing and running the jam!
It's a really neat effect. Some games are just rendering in 3d and down scaling it, that doesn't look so good. This method probably takes a little more effort, but the result is 3d-esque but super clear/not jaggedy, certainly worth the effort. I definitely want to try and use this technique at some point. I did already have an idea of the process, but thanks for the link, it never hurts to see how other people approach the same problem. :)