This game's world is getting bigger!  Over the past week, I finished off the forest map (another big level with a couple of different spots where Rhonda and Diarmuid bond, and then a small level topped off with a boss fight), whipped up an overworld map for level transitions (not the fanciest overworld, but its cute and it shows what all people will be doing), and started the second map (a desert with all sorts of plateaus and weird robot guy for a shopkeep).  So far, the game is looking pretty neat.

The "boss fight at the end of each section" thing was not originally planned.  But MV comes with some really nice sprites befitting boss battles and I wanted to use them.  Especially the Behemoth.  It's like a fat cat-pig.  It's going to be the desert boss and called Big Cutie.  But mostly though, I don't know how to properly balance boss fights.  Or fights in general.  So this is a bit of a challenge for me.

I'm also having trouble getting Rhonda and Diarmuid's relationship to flow properly.  They go from enemies to buddies pretty quickly.  Then again, the characters they're based on do that too.  So I don't know what to do about it now.  I want to get the whole game finished up before I go back and edit that stuff.  From the looks of it, I'll have time.

If I stick to my current planned schedule, I'll be done with the game by June 15th.  That will give me plenty of time to edit and refine the game.  More time than I usually end up with, in fact!  So we'll see how this works out.

I'd like to take a moment and thank everyone who has shown interest in HUNT3R.  This has been my most popular pre-release project so far, with lots of folks checking out the page and downloading the demo and all that jazz.  It makes me feel like I've actually made some progress these two years I've been doing game dev.  So again, thank you all!

See you next week, where the plan is to have the desert area finished!