Age of Anything

Devlog

Frogs that fall over properly, and the site on a phone

Frogs that fall over properly

I was looking at the battle picture for the website and the dead frogs looked upside down. They were. When a frog died, the game flipped its whole picture over, which was meant to be it landing on its back. On a flat sprite it’s just a frog standing on its head, shield and spear included.

The first round of fixes turned and squashed the same picture in different ways, and honestly they were all terrible. You can’t get a frog lying down by rotating a picture of a frog standing up.

So now the frog gets laid down in 3D, like everything else we draw, and baked from there. I picked a face-down sprawl, legs stretched out behind, with its spear and shield dropped on the ground beside it. It gives one last little hop and then flops.

A viking frog spearman and a frog worker lying face down, from all eight sides, their gear on the ground
After a fight: frogs lying face down in the grass among the other fallen

The placement checks learned two new rules for it too: a body that’s down lies on the ground, and anything it dropped lands clear of it. The first try had a frog propped up on one hand, floating in its own shadow, and that’s a test case now.

The site on a phone

I went through the website on my phone and a 14-inch Mac and found a lot I didn’t like.

  • The text on the laptop was squashed into a narrow column.
  • The army box at the top went blank between races, the picture turned into plain grass and the box jumped around in size. Terrible. Now one army fades into the next and the box stays the same size.
  • On a phone the pictures came above their headings, which isn’t how anyone reads. Heading first now.
  • The Follow development button sat over on the left. It’s full width on a phone now.
  • The ticks in the lists sat a bit high against their text.

Each one is a test now, so I’m not the one catching them next time. They’re going into our web playbook too, so the next site starts with them.

The devlog

The devlog’s filled in, one post for every day going back to day one, with tags so you can follow just the art, the sieges or the Steam Deck stuff. There’s an RSS feed if that’s your thing, and every post has its own picture when you share the link.