I’ve been working on Incomprehensible Luminescence (I.L.) for almost two years now, I could say. The world of Chromanea, originally referred to as the >.INVOKE world, was very different when I first invented it back in 2006. It’s a standalone world now. Somewhat. Anyways, I first had the idea of making a danmaku game after playing Touhou for several months, but my concept for the game, simply called >.INVOKE Danmaku back then, was quite different from what I.L.’s concept is now. It featured a completely different cast of characters, and the entire concept was eventually discarded in favor of I.L.
I.L. was originally made in Game Maker. It lagged with 500 bullets (aka, half the usual amount in a danmaku game), so I created a Flash version – which lagged even worse-er. I worked on those versions on-and-off for around a year and a half, before learning to use OpenGL with C++ in order to make an I.L. that could run smoothly at 60 frames per second.
C++ I.L. has been in development for four months now, although development is still somewhat on-and-off. On average, I program about one hour every two days, though I worked on it more extensively during the summer. I’ve kept track of all my programming – when I get on the computer and start programming and when I get off, to the closest minute. The first half of my Epic Dev Log can be downloaded here. It involves lasers, so you should read it.
Here’s some screenshots of what I.L. looks like right now:
