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(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/8779/f4gs.png) (http://excubitorgame.com/)


Excubitor is a new video game project by Tesseract Interactive. An action game at it’s core, it harks back to the days of the Strike Series and Raptor: Call of The Shadows. While those games served as the initial inspiration, in the later stages of development we shifted the focus to not just invoke the gameplay of old school shoot-em-ups, but also provide the player with a loot system and different upgrades, as well as the core mechanics of the tower defense genre. By fusing all of these pieces in addition to our own ideas and gameplay innovations we believe Excubitor has developed it’s own identity, something that will differentiate our game from the ones that came before it.

STORY

In a militaristic future where mankind has conquered the farthest reaches of space, the crew of a lone research vessel called Antares lies dormant near an off-world mining colony until it receives a distress signal and executes a surveillance mission. Upon descent on the planet you discover that the colony is under attack. There you must battle the war machines of humanity, now controlled by a sentient entity of unknown origins. As the player, you are the pilot of a space fighter, the only one trained and capable to fend of the enemy forces and defend Antares.

FEATURES

* Explore different worlds, each one offering a unique feel and different gameplay elements
* Confront a vast array of enemy units, with the difficulty increasing as the game progresses
* Choose from different spacecraft upgrades
* A big selection of weapons that unlock as you progress through the game
* Plan your resources – unlock new strategic possibilities based on your play style using the resources you earn in-game
* Go on the offence, or bunker down defensively - upgrade your spacecraft and take the fight to the enemy, or build defensive turrets and turtle out the storm

SCREENSHOTS

(http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/5502/3ehp.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/845/3ehp.png/)

(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/3613/pmri.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/7/pmri.png/)

(http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/6523/i9hy.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/713/i9hy.png/)

VIDEOS

Alpha Gameplay Footage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xe8FhFAAio)


CONTACT

You can find more info on the following sites:

Official Website: http://excubitorgame.com/
IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/excubitor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ResonanceGameProject
Twitter: @TesseractGames

Or contact us at [email protected]

Here, once a week we will upload all the Development Logs so that they can be easily accessible for future reading.

DEV BLOG ENTRY 0: THE BASICS (http://excubitorgame.com/2013/06/dev-blog-entry-0-the-basics/)

DEV BLOG ENTRY 1: THE CORE (http://excubitorgame.com/2013/07/dev-blog-entry-1-the-core/)

DEV BLOG ENTRY 0: THE BASICS

FRIENDLY WARNING: Wall of text to follow :)

THE GENESIS

Some four and a half years ago, after spending most of their youth in the embrace of the video game culture, Ivan Ivanovski and Aleksandar Jovanovski made the decision to combine their previous IT knowledge and dedicate their time to create a game of their own.


The initial idea was to create a video game that pays tribute to the shoot- em ups of old, the likes of Raptor: Call of the Shadows and Tyrian. Without any previous know how when it comes to actually building a game from the ground up one can imagine how the first steps weren't quite easy. There are choices one has to make before starting a project, and those choices aren't so obvious at first. Whether to go with 2D or 3D, which programming language do you use, what tools are required to create the assets and how long can you develop before money begins to be an issue? These are all valid questions, and to someone with relative experience in the industry might seem like a given, but not so to two students that embark on their first journey into game development.
After spending some time with a mentor, someone who introduced them to the bare- bone basics of creating a video game, they began work on what would eventually become EXCUBITOR.

CHOICES

One of first things that were easily decided was to go the 3D route. While today the amount of 2D games is on a constant rise, and they tend to be a sight to behold, when this project began the team had no 2D artist and the tech was not nearly as popular. Aleksandar had previous knowledge in 3D modeling and the initial wave of asset creation was not a difficult task for him.
When it comes to the programming language it gets a bit tricky. The first, and jarringly obvious, thing is to look at what language the lead programmer knows best. The other important thing is to consider how the programming language works with games, can it be optimized, and how much performance you’d be willing to sacrifice without it being an issue. With Ivan the choice was C#. He had previous knowledge with it and felt comfortable enough to use it for the game.


The two fledgling game developers then took to the internet to find a game engine, or framework, that would serve as the base for the project. Since the game would be coded in C# the decision was not that difficult, it came down to Microsoft’s XNA Framework, a set of tools to promote indie game development based on .NET and with support for all Microsoft products, X-Box, Windows and Windows Phone. It’s important to note that XNA is no longer supported by Microsoft, it was left behind in the wake of the new Windows 8 (METRO UI) era, but even as is it still has the tools necessary to push the project to completion.

THE TEAM

After working on the game as a team of two for a prolonged period of time, Ivan and Aleksandar began to realize that in order to create the game they wanted they needed to bring a few more hands to help them out. There was a need for some additional creative input, people that would design new assets and bring some other new ideas on the table.


That’s where I, Igor Antovski, along with Aleksandar Chakalaroski (Chakal) and Filip Popovski joined up. Seeing as we were (and still are) a small team we decided to share a lot of the responsibilities between the five of us. I turned to texturing along with Filip, while Chakal spent his time creating the concept art and general art direction for the game. As time went by roles changed and expanded, the need came to introduce visual effects, more sophisticated model sculpting and in- game GUI among other things. When we finally decided to implement sound effects and music in the game Ivan Gjorgievski (Ico) joined the team as the sound designer. This team composition is intact to this day, all of us learning new tricks of the trade and constantly expanding our knowledge of the game development process.

TESSERACT INTERACTIVE

Since we all started to realize that EXCUBITOR is turning into a serious project, something that we've all been working on for more than two years, it became apparent that money will soon become an issue. In order to complete the game we needed to forgo any other ventures and completely focus our time on development, but in order to do that some form of financing was required.
That’s when we found out about LaunchHub, a startup accelerator located in Sofia, Bulgaria, and we saw the opportunity it offered.


Long story short, we succeeded with our goal, we formed our company TESSERACT INTERACTIVE mainly thanks to their investment. Since that moment we’re marching on with more poise and dedication than ever before. While the monetary issue will surely rear its ugly head at some point in the future, we’re confident that the task to overcome it is not as difficult as initially thought.

CLOSING WORDS

And we are still developing to this day. It’s a long process that consumes our time and tends to be grueling, but we wouldn't have it any other way. This post did not cover in depth info about the process of game development itself, it was more of an introductory development blog post with rambling about the team, how we got together and how the idea of EXCUBITOR was brought to life. In future posts, all shorter than this one (I promise), we will be talking about the development process in detail, all the design changes, issues we've faced and the thought process behind the creation of the gameplay elements and mechanics.

Also feel free to visit our website and check out more info and media, and sign up on the forums to join the discussion on the game:  http://excubitorgame.com/

DEV BLOG ENTRY 1: THE CORE

This week we will delve a little deeper into our development process. While the last blog served as an intro story about the birth of Excubitor and the creation of Tesseract Interactive here we will talk about the first, and arguably most important, choice the team needed to make, the choice of a programming language.

C#
As mentioned in the previous entry there are a few choices when it comes to the programming language, all of which offer their own set of problems and advantages.

But for us it was pretty straight forward, Ivan knew C# quite well, so we went with it.


C# is one of the most popular programming languages out there. One notable advantage it has over C++, aside from the aforementioned tidbit that our lead coder knew it much, much better, is that the syntax itself is easier. Another advantage is that there is no need for memory management.
On the flip-side though we have the issue of Garbage Collection. That is the method with which .NET manages the memory. This presents a small problem in game development because all of the objects need to be optimized in order for the memory heap to be small enough for the Garbage Collector, and that puts some constraints with the asset creation.

And last, but not least, C# is the featured programming language of Microsoft XNA, the framework we chose to develop in.

Microsoft XNA
XNA is a free set of tools that work in a run time environment that is provided by Microsoft.


It’s based on the .NET framework, so we have the Garbage Collector and the difficulties that accompany it.
Microsoft released XNA with the idea to promote indie game development on their platforms, Windows, X-Box and Windows Phone.
It is basically a .NET variant of Microsoft’s well established DirectX platform, but focused mainly on lightweight games. Though by saying “lightweight” there is the automatic implication the games are of little contact and lower production values, some developers proved this false and released some of the best indie games of the last decade. Some notable games are: Fez, Terraria, Capsized, Bastion, Magicka and the list goes on.
The framework itself provides a good basis for game development, as well as a lot of libraries (especially math related) that are of great help to the programmer. It’s easy to use and has the capability for fast prototyping. Microsoft also provides practical examples for those interested.
It’s important to note that XNA supports pretty much all features that are available to AAA game developers

HLSL
High-level shading language (HLSL) is a proprietary shading language developed by Microsoft for use with the Microsoft Direct3D API

XEN: Graphics API for XNA
A simplifies writing low level graphics code that helped us make the game rather quickly (as quick as first timers can actually make a game).



While it is no longer in development, it still has great 2D support already built in and is rich with features for easier use of XNA’s graphics pipeline.

If anyone is interested to read more about the technology we talked about you may visit these websites:

Microsoft XNA: Msdn.microsoft.com (http://Msdn.microsoft.com)
XEN: Graphics API for XNA: Xen.codeplex.com (http://Xen.codeplex.com)
HLSL: Msdn.microsoft.com (http://Msdn.microsoft.com)

Also feel free to ask any questions you might have regarding the topics covered in this post, or anything about the game in general, we will be more than happy to comply.

As always, stay tuned for future updates, and thank you for your support and interest. Cheers.

Excubitor on Greenlight

Hello TigSource community. We are happy to say that we are finally ready with our Greenlight campaign. We hope you guys will find our game worth supporting :) Please leave any feedback or questions.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=278761249