next »

[Dugan]

Hey - so I have been meaning to setup a devlog for this for some time, and finally am...

WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?
This project has been super slow in development, the sort where it gets an hour or so a week if it's very lucky. It began as a quick simple experiment a friend was coding as something - but then it mutated a lot over time, and the is now targeted for release on xbox indies (XBLIG) first to be followed later by a PC release. Its just a 3 person team, audio and code and art (with design shared).

OK BUT WHAT'S THE GAME?
At its core it is an arcadey side scrolling shooter set very loosely in the mould of defender, with 16bit styled graphics.
The game has a campaign map that allows players to be progressively introduced to the different enemies, as well as give branching route options.

(shrunk half res)

Some other features include:
An alternate rapid-fire weapon whose recharge you have to manage (it also upgrades over time).
Kill chaining enemies for increased score.
Depth based pick-ups that allow you to influence the position and type of the special dropped (so players can use them to fit their style of play).


"Due to a sudden shortage of milk, kittens are forced to look to the oceans to get their fix. Overcoming their fear of water they drill down into the seabed to extract vast untapped reserves of naturally forming full-fat milk."

Your crew sails the seas, and deploy their kitten-piloted submarine where ever the mining operation is in peril - "the milk must flow!" [poor Dune related gag].

(updated 19 Mar 2012)

[paste]

Looks very pretty.  I am interested in this!

[Zulaan]

This looks awesome!
Posting so I can follow this...

[saibot216]

The milk must flow, I love it.
I'm hoping this is like FF meets Metal Slug.

[Destral]

Cute premise, cool art. Looking forward to trying this out.

[TobiasW]

"naturally forming full-fat milk"
...haha, nice.

So, 60%? Show us other stuff!

[Dugan]

Here's a quick bit on the submarine development. I have a soft spot for an old sprite I made for a GBA demo years ago (2003?), that was later tweaked for a top down submarine demo/experiment (for the cockpit compo in 2009 - http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=5187.0).

But for this game the resolution now needed upping (as it runs in a 1280x720 window). It started off firing torpedoes, but after tinkering about has ended up with chunky recoiling machine guns rather than torpedo tubes - to better suit the gameplay.

[Sir Raptor]

Will there be catfish?

[Dugan]

Will there be catfish?

arf - no, no catfish or dogfish 

[Dugan]

excuse the double post...


Here are some examples of the enemies - the latest ones have a bit more polish but the style is the same.
All are mechanised sea creatures in a zoid-like manner.

[Zulaan]

I like the crab the most but I love them all!
Great work.

EDIT: I wanna see a turtle enemy

[ANtY]

Yup, crab is the best, but all graphics look great!

[Inanimate]

You've got a real impressive style, here! I always love mechanized enemies. And those kitties! 

[Dugan]

->

Aaaand here's an updated pic. The golden goldfish needed to be scaled up as it was proving too annoying to shoot (it moves fast and drops pickups).

Others have detail and colouration tweaks to help them look a bit more distinct from one another when the screen gets busy.

Will try to show how the waves developed next (animating waves just isn't fun).

[saibot216]

This game... is gonna rock my world.

[Aquanoctis]

Cool, that long purple enemy looks very nice indeed.

[SundownKid]

Looks like they could go in a MegaMan game. Epic sprite art.

[Dugan]

Thanks for the comments folks!

Here's a bit of info on the sea for the game. Due to time limitations I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, so the initial idea was just to animate speckling a few pixels on the water surface:



But once level scrolling about - this looked pretty weak, so an alternative method was needed.
I thought I`d try to do a short animating wave loop, forgetting how much I hate animating rippling things:


I was trying to get a sense of a rolling sea swell in there, but this 1st attempt was all up and down with no side motion.


Then next I tried to make the waves build from one side rather than having mirrored slopes (above), but then that need a few more iterations before it felt ok.

And then a few different wave layers were used to help give a sense of depth and choppiness to the sea surface:

(it's darn hard trying to animate the sea, but very rewarding once it looks half decent  ).

[ANtY]

Thanks for the comments folks!

Here's a bit of info on the sea for the game. Due to time limitations I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, so the initial idea was just to animate speckling a few pixels on the water surface:



But once level scrolling about - this looked pretty weak, so an alternative method was needed.
I thought I`d try to do a short animating wave loop, forgetting how much I hate animating rippling things:


I was trying to get a sense of a rolling sea swell in there, but this 1st attempt was all up and down with no side motion.


Then next I tried to make the waves build from one side rather than having mirrored slopes (above), but then that need a few more iterations before it felt ok.

And then a few different wave layers were used to help give a sense of depth and choppiness to the sea surface:

(it's darn hard trying to animate the sea, but very rewarding once it looks half decent  ).

Can you make a short in-game gif? ;p

[Dugan]

not sure - maybe using fraps or something? I'll try to find out

UPDATE: I managed to grab the sea in-engine and crop it down, but the gif was pretty large filesizewise, so I popped it onto youtoob instead (cant embed on these forums can we?).

http://www.youtube.com/user/TikipodLtd#p/a/u/0/DeyPreMZiGo