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[DavidCaruso]

September 26, 2014

Daniel's created a new player character design, kind of "in between" the one I posted before and the Shatterhand placeholder. Here are a few animations!

(Speed/length of animations might be adjusted ingame, e.g. the jump will probably look slightly smoother.)

[DavidCaruso]

November 27, 2014

A lot of work has been going on behind the scenes of Steel Assault, both in terms of art/music assets and in terms of actual design/production. We have a lot of stuff we haven't shown yet, but for now, here's a snazzy new title screen:

And here are two new completed songs:

• Regret, a song for a late-game sequence which I'm not going to spoil. In this song I use the NES's terrible-quality DPCM channel to sample, among other things, Jason Robards' regret monologue from the movie Magnolia and the chord from that one Swans song which repeats the same goddamn chord 800000 times. This is probably the best and most ambitious song I've made with Famitracker to date.
• Metro, a song for the level which takes place in the ... ... ... metro. Not as exciting as the last track, but it gets the job done pretty well.

More updates (and more substantive ones) coming soon, probably starting this weekend (because #screenshotsaturday). Also, we're now aiming for a Kickstarter launch in mid-January. We'll tell you more about that as the time comes!

[Schoq]

This looks and sounds like it's gonna be great.

[aamatniekss]

Looks great. You really captured the NES-feeling here! Reminds me of a game on NES called Shatterhand a lot! That was a good game.

[ACOM]

why all the people is making NES Style games? Snes/genesis games were too much nicer

[Paul]

Woww super nice art! Looking forward to this and more updates

[Rebusmind]

This looks exactly like my kind of platformer. Love where this is going.

[shellbot]

November 27, 2014

A lot of work has been going on behind the scenes of Steel Assault, both in terms of art/music assets and in terms of actual design/production. We have a lot of stuff we haven't shown yet, but for now, here's a snazzy new title screen:

And here are two new completed songs:

• Regret, a song for a late-game sequence which I'm not going to spoil. In this song I use the NES's terrible-quality DPCM channel to sample, among other things, Jason Robards' regret monologue from the movie Magnolia and the chord from that one Swans song which repeats the same goddamn chord 800000 times. This is probably the best and most ambitious song I've made with Famitracker to date.
• Metro, a song for the level which takes place in the ... ... ... metro. Not as exciting as the last track, but it gets the job done pretty well.

More updates (and more substantive ones) coming soon, probably starting this weekend (because #screenshotsaturday). Also, we're now aiming for a Kickstarter launch in mid-January. We'll tell you more about that as the time comes!

Glad to see this isn't dead. Also looking forward to those (more substantive) updates.

[DavidCaruso]

Thanks, everyone! :D

Reminds me of a game on NES called Shatterhand a lot! That was a good game.

Yeah, Shatterhand is a major inspiration. I was using placeholder sprites from it for a long time (you can still see them in the GIF in the OP, that'll be updated soon).

why all the people is making NES Style games? Snes/genesis games were too much nicer

True that, but going for a high-quality 16-bit style involves exponentially more time, money, and art/music assets than a high-quality 8-bit one. It's far less likely to result in a complete game because of this, especially given that I'm a university student and can't work on this full-time during the school year. Plus, even mid-quality NES games generally look better than a lot of the "retro" stuff coming out nowadays. Maybe I should put this question in the FAQ when I finish the Kickstarter page.

[DavidCaruso]

December 20, 2014

Remember when I said that I was going to do an update "next weekend" haha? I forgot I was in school though.

Anyway, Steel Assault is now an artgame about avoiding creepy dudes trying to hit on you on the metro:

(click on image for full video link)

(The next step is probably adding some new enemy types finally lol.)

Also, here's the game's updated style guide with tons of NES info:

(click on thumbnail for full image)

And, finally, we have an official website now! We got a few press mentions, one in Siliconera and one in RetroManiac, so that was pretty cool.

[shellbot]

This is the best kind of update: jam-packed with great content!

The website looks great, that gif is awesome, and the style guide was a nice read.

Keep up the great work my friend!

[Alec S.]

Saw the style guide on Tumblr.  This game is looking (and sounding) really fantastic.

[Boreal]

This parallax is ridiculous.  Love it.

[DavidCaruso]

Thanks, everyone! And yeah, it's been super fun going crazy with the parallax.

I mentioned a while back that we were aiming for a mid-January Kickstarter campaign, and now we have some more details on that! The tentative date is January 16, and the tentative goal is $8,000. The page is coming along pretty well:

(click on thumbnail for full image)

[s-spooky g-g-ghosts]

This is sick, I don't think many people are capable/willing to achieve this look and it's just dope *_*

[DavidCaruso]

December 23, 2014

T-thanks, s-spooky g-g-ghosts!

So, two things in this update. First off, we have a SoundCloud now, containing all finished tracks I've composed for the game so far!

Second, here's some new level art! This is Club Pavilion, where the first major boss fight of Steel Assault is going to take place. (And here's the corresponding song, if you haven't heard it already.)

Like most good things, this area was loosely inspired by the opening shot of Boogie Nights. Best opening shot of any movie ever.

[Neeko]

Gorgeous, looks like a true NES throwback. Gameplay looks great and retro as well.

[Wolf_FGR]

Holy F-ing Gosh! For obvious reasons I didn't read all the posts, only looked at the screenshots , and they are really awesome! As a big fan of old NES shooters and specially the Contra series, I'm really looking forward to play this game.

The scanlines on the video are too strong for my tastes though... to tell the truth I never noticed any scanlines on my old TVs while playing games... I still have a pretty old (60s/70s) mitsubishi crt tv and it still works wonders, however, i can't really see the scanlines from a distance, only when you're very close and paying attention you can notice them, so, the effect should be very subtle imho. Perhaps they were more apparent in low-cost TVs?

Also, another things that could be 'emulated' are some small amount of noise (do you remember the good ole ch3/4 rf switch for videogames? those were the days!), round corners and also some distortion around the borders.

Keep up the good work!

[EdFarage]

Dang your project is just ...
dang
those jams too, oh my god.
 

[DavidCaruso]

Thanks guys!

The scanlines on the video are too strong for my tastes though... to tell the truth I never noticed any scanlines on my old TVs while playing games... I still have a pretty old (60s/70s) mitsubishi crt tv and it still works wonders, however, i can't really see the scanlines from a distance, only when you're very close and paying attention you can notice them, so, the effect should be very subtle imho. Perhaps they were more apparent in low-cost TVs?

Also, another things that could be 'emulated' are some small amount of noise (do you remember the good ole ch3/4 rf switch for videogames? those were the days!), round corners and also some distortion around the borders.

I don't have a CRT myself, but when I used to (years back) I did notice the scanlines. I also like the scanline look in itself, even aside from any nostalgia or "emulation" purposes; I think pixel art generally looks better this way. The specific filter I'm using here is based off the in-depth discussions in this forum thread.

I don't know about NTSC filtering, that's going a little too far IMO (because it looks ugly to me lol). I actually do have barrel distortion in, you can see it in the videos in a very slight amount if you look at the edges. Either way, the amount of curvature, strength of the scanlines, etc. will all be customizable.

So like... right now I'm almost done with our game's Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight pages, for the January 16 (EDIT: jk January 19th) launch. I'd really like some feedback on them, especially from anyone who's ran a Kickstarter or Greenlight campaign before (this is my first time doing either).

WIP Kickstarter | WIP Greenlight (image)

The Greenlight one is an image because it's hidden and Steam doesn't offer a preview link feature like Kickstarter does. All of the game screenshots in the image are GIFs.

I guess, some specific questions I'm looking for (though of course any other feedback is always welcome):

• Does the campaign video do a good job of "selling" the game, even if you don't really know what it is? Is the editing okay, or is all the zooming and panning too distracting?
• Do the reward tiers look reasonable?
• Is there any content missing from the page that I should add?
• Should I be putting more detail into the Greenlight, or is that much okay? Can I expect Greenlight users to convert to Kickstarter backers at a reasonable rate?

Finally, regarding marketing... all the guides I've read advise something like sending out 100-300+ personalized press emails. How do I find 100-300 game journalists that I think will be interested in my game, AND cyberstalk them enough to "personalize" my emails to them? Are there even 100 prominent English gaming sites? Or should I be emailing more than one writer per site, e.g. email 5 different people who've written articles on "retro-style" games for Destructoid? (And can I use one of those email tracking apps which embeds a really small image to tell me if they read the email or not, or will it reflect badly if the person sees it?) The press aspect of this just seems really overwhelming to me.