Update:

My publisher and I have recently ended our publishing deal. They tried to transfer the app to me, but Apple doesn't let developers transfer apps that use iCloud, so we had to delete Ace Ferrara and I needed to create a new app with the same name.

Unfortunately this means that existing players will have to repurchase the game to receive further updates. To address this problem, I'm setting the game free for the next few days (until January 2nd), so you can grab it without paying again.

In the meantime, I've updated the game with some new content, which is already in the iOS version that went live today! The big new items are:
• "Ace Ferrara" now sports customized UI layouts to better accomodate the screen sizes of the iPhone 6 and 6+.
• The game now has different types of missiles for different ships: send a barrage of swarm rockets, or stun your enemies with powerful EMPs!
• And there's a new, hard-to-the-max difficulty mode as well, which comes with four bonus missions. A surprising amount of players found the original game too easy. It should now be beefy enough to keep even seasoned veterans on their toes.

The new App Store link is https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id943064340?mt=8

Oh, and one more thing:
Since we had to delete the game and submit it as a new app, it has lost all ratings and reviews on the App Store. If you're getting the new version, it would be fantastic if you could rate it again. If you wrote a review of the game in the past, I've collected all existing reviews here, in case you want to resubmit yours: http://www.aceferrara.com/oldReviews.html

The iOS Version is out now!!  :D :D :D :D :D

New launch trailer:


App Store link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/ace-ferrara-dino-menace/id901401597?mt=8

The game runs on iPhone 4S, iPad 2 and newer devices. It's currently on a launch sale at $1.99 ($3.99 from Saturday on).
Android will come in October, and PC and Mac will be out around the new year.

This is a work-in-progress that won't make it into version 1.0, but I've been having a blast working on it, so I thought I'd show you!

It's a "simulator" that you'll be able to access in the game's mission hub after the first few missions. It'll provide an arcade mode, as well as a bunch of training missions, but it'll do so in ultra low-fi, low-poly graphics, with a chiptune version of the main game's soundtrack.

No idea when this will be ready to be added to the game, it's just something I've been wanting to do since day 1, and I finally spent a few days on it!

This is the game's intro dialogue, introducing the galaxy's main antagonists, Prince Desastor and Princess Nefaris.
The story is told through sequences like this. There's one between each mission.

After about 2800 hours of work, version 1.0 is finally done and will launch on iOS in a few weeks! I've been adding some last polish, animating the rest of the skyboxes with custom shaders:

I wrote a skybox shader for the red giant system today, animating the sun via a masked out displacement map.

Thanks! Great to hear!

I posted an unusually mellow track from the game's soundtrack today:
https://soundcloud.com/philippe_is_a_bee/ace-ferrara-repose

New stuff!



Earth's orbit - this is just a single quad with a custom-written shader that does some funky lighting, bulging and parallax scrolling.



A terran heavy fighter that you'll be flying towards the end of the game. It’s a ridiculously powerful craft, which I tried to convey through the huge engine blocks. I took the screenshot in Blender's viewport, so that’s what the ship looks like before lighting and in-game shading.

And a nebular environment that you enter through a quick series of hyperjumps:

To respond in the appropriate vernacular: Jawsome!

I bought some canvases and brushes this week and started working on the ending. The idea is to do a series of six or seven small acrylic paintings that will be shown while the credits roll. Thought it'd be a personal way of ending what's taking 1.5 years of development and serve as a nice memento of the time spent.

Thanks a lot!

I uploaded a second video, showing how the dialogue system works:



There's one of these dialogue scenes after each mission, advancing the story. This example was taken from very early in the game: On a routine coffee run, new interns Ace Ferrara and Herbert Chen ran into a pack of velociraptors. Surprisingly, they survived the encounter...

I've rolled my own dialogue system, which I wouldn't do again, given that there seem to be excellent 3rd party solutions available for Unity now.

Thanks! :D

The game is now about 90% complete (which means it's still 2-3 months out), so I thought I'd film one of the early missions played on an iPad, to show how the controls work:



After a dinosaur battle group was discovered hyperjumping through a secret Terran system, Sneaky Jacques and the interns escort a scientific shuttle investigating the enemy's jump trace...

Spent the first half of the day making a picture for a briefing slide show...



Pictured here: Baron Odious, velociraptor noble and enemy top pilot. The photo was recently taken in Geneva.

Painted a new skybox this week, among other things:

Here are a few more dinosaur ships, with the dinosaurs that fly them. The goal here is to create an 80s plastic toy look with some resemblance to the dinos' physique, without using obvious things like scales and horns.
I create the models in Blender and the textures in Adobe Illustrator, which is why their shading is pretty flat.

That's absolutely gorgeous!

I'm a huge fan of flat shaded characters. I look forward to what an environment in that style will look like!

Thanks a lot! Just to be clear, the graphics are cartoony and saturated, but technically not cell-shaded - the screenshot of the cruiser and freighter was taken in Blender, not with the in-game lighting, which does have some smooth shading.

I think except for the concrete "terrain" (which I guess is not finished yet?), everything looks gorgeous!