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[Superb Joe]

Ant Racks: Efficient, stylish storage solutions for your insect collection

[cykboy]

Ant Racks: Efficient, stylish storage solutions for your insect collection

Well, we were more going for a twist on anthrax - but that works too

Explosion bugs are fun..

[cykboy]

big explosions!

[Josich]

Looks absolutelly fantastic.

[cykboy]

Thank you Josich!

Explosions need a bit of fine tuning, but heres some more progress... die!

[cykboy]

While Sam has been doing a ton of work on the code side graphical development is not far behind!

Heres some eye-candy update on the teleporter:


Peace!
Leendert

WIP implementation:

[cykboy]

Hey Tig!

We've been spending our time on implementing, testing and finalizing core gameplay components such as shooting, spawning, dying, blowing up and everything inbetween. Have a large update coming soon, in the meantime here's some fun with robots:

[cykboy]

Some news and updates:

We've released our official press release and you can get it here!

Our second mech design now has a portrait image. It still needs a little bit of fine-tuning and is close to being finished:

Then we have our mechbay which was WIP for quite some time. It is being added to the server as I am writing this.
Heres a mockup for what it is going to look like:

Hope you all enjoyed the new updates. More code updates coming from Sam shortly!
Thanks for reading!

Leendert

[cykboy]

Alot of work has been done on the server-side portion, creating an API, authentication system, user account handling, loadout saving etc - but its all paid off and I've finally got around to implementing some UI. Here's the mechbay (wip)!

[cykboy]

Some ingame ui work

[cykboy]

DEVLOG UPDATE - #1 - !

I would like to start with a huge thank you to all the people who are supporting our project.
We have received a lot of positive feedback over the past 6 weeks on the project and are super exited to release new and upcoming content that we are implanting in our beta release this September.

NEW MECH DESIGN
The last two weeks the design team has been working on creating a full new working mech model: The spider mech!

Just like all the other mech designs all of the seperate parts can be swapped out with all of the others. This means legs, torso, shoulder right or left and even both arms on both sides. This all with all of the available colors that our game has to offer. Close to endless combinations you as a user can choose from.

As for the new mech designs here are some eye-candy updates!

MECH WALK-CYCLE
With our flexible designs it is a must that all objects fit in a isometric box. This box is not visible anywhere but when we design it is. As for the legs we can make a small exception since only the torso connects to this part of the mech its body. These spider legs needed more room since the feet need room to move forward.

Here is the spider mech its walk cycle!




And here it is with the full body. Do note that the upper body parts normally bounce up and down in-game to give the animation more impact and movement.



GUN ANIMATIONS
Yes ladies and gentlemen we have guns! loads of guns!
For the spider mech we created a gatling-gun because gatling-guns are awesome!




NEW GAME-PLAY FEATURES
Because of combat and parts can malfunction we decided to add a so called "logistic support" item. It is basically a gun that can heal instead of doing damage. Logi's can either fit a damage healer or energy or shield transfer.

Damage healers speak for itself. The energy and shield transfers do not.
If you are fit with a energy transfer you can boost someone its energy. With energy you can do a lot of things. One of them being able to fire your lasers. And since lasers are real strong weaponry in this game having a buddy with energy support on you can be quite a deadly combination!

As for shield transfers it basically covers your ability for parts to malfunction. You're not invulnerable. Just harder to destroy. Easiest way to explain is: normal health * 2 = your new health.

Here are two GIF animations that show the work in progress logistical transfer weaponry. Do note that without its beam it looks quite awkward. And yeah, no beams yet unfortunately - follow us for the next update - we will feature it there!




Also for our booster tile pick-up-able collection next to the shield booster we now have a energy booster tile! hooray!



And of course the animation for when you have picked it up



GAME HUD
Showing stats and in-game chat.





ART FIXES
We have fixed our isometric angles on our mech designs. As you can tell on the code GIF images down below they are not 100% correct. We have now fixed them on images but also updated our spritesheets. In our next update we are going to show you all more about this. With the upcoming screen recordings you will see the improved results!



ENGINE & CODE UPDATES
Sam Hellawell the coder has been working hard on improving our engine. It is developed in WebGL and JavaScript. Everything outside of the games functions in WebGL and is basically a website. The entire game will actually function in a browser. The WebGL part is for the main menu. In the main menu you can customize your mech, create maps, communicate with your friends, check out your ranking or adjust your game options.

The engine takes in 2D isometric pixel art, converts the necessary components into 3D meshes which allows us to take full advantage of modern game development practices including the much requested dynamic lighting and shadows. It is rendered from an orthographic isometric perspective, the same at which the art itself is drawn. It allows us to use dynamic lighting, shadows, physics, positional audio and even more.

To demonstrate this all a bit further here are some graphical teasers!

THE MAIN MENU
Although we have had a different and super detailed pixel art menu we ended up choosing for a more simple and flat design. Here is a in-game screen recording of our work in progress.




DYNAMIC LIGHTNING & SHADOWS
The dynamic lighting and shadows are already functional and here are some examples of the capabilities it has to offer.

Regular lightning and shadows:


There are possibilities to create a real dark environment with for example red lightning. Also a nice tease to how the 3D meshes allow you to rotate the pixel art maps. How awesome is that?




IN-GAME MECH COMBAT
As stated in our game description post each part can malfunction. It will show up as destroyed. In-game we have implanted firing your guns, impacts, explosions and even destructible parts. Right now the mechs its parts still blow up all together. We are working on a code calculation for received damage on separate body parts.



SPAWNING
We kind of figured that just showing up at once while joining a game would seem real awkward. Then we decided to add a feature that included a spawning animation. We ended up with a teleporting idea that ended up looking and functioning way beyond our expectations. Here's to GIFs!



And implanted in-game:

[JobLeonard]

If you play the spawning animation in reverse, it's like a player is wiped out via orbiter laser 

[cykboy]

Hello and welcome to our second devlog update.

Since our last update on the 14th of February a lot of progress has been made and we are super exited to once again show you our results!

MERCHANDISE
A while ago I found out about Jacky from Redicubricks. Jacky, also known as Valcrow, has created some 3D printed mech models a couple years ago. I found out about Jacky because of his video with Tested.com. You can find the video and article here. Ever since these mech models Jacky his skills have greatly improved and his new upcoming mech works will instantly prove this fact!

We are proud to announce our partnership with Redicubricks and the fact that we are having our first mech design printed! Below here is a first impression in what has to become the printed model.

In a couple of weeks, we aim to have some pre-game merchandise up for grabs. Now that the model has been designed, we just need to get a prototype printed, painted and articulated and then we can discuss distribution. If you think you’d be interested, why not drop us a line at [email protected] and we’ll put you on our first come first served list! We will show off the real life mech model in our next update.



ART UPDATES
How could we not feature new pixel art works in our update right?

After some thoughts about our city map pack we came to the conclusion we needed to expand upon it and add more variety, maps can now be pretty large and currently get pretty repetitive. We came to the conclusion that adding more natural tiles such as grass, sand, etc and decoration objects such as trees, rocks and other early elements would suit best. Here's some previews!

MAP UPDATES
Grass tiles with borders, slopes, corner tiles and everything you would expect from a game that offers a great amount of creative freedom.




As for solo objects we've started adding rocks, trees and even things like a waterfall!




MECH UPDATES
As for our February update we've discussed our new "spidermech". It has been fully completed since that day and the spider mech is now even successfully implanted on the test server!

Here are the graphics. I've included parts of our sprite sheets here to show you all how much art actually is required. It is very time consuming and a lot of work to get a model to work!












PORTRAIT UPDATES
As with our mechs we want to include portraits for all of them. Here's a latest work in progress for our moderator police mech edition. It's still far from done but you'll get the idea.



ENGINE & CODE UPDATES
The main programming focus for the past few weeks has been entirely on implementing existing and new artwork for maps, ranging from decoration objects such as waterfalls, fences, railings to more complex interactable entities such as wires, buttons, spawn tiles and power ups. Graphical gimmicks have also been experimented with, such as SSAO, depth shading, shadow adjustments and adding a vignette effect. I'm not 100% happy with these results yet, so more will be to come in the next update on these when I've fine tuned them. With the ability to have large maps with open spaces, we really needed something to tie that together - that "thing" turned out to be water. It can be placed like any other tile and is compiled as its own mesh with a custom shader. It can be placed at any level in any shape, or can be used as a large mass of water.







I've also been working on heavily optimizing map rendering and compilation, and now we can support 64x32x64 (x, y, z) tiles per map and hundreds of entities. A few other tidbits aren't fully implemented and not yet ready to show, such as slopes terrain tiles, animated decorations and the wire system. Our lighting engine has also had an overhaul, it now supports more lights on screen and can be switched from per pixel to per vertex shading for performance reasons. In the next update, we will go in depth in how these various mechanics work and show off some GIFs of the editor.

The “spidermech” is also implemented in game, and is my personal favorite so far. Fast and deadly.

THE END!
Thank you for reading and following our project!
If you like our project and want to sign up for a beta key you can do so at our website http://antraxx.com

Samuel & Leendert 

[cykboy]

Hello and welcome to the third Antraxx devlog update!
A lot of exiting new things are in the works and it is time to show you what exiting things we have achieved since our last update!

BETA KEYS
Remember that you can still register for a beta key!
At the end of April you can only register for a notification of the release but you will no longer recieve a free beta key!

You can register for a free beta key here

TWITCH
We're on Twitch streaming with devlog updates!

Streams are held mostly on Tuesdays and Sundays. Anouncements on upcoming streams trough social channels (so be sure to follow us!)

Recordings of previous streams will be available on Twitch & Youtube channels.

Click here to follow us on Twitch!



STEAM
Even though we are a full browser game we are now able to go cross platform with Steam!
Are you going to support us on Greenlight soon?



MERCHANDISE UPDATE
In our last update we've shown a 3D model of one of our mech models.
Today we can show you the first test print of this model and all of its components.

In our next update we will feature the fully finished model with its paintjob!

We've also mentioned a pre-sale & to e-mail us. We've recieved quite some interest and would like to start with this soon. If you haven't e-mailed us be sure to do so.

The e-mail you can show your interest is: [email protected]

To add on to all this good news we are planning a giveaway in the nearby future. Keep track of our progress and updates to make sure you do not miss out on this one!

PICTURES ARE HERE!





INGAME SOUND FX
We've partnered up with Kevin Greenlee!

For a while we are working with kevin. SFX are being created and audio updates will be posted soon!

About Kevin:
"Video Game Composer, Sound Designer and Music Producer, Kevin Greenlee, alias LoudCore, is one of the many new talents with lots of potential emerging from the state of Alabama.
Ever since 2006, when he first put his hands on audio creation software, he has been perfecting his style and working hard so that one day he would get recognition for his creation of music.
Since then, he has had the chance to compose for a wide variety of independent games. Kevin is getting more and more recognitions and requests from everywhere around the world from his music.
In exception, increasing his sound quality is most important. Kevin Greenlee (alias LoudCore) continues to improve to become one of the best producers out there."

Links:
https://soundcloud.com/loudcoremusic

PIXELART UPDATES
We have added a lot of new stand alone placeable map objects!

Here's pictures:





And we've also designed a crane that you can stack to create it as big or small as you want!



And if you combine all parts of the crane it can work somewhat like this:



And some more sketches (work in progress)







Remember the spidermech we've shared in our earlier updates? It is now available in all the color variations on all angles just like the other mechs have!









And we've even started on new mecha concepts!



ENGINE & CODE UPDATES
From the development side, a lot of great progress has been made since our last update. The milestone that we are currently working towards is for all things map related, so this ranges from map tiles, placable objects, wired tiles right to the technical aspects of performance, UX/UI of the editor and outlining just how you - the player - will use this. We had to setup a proper, scalable game backend to really be able to integrate what we wanted.

For this we decided that the Google Cloud Platform would work great for us. You can save your maps right to a cloud storage bucket that can be accessed from any device or platform you are playing Antraxx on. Other players are able to browse through community and official maps to be able to dive in and blow up someone's mech.

Another aspect to this is match making, a subject we haven't really touched on yet and probably will expand upon in the next update. We will take information about your mech such as current level, firepower, speed and automatically find you or your party a match that suits. This should help keep the game balanced for new players while also remaining competetive and interesting for the more experienced users. The game server has also been modified to run and scale on cloud computers dynamically, trying to create a smooth, connected experience for thousands of users at a time is no easy task, but we're getting there. Our alpha and beta testers will for sure help iron out these facets.

Phew, so a lot of work has gone into just the theory and user interface of the game already. We've also been hard at work cranking out new map tiles and objects, integrating them into the game and of course - building maps! The editor is at a state now where we are able to build out large test maps (some of which will make their way into the launch) and make sure they load, run and play as we want. Alot of engine optimization and cleaning up has come from this too, which is always great for any programmer to achieve.

Infact, you can take a look at Leendert building out his test map from our live stream:



Work on a 3D positional audio engine is also started, and we have a few sounds to integrate into the game. We will likely create a video on this sometime soon once we have some inconsistencies and issues ironed out. Saving the best for last, Antraxx can now be compiled into a cross-platform binary (Mac, Linux, Windows) which opens up so many possibilities to us - primarily, Steam. More on this shortly.

THATS ALL!
Thanks for reading!

Mucho love,
Team Antraxx

[fingerman]

This stuff is sick. You even made a model, wow! Are the gray bits off a sprue and the pieces in other colours printed or how did you do it? In any case, v. cool.

[cykboy]

This stuff is sick. You even made a model, wow! Are the gray bits off a sprue and the pieces in other colours printed or how did you do it? In any case, v. cool.

Thanks dude!
The model is full 3D printed. Its a standard colour.
Its actually getting a printjob and already uploaded a pic on the painting process.

Love your 1 bit project as well by the way! keep at it!

[Cranktrain]

The art is looking great, particularly interested in seeing how the lighting work is going to effect the overall look-and-feel, seems like it'll add a great deal to the environments.

[cykboy]

Thanks about the art. Its been a long time to get it to where we want it to be.

As for lightning it can definitely do a lot. And its adjustable by you, the user.
Thanks for your reply to our devlog!

[cykboy]

Got a quick update I just wanted to share from the technical side. Been thinking of ways to show depth and add some extra shading so it doesnt hurt the eye for repeated tiles - and I think I'm finally getting somewhere. Shadows look great, but they are costly to run and even more so as the map expands. So I've been working on a block-based static lightmapping system with ambient occlusion, static coloured point lights and hopefully some kind of shadow support, the effects are subtle currently but really do make a difference in a scene. Here's an example with AO off:



and AO on:



Still needs some tweaking, shading on the side faces and static light support - but its getting there.  

[cykboy]

We've been creating this pixelart animation teaser image all day.. Its presskit stuff but so worth it in the end!