The thinly veiled achievement system built into the Tormi engine (named Medals) is being used in Hadal. At the moment there are 17 of them but more will probably be added as I tweak the levels and add new objects.
Tempest will also have them.
So I’ve finally decided to take the leap into online highscore tables. Or leaderboards if you never saw the 90’s. Hadal has an online highscore list built into the game which can display the Top 100 scores or the 10 newest scores. Without mental hesitation be assured this progressive situario will be shifted onto all the games I’m currently working on. Tormishire’s will probably use them in a minigame or to showcase the people who 100% it, and in what time.
Also just got back from this , an eccentric and playful collaboration between my girlfriends choir and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra that was all about a “21st century vocal work that reflects our present understanding and scientific knowledge of the creation theory” but it was good for an agnostic too. Some parts were quite hectic on the ears, I saw it more as an art piece than a choral piece with some off-key flutters here and there. They kicked off with a performance of Haydn’s The Creation which was to showcase the parallel between previous and new knowledge of that big spacey thing. Mad modern goodness though my ears were yearning for a more traditional dose of Mozart or Haydn afterwards.
So 2009 really was a space year. For what its worth both Hadal and Tempest have some connection with space, must be in the stars.
I enlisted the help of a certain, and very awesome, pixel artist by the name of Biax to help me out with the character profile shots during the dialogue scenes in Tormi. He gave me a lot of advice on how to carve out a face from a block of pixels. I whipped up some practice shots of me and MrPineapple (so far!);
They’re a big improvement from my usual Tormi style things of just a ball with eyes and a mouth.
But follow the Biax chap.
There’s probably about a week left on Project Hadal but it wont be released for a while yet. Just finished work on the map yesterday and added a Metroid-esque version into the game, it all works really well and even tracks where you are in the frame (even though each map frame is 13x10px so you don’t exactly get a high resolution!). And why not have 2 pictures I made for it. Although I don’t know if I posted them before. They’re on Deviantart anyways;
I’m quite excited for this one. The music MrPineapple has done is sublime and the title screen, well we were considering/joking about releasing a screensaver version!
Also I’ve found a love for Strategy RPG games, stuff like Final Fantasy Tactics and Disgaea. I’ve been a mega fan of Advance Wars for years but never really branched out into other titles. Got Jeanne D’Arc (sealed as well!) and Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness coming my way this Christmas and just bought Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and Advance Wars Dark Conflict (both new) for a paltry £8 each. It’s the crazydepth of these that pull me in, in the same way Pokemon can still attract this 23 year old.
Been playing a lot of L4D2. And thanks to a recent Steam update I can see how long I’ve played my games for… 460 hours in L4D1 since Christmas. That’s not healthy. But again there’s so much hidden depth to these games, more so to L4D2 with the inclusion of weapons, modifiers and new enemies. It’s offset by the new directors desire to just throw stuff at you in a constant stream from all directions, a far cry from the first games more structured and tense approach. It’s the Hollywood sequel and a very good mirror of the Terminator series in that respect. Now we just need an okay 3rd game and dire 4th.
So I’m teaching and helping out at college and stuff. The students have just been given a brief to model the Pied Piper of Hamlin but in a steam punk style. It’s fantastic and why the hell couldn’t we have done fun stuff like this in college?! The difference 5 years make. So I got sketching this guy. I don’t normally post WIPs (sooo much to later correct) but I’ve had 2 Red Bulls on the bus ride home and 2 cans of Coke at home…that isn’t an excuse at all! But I’m going to play some Left4Dead now.
Hey anyone else preordered L4D2? I’ve sunk 370 hours or so into L4D1 so I’m quite pumped.
How’s this for mental blockings…
One of my most played games on the Amiga was Pinball Fantasies and Dreams. My aunt used to have some mini pinball game. Every time I went on holiday I played pinball games at the arcades (we don’t have them in our town, boo) and I put a fortune into them, and Mortal Kombat 2. Then along came Windows 98 or something with that Space Cadet pinball game and I played that a lot too. Basically man, I played a lot of pinball.
Then, somehow, I forgot that!
I recently got the port of Pinball Fantasies for the PSP and it all came flooding back. I love this stuff! So I snatched a copy of the Williams Pinball collection for PSP and really fell into it all again.
I think I like it because it has an illusion of being random whilst actually having a lot of skill behind it. To do well you need to master the board and how to activate the extra ball, multiball, multipliers etc, but more so you need to know how to aim the ball and think ahead of its current path. I can’t watch horror films without looking past the image and imagining the studio, and games have never really physically affected me – except this. Which makes a nice change!
So I got thinking… After the current projects and then Tormi why not make a pinball game? Well because they don’t do too well in the market. But if I could come up with something to really make an interesting game, something that gets the feeling I have during pinball into the minds of others… it could possibly be done. Maybe as an iPhone game? With Sam, Tormi, Titan Omega, MrPineapple tables. Now Unity Indie is free it might be worth looking into.
And this is a screenshot of New New enwenwnewne Sam’s Spectrum mode. Well not really, its just me messing around with HWA shaders. It’s even more impossible to tell whats going on in with that effect! So all the other projects are coming along really well. Hadal is almost finished. The (new) map is just around the half way point but progress is going fast now. It just needs testing and adding the online highscore submission thing. The Sam remake is coming along very well, it’s just a matter of tweaking really. All the old codings have been transferred and edited (Sam now has ceiling value in both horizontal and vertical movement to make it more manageable, like what Pantene Pro V does for hair), adding and altering the powers too. The basic beam attack now has a power up with splash damage.
