Satan Sam.co.uk

I was hoping to have Wake released by now. Developments coming to an end now, it’s mostly just balancing, bug fixing and testing. It’ll be out this month without any doubt but I’ve realised there are pretty much no details about it!

So what to do you need to know about it?

It’s a distilled Metroidvania type game. The premise is explained on the title screen and there’s no real story after that. It’s a fight for survival, a race against time (or rather, water) to get to the exit. There are 3 difficulty modes that alter the initial items and other things… but most importantly it alters the final score. And that’s what this is all about! A juicy score! It’s the first game I’ve made with an online highscore and I’ve integrated it right into the game, so you can check the Top 100 or the 10 latest scores. It’s grown from a tiny minigame project into a fully fleshed out game hence the longer development time.

The very first screenshot I took back in August, still using the Tormi sprite too.

…and the latest.

And the Christmas Steam sale! I’ve had to buy (or been gifted by the most wonderful girlfriend)…

FUEL
Oblivion Game of the Year Deluxe
Beyond Good and Evil
Morrowind Game of the Year
Trine
Torchlight
Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast
Multiwinia
Darwinia
Max Payne 1
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Loom
The Dig
Prey
Zombie Driver
Braid
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Alpha Prime
Geometry Wars
FarCry
Grand Theft Auto IV

Just incase you want the Lunnye OST is available to download – http://bossbaddie.com/files/lunnyemusic.zip it’s only 9 tracks but there you go.

Me and MrPineapple are also working on another short game. The only thing set in stone is MrPineapple is fully composing the soundtrack and will be bigger and more ambitious than Lunnye. It’s a Tormi engine game but with a higher resolution this time.

I haven’t stopped work on Tormishire either. I’ve updated one of the bosses and I’ve been making adjustments and fixing bugs on the engine. Once this next game is finished it’ll be full steam ahead on Tormishire!

So I think I’ve had an Xbox 360 for a few days now, I’ve played them a few times in the past but never really dove into any of the features beyond playing games. And how I’m reminded of the Xbox’s manufacturer – Microsoft.

Paid themes and images-  Why? Why on Gods great earth would anyone spend money on a JPEG and few colour changes. It’s absurd that they’d charge for something as paltry as some tiny PNG profile pictures too.

Stop trying to sell me things! Just an extension of the above point, but why is the first screen I see a spotlight of disposable nothings on Xbox Live? Isn’t it a better idea to have My Xbox as the first screen, or better still give us the option of selecting the initial menu.

Menu removal- Okay Microsoft, no matter how much you want me to I’m never going to rent a video from your store just as I’m never going to play a video DVD on it. The system is much too loud to be a media centre. Maybe some people do rent, but it would be nice if we could remove channels that we’re never going to use. The only customisation on an Xbox costs money, unless you go for free themes.

Avatar- Let us shift around body parts.

Community games- Some of them aren’t worth the pixels they’re printed on, are there any free games? There should be free games.

Meh, I guess it all comes down to everything having a price on the Xbox 360. £50 wifi adapters, 120gb HDD at £90, paying for themes, renting (not owning) videos, paying to play a game online. No wonder they charge so little for an Xbox now.
But oh do I like it. It’s got some great games and I’m really enjoying it before I’m flogged.

And in this future I own an Xbox 360. I’ve not set Live up on it yet but my Live name thingy is raggedjimmi, so add me! Or something. I’ll be borrowing games from my brothers library of about 30 million so I’m sure we can play something.

Computers back from the shop. Now have 500 giggerbites running around the inside of my machine, 120gb to transfer across. Time to sit back with the PSP!

Yea, so outside of Tormi I’m planning on getting into some hardcore iPhone dev-ing nonsense thanks to them awesome sounding OS 3.0 features.
Also. It’s still in the design stages but a new Sam is definitely happening. Me and Pineapple have been throwing around ideas for a bit now, but this new concept I’ve come up with is, well, a step back to the very first Sam game but with some heavy multiplayer stuff. And given that most people don’t have 4 controllers wired to their computers it might well be a console release.

That very awesome chap Melcadrien has finished his epic “let’s play Satan Sam” video walkthrough, with an attempt at Echo World. But damn Sam and his buggy MMF1.5 environment it just crashes. Congrats anyways Melcadrien!

It’s all here

Just got back from a little 7 day holiday to my grandparents place in Poland. A place devoid completely of unsecured Wifi, ho hum! Planned out another area for Tormishire that I’m hoping to finish in a few weeks, and finished up the planning on the next boss encounter. The whole holiday was really inspiration for the game, really needed that!

But now for life and junk! I’m back on the gym now. It’s become a lifestyle thing switcheroo thing instead of the previous sporadic exercise stints. Which weren’t healthy for me really! Feels great getting this kind of energy back again. I highly recommend it!
There’s probably more reportings to be had but it’s 7:39am, cheerio! 

So the sprite redrawing wasn’t the only graphical update I’ve done. I’m redrawing everything from the ground up. The new graphics are really something else! A lot more form compared to the previous ones, much smoother and nicer looking.

I’m a little worried there won’t be a trailer until early new year but I’ll try my best.

Before and after (unfinished again, the right shot was taken without runtime lighting effects on)

I’ve got myself a little job doing some graphics so Tormi has taken a bit of a backseat of late. But it’s all peaches and cream, 3 days ago I set about doing a whole overhaul of the graphics. I’ve updated all the sprites ingame and soon all the backgrounds will be updated too. Apparently looking more Nintendo-ish. Which aint too bad! I’ve finally applied a consistent graphics style!

Other than that I’ve just been putting in work for the manual, I’m aiming to keep it as small as possible and rely more on visual and audio hints in the game itself.

I’ve almost been working on this for a year. 11 months since it began as my Design Experience project, heh, the filename is still that too!

^ old sprite, just for kicks.