So I felt it was time to give you guys an update on what I’ve been up to…

The plan (as I mentioned in the quote-unquote interview) was to work on Legend of the Starmen with an aim to heading for an IGF entry.

Well, just like the last time I went indie, I changed my mind once I actually had the space and time to think about it. I still want to make LotS, and it’s high up on the list… But it’s a big game, as big as Lone Survivor, perhaps.

So I figured, if I’m going to do a big project anyway, it may as well be the one which is most personal and important to me. The one I’ve been trying to make for several years, since making Soundless Mountain II – Lone Survivor. After all, the game is already further along than LotS, so it makes more sense from that perspective. And there’s the thing that it may help get recognised because SMII is still probably the game I’m most known for doing…

It’s coming on really well! I’m planning on entering it into Indiecade, either at the end of this week, or two weeks after that if I miss the deadline. I’m focussing on making the first world really fleshed out and finished, the intro and outro, polish and bugfixes and a total overhaul of the audio. Save games, title screens, some more puzzles and survival elements, a new monster, it’s all happening so fast!

And there’s more…

I’ve started a new (relatively) small game – perhaps the size of Soul Brother when finished. It’s called XOR, and it’s a homage to the games I grew up on, perhaps more so than the other games I’ve made. It’s a randomly generated Atic Atac / Zelda mashup wizard-shooter. It is presented in a warped ZX Spectrum view, complete with filthy screen, ‘off’ colours and flickering glows. It all looks much better in motion, but have a (slightly out-of-date) screenshot all the same:

The names are procedurally generated and this one just happened to come up.

There’s also a background story to it which I won’t reveal yet, suffice to say it’s gonna have more than a nod to a certain other glowing movie, but hopefully turn things on their head a bit. According to Anthony Carboni at least, I like to ‘flip the script’ like that.

Finally…

A massive thanks out to the 270,000 players of Soul Brother, and the many new reviewers and podcasts which have covered it. I really am humbled that so many have enjoyed something so silly of mine. Thanks to Terry for helping me along the way so much, and thanks to all the indies who reside in a certain forum I frequent for all their incredible work helping me test and improve the game. You all know who you are, and I can’t thank you guys enough!

Also to Brian Keong, I’m sorry I haven’t forgotten your sprite, I’m just really swamped getting ready for Indiecade, so expect it next blog post, sorry!

I wonder when they sold their last crab?

Just to let you guys know things are being worked on.  I think it won’t be long before I can put together a teaser trailer as it’s getting to a decent level of polish now.  Have completed about 30% of the art and animation, only about 5% of the sound though.  But I plan to be actively working on that from now on (taking a break from my music career to do so).

I plan to enter Lone Surivor into IGF this year, and have the game finished by New Year… so wish me luck! As El Crab Shack’s owner likes to say: ‘Go Loco!’

I feel like the guy in Shawshank, slowly tunneling away towards it…  Progress is excruciatingly slow, but it never ceases, and neither does the hope that burns with it!

This is the fun part I’ve been waiting for, and slogging through all the nasty bits for…  It’s time to make the game proper!  Now I can enjoy the rest of the project a great deal more because it’s all about:

– making graphics

– making sound and music

– making levels

These parts are why I make games – programming and engines are all a means to an end – and I’m pleased to discover that the engine is adapting well to having lots of shiny new content thrown at it.

In that sense I really feel like I achieved my goal of reducing all the bullshit you have to do to get stuff into the game – it’s now just a case of coming up with the creative stuff, and getting it in there is [almost] pleasurable with the editor.

So far there’s heaps of new locations, sound and animation – but I’m going to hold off on releasing any more demos until I reach the closed beta stage.

I’ll leave you with a new screenie – recalling Soundless Mountain II in some ways (I like bathrooms, what can I say?)

In other news, there could be some wonderful things about to happen with Superflat Games – I will tell more when it’s confirmed – but suffice to say things could get quite a bit more serious in the coming months…

Lone Survivor v0.2 – [Play Online]
NOTE: It’s recommended you have no other Flash windows running to see good performance.

So, just say I was going to re-build my survival horror engine (as seen in Soundless Mountain II) in Flash…

To re-create the lighting / fog / film-grain effects, I’d probably need to harness the power of Flash 10.0’s all new ‘Pixel Bender’ tech. This is like having programmable PS3-style shaders at your disposal. At the moment it runs in software, but it’s still faster than pure Actionscript 3 (Flash language).

From the research I’ve done on the net, no-one’s combined this tech with pixel art as yet (partly because it’s fiddly to set up I think, and it’s so new) – so let me know how it runs for you.

Press A/Z to move the secondary lights. Press Left / Right to move your player – there’s no walk cycle yet though!

The reason I’m posting is that I’d love to know what framerate you’re seeing, and your specs – press the ‘|’ key or the ‘¬’ depending on your machine to bring up the console and see your framerate.

Thanks in advance!