Posts Tagged ‘ Lone Survivor ’
Off on holiday today, but I’ll leave you with a screenshot showing the new lighting system (notice the grading across the screen), the redrawn art (I’ve done a second detail pass on all the art) and the new area (in fact the first area I began two years ago.) Also you can see the item combination system here. I wonder what irradiated orange + squid stick tastes like?
It’s going well!
First of all I’d just like to finally give Brian Keong, the Rainbow Star Challenge winner, his prize. Nearly half a million players have entered Soularis now, and it makes me so happy. I’m planning to do a bit more of a post-mortem of the game at some point, and I’d also like to share some more press and interview links about it, as it seems to have had a good buzz.
Anyway, he requested a bird character, and here he is, in-game:
Brian, I almost broke the game doing this, so I hope you like him!
Lone Survivor Update
I managed to get a solid build of Lone Survivor into Indiecade this year, one of the main indie game competitions along with IGF. I worked incredibly hard on it for the two months leading up to the deadline, almost going as insane as the protagonist. It probably helped the atmosphere in some ways!
Here’s a little teaser trailer I made (it shows almost nothing of the actual gameplay, that will follow in the real trailer, which should be much better than this one!):
The music is by myself and Silver (Sonic & Silver), the VIP mix of Rocket Launcher on Virus Records. It’s not used in-game, for those that hate it (it’s a polarising one.) There’s already 22 original tracks in Lone Survivor, and it’s going to give me a lot of pleasure to finally share them with you guys.
Since submitting to Indiecade I had a little time off playing Yakuza and so on, but I’ve now started back on full-time work on it. It’s getting quicker to make as what I want to do with it is getting clearer in my head.
I’ll leave you with a new screenshot, from the dusty cellar, of the new mirror savegame system:
HEAVEN
+
HELL
It’s been an exhausting several weeks of crunch on the game, but progress has been tangible, so it’s been a lot of fun too.
And after all that I’ve decided not to enter at this point. Although I’m super excited about the way it’s going, I don’t think I want to reveal plot details yet, and I want the game to be close to completion before submitting it anywhere… So my plan is now to get it finished for IGF instead. We’ll see if that pans out!
Anyway, this means I’ll finally have a little time to catch up on all the smaller things I’ve been neglecting, like the ongoing saga of the Rainbow Star Prize, the writing of blogs and so on. I’ll be doing a more detailed report of where it’s going at some point soon, and I still plan on doing a behind-the-scenes tour at some point, showing the tools I’ve used to develop Lone Survivor.
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!
So I might just be working on Lone Survivor again. Might meaning am. I know I said it was unfinishable – but I must finish the unfinishable if I want to make a success of this indie lark. And that’s exactly what I plan to do.
I’ve now christened my tool ‘TELEPLAY’ – it’s the combination of the visual editor written in BlitzMax, and the Flash project which runs the games made in the editor, which all runs on HAL-script (the high-level adventure language, natch.)
TELEPLAY is now 99% feature complete, and this means that work on Lone Survivor is progressing nicely at last. Although I may miss my original goal of releasing it in time for IGF entry, I think it’ll have been worth the wait. My plan currently is to go full-time indie from sometime in the new year. 2011 is the year Superflat Games will get serious!
To keep y’all sweet, here’s a recent screenie, showcasing the inventory system:
Lone Survivor – coming early 2011
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’ll let this wonderful image, courtesy of the equally wonderful Bento Smile, speak for itself. It’s of the protagonist of Lone Survivor, also known as ‘You’.
It’s my first ever piece of ‘fanart’ (although really it’s ‘friendart’) – and for reason that it totally made my week. Now onwards and upwards: the final stage begins.
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!
You find yourself in troubled waters…
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…
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