Well it's live and so far on day 1 we've raised $90.00. I have a good feeling, and I know
with everyone's support we can make this game great!
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Sunday, August 5, 2012
WOO! DASHAUND!
Ha, well I'm happy now. We got yet another new folk working with us, Younes Issa, handling the character portraits and battle status pictures. So to recap we have on the team 2 Britts, 1 Thai, 1 Aussie, 1 Irish, 2 'Mericans and a beaver. I'll be posting more soonish, but for now here's Younes version of Klint's Battle Status, mines the top, his is the bottom:
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Staff updates and new tiles
Well I guess a quick staff update is in order. Aside from Nick and myself, we now have 2 new artists for sure working. Matthew Walkden our resident world map character spriter has been joined by Leonard Robel, an environmental spriter.
Both are quite dilligent workers Matthew is on character #5 at the moment, and Leonard has just about finished the Murderapolis tilesheet. I'm planning on building murderapolis this weekend, or at least laying out the new base so we can attempt to create a video for 8bit funding.
I am going to be asking everyone on all blogs to check it out when it is launched, then I'll go back to my normal absurd self.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Crowdfunding Mk2
So last night I started resetting up for a second stab at kickstarter. Last time we were pretty defeated and some people even went as far to pull funding out, which really brought us down...
This time we've got a great team, other than myself and nick, we have a great sprite artist doing all the characters, on working on highly detailed environments, and I'm still discussing with the one who would be working on the battle sprites with us.
We have a unique combat engine, with visible status portraits (a la DOOM) and highly animated characters. we have a few composers from newgrounds working with us on music and several voice actors have started doing some of the lines from the script.
...Oh and we are no longer using kickstarter. We're going to use 8 bit funding this time. It will work better for us overall and its only games. Plus funding goes directly into our paypal account which goes directly to the artists.
We truly believe this time we'll meet our goal, and be able to finish Risque with gusto.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Hiring issues
Recently I've put an ad on several sites to hire some help. I found some great artists, however, several have been a pain to deal with. From someone pulling out the race card on me (like your email tells me your ethnicity) to having a parent flip out on me (hate mail from someone dudes mother) to someone who was turned down because of his age, and had the nerve to email me saying "it's OK because all the payments go into my fathers account. ...YOU'RE 16 YOU CANT WORK ON A MATURE RATED GAME! (Unintelligible yell)
...sorry, it's been a long night.
The artists I have been in contact with have already started working and have produced some great work. I'm still waiting to hear back from one artist, and hoping I do, as he would be the final one we'd have to hire. In the next weeks we should have an alpha build going, with the new art and then we can launch our kickstarter for the final product.
Till then, I'll continue plugging away at the scripting, Nick will continue sketching up my bizarre ideas, and when the final pieces are in place, we'll blow someone's mind.
...sorry, it's been a long night.
The artists I have been in contact with have already started working and have produced some great work. I'm still waiting to hear back from one artist, and hoping I do, as he would be the final one we'd have to hire. In the next weeks we should have an alpha build going, with the new art and then we can launch our kickstarter for the final product.
Till then, I'll continue plugging away at the scripting, Nick will continue sketching up my bizarre ideas, and when the final pieces are in place, we'll blow someone's mind.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
New artist, game work and why I hate youtube 10 ten videos
First off, I'd like to welcome Diego Colonna to the team, our newest artist. A graphic artist who's made some flash games on www.newgrounds.com, and genuinely just wants to work on video games.
That being said I guess I should talk about projects:
Risque: Total Carnage is a newgrounds.com only game, starring Klint and Jordan. A tribute to 1990's arcade games and the uber violence that ensued in them. Blood, guts, gore and vulgarity will fill this one pretty bizarre game. More to come obviously.
Necromacy: The Killing Moon is the first in a horror series I'm writing. Inspired by HP Lovecraft, and with our dark sense of humor, Necromacy's first game will be an old school adventure game. Necromacy deals more with character and story development and makes you think about picking your battles.
Risque (the big one) is still underway. We're going to be trying again for a kickstarter to get more funds so we can get more help for coding and a world map artist. More to come on that as well.
So... why I hate youtube top 10 videos:
I was watching this "Top 10 FTW" best game engines. What pisses me off is that all they covered was shooter game engines, and even if those games could be used for something other than shooters, all they covered was the shooters. I guess maybe since I'm personally sick of the over abundance of shooting games, it irked me, however, maybe it was just the lousy sense of humor they tried.
Last note: I (Josh Flaherty) am writing a blog at http://secretlaboratory.org on video games, old, kinda new and indie.
That being said I guess I should talk about projects:
Risque: Total Carnage is a newgrounds.com only game, starring Klint and Jordan. A tribute to 1990's arcade games and the uber violence that ensued in them. Blood, guts, gore and vulgarity will fill this one pretty bizarre game. More to come obviously.
Necromacy: The Killing Moon is the first in a horror series I'm writing. Inspired by HP Lovecraft, and with our dark sense of humor, Necromacy's first game will be an old school adventure game. Necromacy deals more with character and story development and makes you think about picking your battles.
Risque (the big one) is still underway. We're going to be trying again for a kickstarter to get more funds so we can get more help for coding and a world map artist. More to come on that as well.
So... why I hate youtube top 10 videos:
I was watching this "Top 10 FTW" best game engines. What pisses me off is that all they covered was shooter game engines, and even if those games could be used for something other than shooters, all they covered was the shooters. I guess maybe since I'm personally sick of the over abundance of shooting games, it irked me, however, maybe it was just the lousy sense of humor they tried.
Last note: I (Josh Flaherty) am writing a blog at http://secretlaboratory.org on video games, old, kinda new and indie.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Major Updates
Been working a lot on mapping lately and I think I got a pretty good 16-bit groove going right now.
Once the main map is done I'll probably upload something, but until its done I think I'll keep it pretty quiet.
Klint's world map sprites and battle animations are pretty far in, should have enough for a video or something in the next week.
Once the main map is done I'll probably upload something, but until its done I think I'll keep it pretty quiet.
Klint's world map sprites and battle animations are pretty far in, should have enough for a video or something in the next week.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Writing, the lost art of storytelling, new plot stuff and a general rant
I'm posting this: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA7A55AC840F34BFF
It's a youtube channel me and Nick started while we're working. We're weird so the music is quite litterally everywhere. We'll be adding more every time we work. Most of the songs on there are inspired by random real life stories, ideas for character development, or just (when we eventually get big enough to afford it) songs we'd love to put in the game in a really funny incident. Because in space, hearing the Darkness "I believe in a thing called love" after months of nothing would be the greatest thing ever.
Back to my original point, update, whatever. I'm sitting here writing, thinking carefully about what I want to put in the game, what wouldn't work well, etc. Then I started thinking about modern games and the stories therein. The last game I remember the plot of clearly was "Brutal Legend" before that "Star Ocean 2" then I realized that's a rather large gap of games I couldn't remember the story to.
I mean let's look at both games: Brutal Legend: Tim Schafer... Oh that's why I can remember it, he's a brilliant writer and he has a great blend of story and comedy that makes it memorable. Star Ocean 2: Granted this game was a gargantuan time sink (what with the 100 or so endings based on character development) I probably only saw like 40 (I've played it a lot) Star Ocean 2, in the land of 3D had a "mostly" 2d game. It still used sprites and while it had low res 3D worlds, there was never a cutscene with 3d characters. The Clincher was the private actions where the party could separate and you could interact with them differently.
What we're doing is more Star Ocean 2, but you don't have to hit a button.
A) All Characters are wandering around in town automatically. Klint will be who you control and you can interact with Vincent, Julie, Tsani and "Turk". I can't even go shopping with friends without everyone wandering off, so why would 5 people stay together anyhow? Never understood that logic.
B) Things you do with certain characters MIGHT make the game a lot harder (and more insane) Meaning beware what choices you make, some of the group are a bit insane.
Also as both Joke and Tribute, i'm kinda mocking one of my favorite video game scenes of all time, The Opera House (I seriously play Final Fantasy 6 once a year just because of that) We're not doing an opera, we're doing a "Soap Opera" basic jist is that Klint, Julie, Vince and Tsani get forced into a Soap Opera (because Julie beats up one of the stars) "Turk" isn't allowed (he's too short) so he decides to be a bit insane and be the "Phantom of the soap opera". The Whole scene is dialogue however you get choices and depending on what for example Klint would say, it would change the whole dialogue, stray too far off the script and it turns into "winging it" However, if ratings drop too low, the team is killed by the producers.
Also I'm writing a Pop song for Vincent to sing, just because I can.
It's a youtube channel me and Nick started while we're working. We're weird so the music is quite litterally everywhere. We'll be adding more every time we work. Most of the songs on there are inspired by random real life stories, ideas for character development, or just (when we eventually get big enough to afford it) songs we'd love to put in the game in a really funny incident. Because in space, hearing the Darkness "I believe in a thing called love" after months of nothing would be the greatest thing ever.
Back to my original point, update, whatever. I'm sitting here writing, thinking carefully about what I want to put in the game, what wouldn't work well, etc. Then I started thinking about modern games and the stories therein. The last game I remember the plot of clearly was "Brutal Legend" before that "Star Ocean 2" then I realized that's a rather large gap of games I couldn't remember the story to.
I mean let's look at both games: Brutal Legend: Tim Schafer... Oh that's why I can remember it, he's a brilliant writer and he has a great blend of story and comedy that makes it memorable. Star Ocean 2: Granted this game was a gargantuan time sink (what with the 100 or so endings based on character development) I probably only saw like 40 (I've played it a lot) Star Ocean 2, in the land of 3D had a "mostly" 2d game. It still used sprites and while it had low res 3D worlds, there was never a cutscene with 3d characters. The Clincher was the private actions where the party could separate and you could interact with them differently.
What we're doing is more Star Ocean 2, but you don't have to hit a button.
A) All Characters are wandering around in town automatically. Klint will be who you control and you can interact with Vincent, Julie, Tsani and "Turk". I can't even go shopping with friends without everyone wandering off, so why would 5 people stay together anyhow? Never understood that logic.
B) Things you do with certain characters MIGHT make the game a lot harder (and more insane) Meaning beware what choices you make, some of the group are a bit insane.
Also as both Joke and Tribute, i'm kinda mocking one of my favorite video game scenes of all time, The Opera House (I seriously play Final Fantasy 6 once a year just because of that) We're not doing an opera, we're doing a "Soap Opera" basic jist is that Klint, Julie, Vince and Tsani get forced into a Soap Opera (because Julie beats up one of the stars) "Turk" isn't allowed (he's too short) so he decides to be a bit insane and be the "Phantom of the soap opera". The Whole scene is dialogue however you get choices and depending on what for example Klint would say, it would change the whole dialogue, stray too far off the script and it turns into "winging it" However, if ratings drop too low, the team is killed by the producers.
Also I'm writing a Pop song for Vincent to sing, just because I can.
I do miss some of the older games. Final Fantasy 6
had great creature design for what it had to work with. That being said,
I'm not fond of palate swaps. I assume if you're a backer you know what
I'm talking about, however if you're not I'll briefly explain:
A palate swap was a sprite for a video game that had its colors altered. That being said, it was also used on early 3d games (wild arms, shining force 3, etc...) usually implemented to save memory and give the idea that there are a lot of enemy archetypes. Usually they were just the same enemy with boosted stats, and maybe a new ability.
Well due to the fact we're old school gamers (and memory isn't much of a factor anymore...) we're not doing palate swaps. Instead we're working on a script that will keep the enemies about your level and bosses a fistful of levels higher. Why am I doing this? The sweet spot.
I first heard of the sweet spot with Max Payne 1 (great game, though he makes this horrible grimace the whole game) What it did was adjust the difficulty on the fly, meaning if you sucked, it would adjust enemy reaction time, health, number of enemies so the game is "Just difficult enough for you to enjoy but not quit"
Egoraptor covered this in his sequilitsits... sequileist... screw it... he made a great video about castlevania and mentioned the "fake difficulty" of Simons Quest (I'm paraphrasing, go watch the video on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip2aIt0ROM) we're aiming to a) get rid of grinding xp and b) make it when you do have to backtrack, the enemies aren't quite a pushover.
Someone is bound to email me about how this is adding fake length, but answer me this, whats the difference between being level 20 and fighting level 10 enemies and being level 20 and fighting level 20 enemies? About a fistful of gained levels.
Also our skeletons die if they throw too many bones. I'm not joking.
A palate swap was a sprite for a video game that had its colors altered. That being said, it was also used on early 3d games (wild arms, shining force 3, etc...) usually implemented to save memory and give the idea that there are a lot of enemy archetypes. Usually they were just the same enemy with boosted stats, and maybe a new ability.
Well due to the fact we're old school gamers (and memory isn't much of a factor anymore...) we're not doing palate swaps. Instead we're working on a script that will keep the enemies about your level and bosses a fistful of levels higher. Why am I doing this? The sweet spot.
I first heard of the sweet spot with Max Payne 1 (great game, though he makes this horrible grimace the whole game) What it did was adjust the difficulty on the fly, meaning if you sucked, it would adjust enemy reaction time, health, number of enemies so the game is "Just difficult enough for you to enjoy but not quit"
Egoraptor covered this in his sequilitsits... sequileist... screw it... he made a great video about castlevania and mentioned the "fake difficulty" of Simons Quest (I'm paraphrasing, go watch the video on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aip2aIt0ROM) we're aiming to a) get rid of grinding xp and b) make it when you do have to backtrack, the enemies aren't quite a pushover.
Someone is bound to email me about how this is adding fake length, but answer me this, whats the difference between being level 20 and fighting level 10 enemies and being level 20 and fighting level 20 enemies? About a fistful of gained levels.
Also our skeletons die if they throw too many bones. I'm not joking.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Sprites, Animation and style
Risque has never been a typical game in our mind. It's dark sense of humor, warped heroes and its unique look we're aiming for has got us thinking about style.
Take Klint for example:
In the original art sketches, we've made him fairly "normal" looking. Now we've beefed him up slightly, since he's supposed to be the "tank" of the group We've started exaggerating certain things now to make them slightly more entertaining. I still chuckle when I see Klint get hit in a fight.
Klint Walking (ignore the zoom, crappy gif maker)
Take Klint for example:
In the original art sketches, we've made him fairly "normal" looking. Now we've beefed him up slightly, since he's supposed to be the "tank" of the group We've started exaggerating certain things now to make them slightly more entertaining. I still chuckle when I see Klint get hit in a fight.
Klint Walking (ignore the zoom, crappy gif maker)
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Kickstarter updates
Well I've been updating the kickstarter today, did the FAQ.
I had to enclose the "You Suck" email I got recently. How can we suck if we have nothing done yet?
That's like going to a restaurant ordering a burger and before it comes out, claiming its underdone or something.
UGH.
Been writing more character development. That's really all I've been able to do today. Nicks drawing more character stuff and I'm working on the size requirements for the "Maps" for Risque. Hmm... Other than that I've had a bunch of Sci Fi movies playing in the background. ...Supernova really sucked (to me)
I had to enclose the "You Suck" email I got recently. How can we suck if we have nothing done yet?
That's like going to a restaurant ordering a burger and before it comes out, claiming its underdone or something.
UGH.
Been writing more character development. That's really all I've been able to do today. Nicks drawing more character stuff and I'm working on the size requirements for the "Maps" for Risque. Hmm... Other than that I've had a bunch of Sci Fi movies playing in the background. ...Supernova really sucked (to me)
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Up and running
Sorry bout late updates. Been busy working on Risque, working on advertising, kickstarer funding and engine stuff. I'll try to be more adamant about updates in the future, however working on the project will always trump typing about it :/
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Vaguely Open for Business
Between working on the game, getting the kickstarter going and setting up the website, we officially 75% exist.
Kickstarter should be up by the end of this weekend, and hopefully, we'll be going good after that.
Kickstarter should be up by the end of this weekend, and hopefully, we'll be going good after that.
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