Mmmmmmm "thịt chó" Concept looks awesome! Is it going to be fully 3d or pre-rendered background? PS please put in some zombies
@hyung: very interested here too! Hope that development goes smoothly, and i'm looking forward to seeing the finished product! Good luck!
I am loving the concept idea and a smart move to move away from the fantasy theme. Will it be pre-rendered graphics or real time?
We're trying to do a combination of both. I don't want to go into too much detail yet because we're not sure it will work, but we think we've figured out a way to display the best graphics yet in a shooter and still keep super smooth frames rates. We're using some unorthodox techniques, including one which Apple specifically states "Don't use this technique." But so far, our tests show that it will work!
Yup, it should work. We're targeting iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3rd Gen, and iPad 2 and higher. We're not 100% about the original iPad, but we'll certainly try. And with my apologies to any Android users here, given our experience with Meteor Blitz on Android, Android can suck it. They need to fix their Marketplace and device fragmentation problems.
The concept art looks really good. I'm curious to see some actual screenshots once you guys are ready to post some.
yeah btw what's happening in the artwork? I'm pretty sure it's a power up thing where he's wiping out everyone else but it could be them being beamed down..?
Instead of having lots of powerups, we're trying to create the game where players will have a lot of different ways to attack. It's been quite a challenge. We're trying to stay away from the standard "switch weapon button" or "pause the game and select different attack" functions.
Update #5 - Dynamic Lighting It's been a while since the last update, sorry about that. I had to finish up our contracting gig, and there was some trouble at the end when the client decided to only pay us 60% of what we agreed. Unfortunately, we're in different countries so I don't have many options. Live and learn =/. I'm going to try to turn down further contracts until this game is finished. -------------- "AL", our shader guru, made a ton of progress these past couple weeks. We found a very clever way to do dynamic lighting and dynamic shadows. It's an approach I've never seen in any game before, but it works really well! I'm really excited to see how it will look with everything else going on in the game. It's making me work that much harder at getting the playable demo running. -------------- T and I have been working a bit on the story of the game. I used to be convinced that storylines don't matter (I almost never pay attention to them), but I'm starting to believe that even a little bit of story can go a long way towards immersing the player in the game. T and I agree that we don't want to have drawn-out cutscenes. We're trying to figure out a way to tell a story without stopping the gameplay (Portal's a great example). But considering our budget and limited engineering, we're not exactly sure how to get it done.
We're trying our hardest to make the game look better than this screenshot. If we didn't believe we could make it look awesome/unbelievable, then we would have picked a different game. But we're definitely taking a lot of chances. We're using a handful of technologies that I've never seen used in any other game. There's a strong chance that at the end of the day, it's just not going to work or the game's gonna look like crap. But we're willing to find out, and hopefully we'll end up with something that Unreal or Unity just can't do!
It's good to hear about devs trying new things out. Of course, sometimes it won't work out, but there's no progression and innovation without risks. And when it does work out, that's a great result.
Update #6 - App Icon & Dynamic Shadows T put together this rough first draft of our app icon. I think it looks awesome, and had to share, even though we're still working on it: AL and I got first-pass dynamic shadows going. They look really great and really add a lot to the visuals. AL also has a basic dynamic ground lighting demo working. Making these demos is a ton of fun. It will take some hard work and time now (maybe a couple weeks) to fully optimize and integrate these demos into the final game. I'll try to add a quick YouTube early next week showing Dude running around a light source. ----------------------- We've been really happy with our progress, and so far, it looks like the technical risks we've taken have been paying off *knock on wood*. We've been thinking if Rogue Element can earn enough revenue, we'd love to take this engine, add another 6-12 months of work and make a full scale 20-hours of gameplay RPG out of it.
