New Project - Sneak Peak

Work is going really well on this new project, however we don't have anything quite up to the level that we want before we can reveal or show anything significant...

SO, I've decided that I would like to share just a small sneak peak of some concept screens... Please remember that this is extremely early work and is not final in any way, its very rough and unfinished.

Hope you guys like it though as we have been working extremely hard on this project. We are excited to show more soon.

Progress update

Hi all.

We've been working really hard on a new game for the past few weeks that we (my brother and I) cannot wait to start sharing with you here.

Right now its not ready to be shown as its all extremely early in development. The good news is that it is getting so much more time than On Call. For those of you who don't know, On Call was created in about a month and then continuously patched. It was a small game and yet I still feel as if it was unfinished to a large degree. Ultimately we ran out of time as the new semester of university started and we simply did not have any more time to continue making it.

Fast forward to today and I can say that the new game has been developing well. Each level is getting the attention of the entirety of On Call, so the over all level of polish is astounding. It blows me away when I look at it. I'm not the greatest artist or developer, but I'm proud of the level of polish the game already seems to be taking. Its gameplay is shaping up to be fun, its art looks great and its music sounds really cool.

Its truly exciting and I cannot wait to share more within the coming days about this game.

Its my hope that we can have a reveal trailer as well as some work in progress screens either this week or the next.

I hope everyone is having a great time, hopefully I will have more to share soon.

On Call Patch 1.05

I've just been notified that the new patch is now being distributed on PSN!

I'm surprised by how fast that was, thanks to the team over at Sony for their great work!

Hope you all enjoy the tweaks, fixes, changes and additions.

On Call Patch 1.05

The patch has been uploaded successfully after some trouble regarding keys and licenses that were changed when I re-installed my OS.

From what I understand, this patch may take far longer to upload from Sony to PSN as their staff are on holiday. Its understandable and totally cool, I just thought I'd mention it here.

They have informed me that it could take up to Jan 14 before anyone even looks into the patch, so I thank you all in advance for your patience and understanding.

In the mean time, I hope to be able to share some new things with everyone soon. Things have been more than hectic here with the holidays and all. But I will have stuff to show off soon enough.

Lastly, I'm a day late, but I wish everyone a great new year.

On Call Ver 1.05 Patch Progress

I'm nearly done with the work for the next patch and so I'm here with a list of all the changes and tweaks that will make it into the patch. Its a large patch, so large in fact that I've gone through several version numbers during testing.

Space ship explosions:

Color and lighting tweaks as well as new art / posters:

• Re-Coded camera for the space ship:

1. Changing to the follow camera and then back to the normal orbital camera will no longer cause the camera to glitch out in terms of position.
2. Using boost now makes the camera follow the ship so that its easier to control.
3. Holding square now also causes the camera to center and follow the ship.
4. Optimized the camera code, removing a few hundred lines of code.
5. Added different positions for the camera, so that when boosting, it will be further away to give the player more screen space.

• Tweaked the space ship:

1. Fixed a glitch where the player would continuously lose health.
2. Re-Balanced the health and damage of the ship for more fun.
3. Added the ability to slow to a halt in space, this will double the sensitivity of the ship, allowing far better control in tight dog fights.
4. Gave the player infinite boost in the interest of more fun.
5. Doubled bullet speed so that its easier to hit your target at great distances.
6. Improved collision detection for objects and bullets.
7. Improved aimer.

• Tweaked the space AI:

1. Added a new routine for the ships to speed up slightly while the player has stopped, allowing the player to over take.
2. Tweaked speeds and general awareness in the interest of fun.
3. Tweaked damage dealt to the player in the interest of fun.

• Arcade Mode:

1. Tweaked colors and lighting due to player feedback.
2. Added a menu for when the player dies showing the players current score, high score and asking the player whether they wish to play again, or return to the main menu.
3. Added explosions for the enemy AI. (still tweaking the sound for this as it currently crackles)
4. Added force to those explosions that will push any ship away that is close enough.

• Space:

1. Tweaked colors and lighting due to player feedback.
2. Added an explosion to the drifting ship.

• Fire ranges:

1. Added new art in the form of papers and posters that litter the levels.
2. Added sparks for when the player shoots the turrets.
3. Added a smoke particle for when the turret is disabled.
4. Tweaked colors and lighting due to player feedback.

• Hanger:

1. Tweaked colors and lighting due to player feedback.
2. Added new art in the form of papers and posters.

• Life support:

1. Tweaked colors and lighting due to player feedback.
2. Added new art in the form of papers and posters.

• Crew chambers:

1. Tweaked colors and lighting due to player feedback.
2. Added new art in the form of papers and posters.
3. Added gore and particles to the creeps for when they are shot and when they die.

• Bridge:

1. Tweaked colors and lighting due to player feedback.
2. Added new art in the form of papers and posters.
3. Added sparks to the turret when the player shoots it.
4. Added a smoke particle for when the turret is inactive.
5. Added gore and particles to the creeps for when they are shot and when they die.

• Engine:

1. Added gore and particles to the creeps for when they are shot and when they die.

• Credits:

1. Added new names according to their contributions and also tweaked their appearance.

Good and Bad News

Hope the holidays are going well for everyone!

Things are going ok over here, but alas, I have some good and bad news.

I'll start with the good. I have several large projects lining up with several other small time indy devs. What this could mean is the formation of a studio in the far future... What it definitely means is far larger scale games. One project is an art orientated project that I'm keenly interested in and another is a more tech orientated project that I've been asked to join. Both are far larger than On Call but both are likely to be about as small in terms of success. I honestly love the idea of working on my art and improving, but at the same time the large scale and technology I would need to make for the other project intrigues me greatly. In all honesty though, the more arty idea will likely see a full game being released, where as the more tech idea I can foresee everyone else leaving me to work alone on it in my spear time as soon as they realize how hard it will be. Hopefully both can come together well. One of them is in concept while the other is only gearing up to start concept next year, so anything could happen.

The other good news is that I'm gearing up for the reveal of a new project. I've been working insanely hard on the art for this one, as I feel my art is whats lacking in order for me to land a job at a studio. I cant wait to show it off.

Lastly we come to the bad news. It looks like I cannot finish working on On Call unless I turn it into a sequel. This is a two part reason. Firstly and most importantly, I cannot change the age rating to include human enemies... Apparently that is set in stone, which means I cannot add any of the new levels I've been making... Which means that the only way to release it would be to make an outright sequel... That is not in all a bad thing, as my second reason is that the new levels would make On Call around 5 times longer and larger than it is now, which in truth does seem more like a sequel than a simple update...

Because of these things I have decided to release all the game play changes and new weapons for On Call, as they do not need to be re-rated. I will also work on anything else people do not like, like the fact that the creeps just disappear when they die as well as adding in the great art supplied by Matthew Sibler, while adding the new names to the credits for their help. Then we shall see if there is enough interest and support for me to make a sequel in my spare time. I'm extremely upset by this, as I've done a lot of work and preparation for On Call's new levels, story and enemy types.

The last think I need to talk about is how I really really want to make a multiplayer test game for PSM. It would be free, but small so that we can all test it to see if it works. I would add 2 modes, one on the ground as normal people in a small map, and one in space... I'd love to do that just to see how viable it is performance wise and how the networking code would need to work...

So there you have it... As you can see, my future is extremely uncertain at this point... I'll let you know how things progress.

Tweaks

I've re-written the space-ship camera code to add and revise some features:

• If you hit circle, the camera will still go behind the ship, but now it will follow the ship completely instead of allowing the ship to have some free rotation. Its better like this as the player can see what is up above and down below them.
• If you hit square the ship will rotate faster and your speed will come to a halt. The camera will revert to the follow position while this happens. This new mode of movement will add a level of ease to controlling the ship in combat.
• The camera will subtly follow the player when no movement is made to the camera stick after a period of time, akin to GTAs car camera.
• The camera should also never forget its position when changing camera modes now as it has before.
• Now that the glitch where the player automatically loses health has been sorted out, I've re-tweaked the damage ratios for all enemies. The player will now die fastest from collisions, followed by large shots and then by small shots.
• I've added a new routine to the enemy space AI so that they will speed up when the player goes slowly allowing the player to let them overtake.

These additions / changes are purely to enhance controls of the ship and camera, hence providing more fun gameplay to the player.