Announcement to follow shortly, but first a retrospective of past projects Sir Sapo and I, the quintessential programmer-artist team, have worked on...


Greatest Airplane Games of All Times: A Comprehensive History
Note: If you're interested in the whole history of our games, check out back issues of Sir Sapo's journal and this one. I'm afraid a lot of the old content was on webspace we've since lost, so there aren't a whole lot of images on the early pages of Sir Sapo's journal, but here are some never-before seen screenshots of things.


Project RTT: This project was never finished, but the glimmers of hope contained therein will never be forgotten. This was our first project together, and while no known screenshots survive, one thing is for sure: you don't want to see those screenshots. Seriously, that game looked absolutely terrible. We were in 10th grade at the time, which means we were both full of youthful exuberance and near-zero meaningful experience.

Project RTT was a tile-based top-down airplane game, which started when Sir Sapo and I got stuck in the same weird-as-shit high school "gifted" class, and had to find some sort of educational project to work on. Our idea of educational was playing video games in historical settings, so Project RTT was supposed to be set in World War II. For some reason, the only level we ever had was set in the desert, complete with green blobs of cacti and bright orange adobe buildings with flak cannons on top. Flak Pueblos we called 'em.

This is a SAM Pueblo.

Notable Features:
-No sprite rotation, so there was a different sprite for each angle, which was difficult in the days before Photoshop comprehension.
-A "mod" button that for some reason turned the animated water tiles into giant pulsing super-cacti veins and the airplane into a carrot that dropped eggs instead of bombs. It made about as much sense as it sounds.
-First project evar!!!1~


Partisan Final 2:
I that's what is was called. It was technically a ridiculously hard space shooter, but it's important because it is the origin of the Partisan fighter as we know it today. The Partisan is kind of our trademark, a fighter jet with forward swept wings and copious amounts of gumption... whatever that is. I'll have to make a sick "Evolution of the Partisan" image to post later, because if I tried to make it right now, you would be reading this in March.

Notable Features:
First Partisan. Inspired generations of games to follow.


Angels 20:
Angels 20 is our signature game, and technically our only complete project to date. Hell, you can even download it here: Angels 20 GDnet Showcase. It's 2D side scrolling, but the aircraft is completely controllable, depending on your ability to understand the somewhat wonky controls.
There's 12 levels, most of which are impossibly hard... game design wasn't exactly our strong suit then. For real, if you can beat a level, props.

This project was our baby, we labored long and hard on it to submit to the 2006 IGF. This was really an eye-opening experience and gave us a real appreciation for how hard games are to complete- such and impression, apparently, that we haven't finished one since. Everything about this game we got sick of at one point or another. Sir Sapo still gets a sinking feeling when he hears the engine start sound when the level starts.

Bask in the glory that is Angels 20!:


Sitting on the carrier, and already damaged?



A typical game of Angels 20. If you look closely, you can see the repair truck that makes the game five times as hard as it should be.



Getting reamed by SAM's. Just a day at the never-ending Cuban beach. See the video Part C below for the full motion version.

Notable Features:
-2D tiled terrain
-Complete Game
-Solidified airplane game concepts in our minds

If you are still somewhat tempted to learn more, we made some narrated gameplay videos:

>Angels 20: Airborne Laser Mission Part A

>Angels 20: Airborne Laser Mission Part B

>Angels 20: Airborne Laser Mission Part C


Dogfight/Dogfight Online:
Dogfight was an interim project ('interim' meaning I can't remember when we made it) to test something, I guess. I actually did very little work for the original Dogfight, since Sir Sapo took it upon himself to make polygonal airplanes, which explains it's somewhat austere visuals:


The two gray smears are an F-18 and a MiG-21...


Dogfight online was going to be multiplayer portion of Angels 20, but it never really worked out. It turns out making things work over the online is rather difficult. We did get an initial version that worked over a LAN at school, though, which was pretty fun for what it was worth. I tried to get it running to get a screenshot of it's rendered glory (once again I had little involvement with the art before the project ended), but I could only find an early, early version that worked:

Didn't I say it was an early version?


Consider that it was supposed to look more like this:

Weird, right?


Notable Features:
-Classic "wouldn't it be cool if..." projects
-Further illustrated our addiction to airplane game-making.


Angels 22:
Angels 22 was our dream project: to be everything Angels 20 wasn't. It was going to have better... everything. Rolling terrain, actual gameplay design, interactive bosses and buildings that collapsed, etc. Angels 22 actually went surprisingly far in terms of design...


This is the weapons select menu, which was only partially functional but completely sweet-looking.



Note the fire and smoke, and how iffy they look. See the Part B video below for the moving picture version.



There were even functional enemies, which you could target with guided missiles.



There was a built-in editor, which worked (but did not look)great unless you hit a button without an implemented object and crashed the game.


Like Angels 20, we recorded a few videos of us playing the game and talking about what's going on (or how we're getting screwed). There a couple more videos, so if you want to see them you'll have to check out my YouTube channel

>Angels 22: Lighthouse Island Mission Part A

>Angels 22: Lighthouse Island Mission Part B

>Angels 22: Lighthouse Island Mission Part C

Notable Features:
-Rolling terrain
-(some) Collapsible structures
-Limited physics
-Too ambitious for it's own good.


Given the topic of this post, it shouldn't be too hard to guess what are next project will be- I'll leave you with a screenshot, but I'll leave the full explanation for next time.

It's a start, and looks better moving... but we're pleased.


Comments are welcome, and props to the rest of journal land who manage to update. Don't forget, comments are the Melange that keeps Dune- er, journal-land running.