First of all, Sir Sapo, the programmer man, came down to our hometown for his summer break- all week and a half of it. That's what he gets for going to the US Air Force Academy, though. We were able to spend an old-school night playing Halo 3 and figuring out game stuff, so there's some progress to show, except I don't have screenshots. Yes, I know, cue the emoticons.
Second of all, I went to Washington DC with my dad and took huge amounts of pictures which I have been wading through and putting up on my deviantart. That's been taking up a lot of my art-time.
Third of all, I have a girlfriend. Weird, I know, but this requires a large investment of effort, especially on weekends. And at Night. Not that I'm complaining, but it means a lot of my time that would otherwise go to being a lonely but productive artist goes to making out and stuff.
My goal for this week and the next is to get back into the swing of gameplay analysis and brainstorming, but first, some of the more interesting pictures from DC and surrounding area.
Cool Things I saw.
Click for Bigger
It's the day America gave the Ruskies the finger using the Moon, so this picture seemed appropriate. Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
Uh, this was at the Army Ordnance Museum and I couldn't resist Photoshopping it a wee bit. The original is here
This is one of those things that as a technical-oriented artist that make me happy inside. God, this thing looked so badass. Army Ordnance Museum.
Korean War Memorial. I'm not sure what the statues were made out of, but it was... beautiful.
A memorial to the Katyn Massacre in Baltimore.
Ho-kay, that's enough for now. Don't worry, I have almost 3 gigs worth of pictures left.
Game Overview
It occurred to me that I don't think I put up a reasonable explanation of the game up all up in here, so here's a primer:
Basics: 2D Top-down Scrolling Shooter, set in space.
Setting: Large-scale stalemate between two interstellar empires (both human).
Story: Player starts on a carrier going on "deep patrol" into a disputed frontier system with a large asteroid belt that might contain a secret enemy contingent, in addition to the native pirates. Player goes on a mission escorting an AWACS with a bomber, and comes back to find the carrier bum-raped (see previous journal entries), meaning the Player, the AWACS, and the bomber are stuck far behind enemy lines and will have to fight their way back to a jump-gate to get back to friendly forces to report what happened.
Missions: Only 5 1/2, to keep it short. Maybe 5 minutes apiece, max. So far, we got:
[Establishing]
Mission 1: Escort AWACS, Locate Enemy
[Return to find Carrier destroyed]
Mission 2: Fight Way Out of Attack
[Afterwords running low on supplies, need to find resources]
Mission 3: Assault Pirate Base
[Afterwords find location of enemy carrier]
Mission 4: Enemy Carrier Boss
[Afterwords, find jumpgate to friendly forces...]
Mission 5: Still a secret, for now, anyway.
Brackets indicate where there will be basic cutscenes (feature already built into the engine FTW!). Hopefully we can come up with some snappy dialog. I'll try to dig some up to share next time. Hopefully it won't be too cringe-worthy.
Parting Shots
A Helpful Tutorial on The Most Difficult Video Game Ever
This video is pretty much the funniest satire of a game genre I've seen... ever. It's also a lesson for game designers. Don't open your Space Inventory. It's also very dense, and requires more than one watch. Hell, just look at the first 2 seconds:
I LOL'd.
Hella shout-out to Cabalistik, because his little TBS project excites me to a disproportionately large extent. It's called Red Assault(click for website), and it covers two of my favorite things: Cold and War. All I can say is aaaww yeeeah.
Well, in the interest of getting sleep, I'm gonna leave some stuff for tomorrow (I need to get a montage of all the spacecraft so far together).
Here's a parting piece of art to inspire you:
I forgive you. Now stoppit and go back to making cool pictures.