Hello ya’ll!

I’ve been neglecting this place. I haven’t even been announcing our games officially on the blog. (by the way, we stealthily released The Crazy Program on Android!)

For the past year or two I’ve been hacking away at HTML game demos on and off. Thinking about it, I never followed through and released something. For a time, I was thinking seriously about doing a Japanese styled mobile card game, similar to the now famous Puzzles & Dragons but I sort of hit a wall with my approach to using 3D with CSS. But that ended up just turning into a blog post outlining a CSS3 technique.

I decided to release this new project as early as possible and get something out the door, no matter how rough it was. Introducing…

RUSH-D (alpha)!

Play it at http://www.rush-d.com

RUSH-D is a Sokay game series that never got quite off the ground. I started designing RUSH-D as a side-scrolling space shooter (SHMUP) fashioned after some of my favorite games — Einhander and UN Squadron. I created a simple Flash prototype while I was working on Thugjacker and in those days, that was enough to completely sidetrack me away from my main project.

Here’s a screen shot of RUSH-D (aka Sokay Rush) prototype.

Since this was back in the day (around 2003), I thought I was clever planning to use pre-rendered 3D art to wow all of the Flash game audience. My expectations grew and I never got really far with the project outside of a few design docs and concept art. Continue Reading…

Looking through my old artwork, I found these files…

I made these a little over 5 years ago. These are based on a drawing I made — and more like it . The Flash movie was a demo of how I could execute a game cinematic. The Papervision stuff I’m doing right now is looking awfully similar. I started developing a game based on these concepts but I went in a very different direction. It’s one of the projects I’m going to get back to one of the days.

Back then I was still in art school. Basically my free time was spent drawing and working on Thugjacker. I lurked Pixelation all the time. It’s a forum for pixel artists, if you haven’t heard of it. Lots of inspiring work there, a great place to get critiques. Pixel Joint is another good pixel spot.

This is my first public Papervision demo. I’m experimenting with some techniques for the next Sokay game. This is also the debut of the main character for the game, designed by Ricky Enriquez. Check out the demo.

My Papervision Demo

This scene is composed of 4 planes — the cop, the sidewalk, the shop, and the city. I positioned them within the scene with code. The animation is handled with code as well. I’m using Tweener to move the cop left and right, as well as his jump animation. The camera is targeting the cop.

I’m going to keep playing with this. I want to push it further by adding some movement to the rest of the scene, perhaps tweaking the rotation of the buildings as the camera moves.

If you’re looking to start with Papervision, there are some excellent video tutorials at gotoandlearn.com that’ll help you get started.

While you were too busy playing GTAIV, Nintendo launched the “Nintendo Channel” for the Wii. As per usual Wii owners can download the new channel for free from the online shop. With it, you can stream videos of game previews or (as is the case for WiiFit) interviews with developers. You can also download game demos for your Nintendo DS and of course Nintendo has given us the power to volunteer market information. Continue Reading…