No Name Games

I thought I would show off a bit more concept work done by one of our artists for our new game…  Enjoy!

This is just some of the new concept art, hope you like it!  Stay tuned, more to come

Last night while some of my classmates were diligently finishing their computer graphics assignments, I was blissfully pissing time away playing a flash game on Kongregate called Sonny. A friend from class started up a conversation on GTalk regarding implementing multiple mouse object selection in GUIs. Digression ensued:

Well I figured it be more interesting if we gave our next game project some sort of..  presence, so why not give it a code name This is by no means the offical name, just the code name while we get the ball rolling!  Kind of rolls of the tongue a bit to, PROJECT DEAD BOLT!!! yes… I think I like it, don’t you?

Earlier today, I met with Andy and Joe to discuss game design/development ideas at a Starbucks in Sacramento. I don’t normally like being That Guy who buys a coffee for $1.89 and decides that two dollars is a reasonable price of entitlement for your very own corner office at a coffee shop, but I got over it. Boy I’m glad I did since I had the pleasure to sit by a woman who was having a deep and involved conversation with her invisible friend.

Meanwhile ideas were formed, pictures were drawn, caffeine was consumed. Some of the more serious talk was about the use of non-traditional perspectives in 2D games. Some of the wackier ideas that were thrown on the table included steam-punk weapon-wielding ninja heroes fighting for humanity’s existence against an army of sentient future robots…yanno, since it’d be foolish to trust anything with a computer at that point.

Sometimes the hardest part about making a game is getting started. Have an idea for a great game? Awesome, that’s a great first step! Cool, let’s figure out the scope. We’re gonna need sprite sheets for animations, background and miscellaneous art, music, sound, a tailored game engine mostly from scratch, code up the game, make map and other editors, test, debug, refine/tune, and then spend countless hours on feature creep and polish. Got an idea for a great game that can be made within a reasonable time…say like 2 years or less? That’s a bit tougher to do. As one of my game dev friends likes to say, “embrace futility” and you’re well on your way down the road of game development!

In other news, Andy whipped up some possible concept art.

Made by Andy. Check out his site www.rezenstudio.com.

-GD

Unlock achievements and get the highest score in this exciting 3D space shooter!

Click the image to play the game

AstroMines is a 3D space shooter in which you blow up asteroids to earn points.

You can register with us and we’ll keep track of your scores, and you can even earn achievements. The scoreboard will show you your scores, and when you click the ‘online’ button, it’ll show you all the high scores saved to our database. See if you can top our scores!

In Survival Mode, you’re flying through space with asteroids continuously coming at you. You’ll have to keep blowing them up and dodging them as they split into smaller asteroids and get faster and faster!

In the mini-game we included, you play a twist on a classic! If you were into the old one, you just might like this version.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do as much as we’d wanted to do with the game (no missions, had to scrap the storyline, fewer objects in space, things like that…) - largely due to time and Flash performance constraints. But hopefully you’ll enjoy what’s there! If you like it, be sure to say so - we just might include that stuff in a sequel!

And remember! Gold asteroids are worth 5 times as much.

===== Basic Instructions =====
To bring up or get rid of the options screen:
-Enter

To pause while play:
-Escape

Survival Mode:
-Movement: W/S/A/D or Up/Down/Left/Right
-Shoot: Space bar or Ctl keys

Mini-game:
-Turning: Left/Right
-Accelerate/Decelerate: Up/Down
-Shoot: Space bar

-Developers
Joseph Burchett: Project Lead, web and game play programmer
Gary Deng: Physics and game play programmer
Eli Ross: Sound Engineer, 3D Modeler, game play/UI programmer
Joseph Grasso: Concept artist, texture, and 3D modeler
Lauren Zeier: Contributing concept artist
Andy Dicochea: Contributing artist
Zach Rhyenolds: Q/A, designer, tester

-Tools used
Platform: Flash player 9
Animation: Boostworthy Animation Library
3D engine: Sandy 3D Engine

Special thanks to
Everyone who helped test the game, and to the Sacramento Game Developers Meetup, without it none of this would have been possible