It appears progress on Guillotine Escape is at a stand still for the foreseeable future, as the scriptor’s laptop has a bad power supply at the moment.
*sigh*
Perhaps the two of us should just make illustrated books instead. The people that manufactured them would just end up running out of glue, I guess. 😉
In happier news, I’ve been hired on to produce sprites for a small, unannounced title. Time will tell if any of my art might see the light of day!
I’ve been writing (and rewriting…and editing…) a new project for over a year now, and while it’s far to early for an announcement, it is always a good time to stoke interest with tentative titles and concept art! The story is currently called A Wizard’s Tale, with a small prologue game, titled A Wizard’s Blunder, all set to be produced as soon as I can get a proper team together. The game is going to be quite large, possibly being broken into two titles. I had planned, from the moment I realized that this would be more than a one room game, to never create one sprite, scribble one character or backdrop, not even start a proper design document, until I figured out the basic plot, beginning to end. It’s obviously still evolving as a story, but having spent about 15 months writing, I’m fairly confident in my ability see this through to the end.
So, without further adieu…
Early character designs
and…
Early character designs.
I’m hoping to be very open with these sort of things throughout the game’s design / production in a way that doesn’t let any plot points slip, so look for more info as it comes!
We finally have beginning-to-end build of Guillotine Escape for testing purposes, marking the first time I’ve ever seen the ending for a game I worked on. While it’s obviously not “done”, it’s still very exciting, and it’s cool to see how some of my ideas actually work out. Probably with in the week we’ll have a build solid enough to beta test, a position for which I’m taking applications, starting now. It’s only a single room escape, so playing though it a couple times shouldn’t be too difficult to fit into your schedule. Let me know if you’re interested, and I’ll keep you updated as things progress!
First post of 2010 coming halfway into the year? Yeah, that sounds about right.
Here’s the long and hard of it. I’ve spent the year since my last post working to pay the bills and writing my newest adventure. Development on the two titles we had in the works slowed to all but a complete halt, but there’s finally some news to be told. The room escape game mentioned in my last update is near release, with only a bit of testing and refining to be done. The game now features full voice in addition to the previously mentioned feature set. Hardly an extra year’s work, but that’s what can happen when you’re only part time developers who work for free. 🙂
There may be another short game in the works, with a different developer who needs spriting services, which I’m hoping will get me back into the swing of animating so we can finally finish Ethyn Price and the Idol of Chanta. I’ve had a couple other requests in the last year or so for the same kind of services, but I felt it was unfair to make headway on someone else’s game while Ethyn Price sat at a stand still. Now I’m hoping the same thing can be what motivates me and makes spriting fresh and fun again. More on the project once it’s underway.
I decided that doing nothing because I’m without my own computer or resources is just silly. I spent about four hours brainstorming and writing things down, and turning my legal pad into a general mess, but I was eventually able to distill the twelve pages of thoughts and ideas into a short, one room, adventure / horror game. It’s been about two weeks since, and we’re nearly done, so I think now’s as good a time as any to announce
Guillotine Escape!
The player takes on the role of Joseph Leone, a highly televised escape artist, abducted and drugged by a madman who feels it’s his mission to out Joe as the phony he really is. The game will break down into two scenes, the first of which will be Joe’s time to study his surroundings, collect useful items, and attempt to sabotage the death dealing device. During the second scene, Joe will be strapped into the device, and will live or die depending on his choices in the first scene.
I think Death Room says it all.
The game is nearly complete, with two tracks of original music (by J. Aguila), about 95 percent of all the artwork complete, and Matt Rollins putting it all together. I’ll be looking for a few beta testers with in the next week, hopefully, then on to a full release. While the idea for the game does sound a lot like the Saw series of movies, I honestly drew no inspiration from them, and have been working extra hard to keep Guillotine Escape as unique as possible. Which isn’t that unique, I know. 😉
I got a bit restless in being totally unproductive, so I put together the frame work for the new (free, mind you) RocketBike website! It’s still very plain, and has no images since they all reside on my laptop, but I’ll take any feed back you can muster.
The purpose of the site, along with providing more general information, is to showcase games in production, as well as ideas on projects for which I may need to hire a team. I signed up with Google Sites for this, and while there are many limitations (nothing is that free), it has a lot of great tools that facilitate collaborative, team efforts. Google Sites is also designed to be a “one click” website creator, which is great for me because there is not a single line of HTML stored in my brain, and I just don’t have the time to learn any. I weighed the pros and cons, and it really is worth the trouble. And, yes, I’m aware the URL is 87 billion feet long, but that’s the nature of this particular beast, and I plan to take care of it when the site’s close enough to completion for it to become an issue. I do, of course, plan to eventually get a real website up, with a friendly URL and all the trimmings you expect when visiting a grown up’s website, but this solution works beautifully with my budget right now, and it seems to work well at that!
I also wanted to say, I’ve been getting a lot more hits here than I expected, which is absolutely great! Thank you all so much for the patronage, and thanks ahead of time for any opinions on the site!
All usable progress on any RocketBike games has been halted by the VERY untimely demise of my laptop. Again. The solution to this particular problem is, for once, simple; it’s still under warranty at Best Buy. Unfortunately, they are very slow, so there will likely be little or nothing to report in the very near future.
On the up side, I’ve moved to northern Florida, to an apartment shared with a friend, and the conditions here are much more favorable for the work I’m doing (when my computer runs), so once I’m back online it really will be like setting up a new office. I’ll, of course, keep this updated.
I’ve really been wanting to talk up the game I’ve been working on with Matt Rollins, and now I have official permission!
While I’ll save the name for the official announcement, the game centers around a local thief, on a very far off planet, as he tries to escape recapture by said planet’s authorities. A very vague plot outline, I know, but there hasn’t been an official announcement yet, so that’s all you get. Along the way we have requisite puzzles, some interesting characters, and some VERY awesome creatures. The otherworldly setting is tremendous fun to design for, especially when coupled with Matt’s openness to input. The whole aesthetic for the game is “retro Sci Fi”, (meaning rocket ships, ray guns, and spacemen) and it’s interesting trying to make sure everything has that style, but still feels more believable than the 50s and 60s sci fi it’s based on.
Cat burglar, or protagonist in diguise?
Working with Matt has been a real treat as well. He’s a very talented game designer, a more than apt writer, and an overall decent guy. I’ll be posting little pictures here and there (though not of Matt), but you’ll have to wait for the official announcement before the gratuitous screen shots. Get excited though, this is going to be great!
I’m working now on sprites for both of the games I’ve got on my plate, and I’m noticing more and more that Florida is killing my rate of productivity! I’ve always drawn everything out on paper first, even if I decided against using the scanner, It helps me to really assemble the image / frame before spriting. The house I’m working out of (a professional sounding way of saying “living in”) has a broken air conditioner, and we’re having upwards of 98 degree days, accompanied by 88+ degree nights, which is teaching me basic “art-math”; pencil + paper + sweat = smears.
Early animation from Jerk Perkins
So I’ve been working directly from brain to computer that last few months, with seriously mixed results. It may be time (to get the air fixed!) to get a tablet.
Welcome to the inaugural post for the RocketBike development diary! Since these usually start a whole lot earlier in the development time line of a game, some of these post are going to have a bunch of exposition for the purpose of catching up. I currently have two games in development, one of which is a RocketBike original, the other is a retro sci-fi adventure by Matt Rollins that I handle spriting for. The “office” is a little plain right now, as I’m still pawing around the customization options in a wordpress.
I’m currently in the process of assembling a team for Jerk Perkins, the a fore mentioned original, to hopefully begin production by winter this year. At this point I’m looking for someone interested in scripting the game, as I’ll create placeholder graphics for use in a demo. I’m hoping with a demo complete, I might be able to find a more apt graphic artist.
Designer / Sprite Artist
RocketBike 