Another busy old week for us at Adarakion, lots of change and lots of good new stuff to share.
First and foremost we came to the conclusion that we really didn’t have the work for a “full time” designer. This was a very tough decision to have to make. The majority of our current projects (and planned future projects) are all of our own individual design anyway, so we have a strong idea of where the games are going to end up.
Rather than keep him stringing along without much to do I decided to be up front and honest with Chris and explain to him the situation we found ourselves in. As I say, this wasn’t a decision that was made lightly but I do believe it was the right decision for everybody involved (Chris and Adarakion). May I take this opportunity to thank Chris for his work on Project Blast! and wish him all the very best for the future.
We have also very recently invested in our own server, which means we are now totally in control of our own destiny in terms of mail, website, project management etc. This is an important step for us. As Adarakion grows we will need the flexibility that this server allows us. I’m also incredibly lucky that everyone on the team is seemingly a web genius, batting around terminology that I personally have no knowledge of! Again, its good that the team understand this stuff as without them Id be totally at a loss by now, so thanks guys!
In terms of Blast! I am currently about half way through writing the technical design document. This mini-bible covers off how the game should be coded, how the various segments of code fit together and “best practice” guidelines for using our version control software and other tools at our disposal. Whilst its quite a formal document, as our team is quite small I expect to get feedback and input as to what works, what doesn’t etc. so we can redesign the document until we are all happy with its content and we can crack on with getting down to the nitty gritty of dishing out the code.
As I stated last week, the current work done on Blast! is going to be taken as the prototype so we all know where we want to be, and how Blast! should play in the final version. To that end, I’ve released a few videos on YouTube showing Blast! in action so people know what to expect. Bear in mind these are all pre-alpha videos and do contain some obvious bugs and the like, but they do give you some feeling as to how the actual game will work:
The menu system and ship selection screen (One of the things I don’t like here is the actual ship selection screen, which wil be redone in the release version.
The “fight” engine in operation. Contains quite a few bugs as you will see, but gives you a good feel for how the game will actually look and play.
The basic “scenery destruction” system in operation – the plan is to make this a little more elaborate in the final release. Watch the player two landing pad as player one peppers it with bullets and missiles!
It feels at the moment that we have proven that we are capable of producing something that works and fits the original vision and the next step is to code it “properly” so that it runs as intended on the majority of PC’s and also means that come the day, its portable to other platforms and maybe, just maybe we can start to earn some cash from all this hard work!
The final thing to say is that we are currently redesigning and redeveloping our website so certain functionality may be lost/change over the next few weeks. We are considering taking our forums offline until we get closer to release on a project as at the moment they are just attracting spam accounts and there isn’t really a fantastic amount to talk about until we have a game out there. So as and when we are back up and running at full speed, I’ll obviously let you all know!