Infected Again…

Posted by oddbob on April 13, 2008 · Lovingly Filed Under Development Log 
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It’s been a funny couple of days in Bob Towers, nose to the grindstone and all that on the VI Reboot given it’s got to be out the door by the end of June. However, great amusement was taken yesterday when I stumbled once more upon the blog of a veteran industry marketer, this time attempting to revise his own former companies history. Which y’know, wouldn’t have been so bad if the entire sordid affair hadn’t been documented well in magazines, in an infamous documentary and from other parties involved over the years. Quite bizarre behaviour all told and I’m still struggling over 24 hours later to fathom out what the selective tilting of facts and finger pointing at bogeymen was supposed to achieve…

People, as they say, are weird.

Anyway, I’m not going to waste any more thought processes on that most curious of incidents and move swiftly along to VI and it’s resurrection.

VI Reboot Thingy

Why VI again?

Putting it bluntly, having to hammer the nails into it the first time round chafed. There was, underneath all the disarray and flailing that eventually consumed the game, a fair old title waiting to come out. More so, something I actually wanted to make but screwed up big time. And yeah, life isn’t always fair like that and things don’t always turn out quite how you expect and normally I’m the first person to say “leave it be”.

But y’know, it still niggled at me. Every couple of months, no matter what I was working on the thought sat in the back of my head that I could restart it. Every time I’d rush to put it out of my mind but there’s only so long you can sit there and say “no” to something before it starts to really irritate you.

When the RRCD was proposed, I got put to work on someone elses game as well as George, The Squizzy Griffin. The game in question is currently and provisionally titled GWAN. Unsurprisingly short for Game Without A Name. It’s a vector based arena shooter (who’da thunk it?) based on colour coded enemies and to date, it’s pretty darn fun and resolutely old skool in its approach. Rather than follow the tried and tested spangly lots of particles route, Peejay has gone for a raw arcade feel and it works. It shouldn’t feel different, but given the barrage of games attempting to emulate Geometry Wars in one way or another, it does. (I’ve done little on it other than grab my doodling pen and fill in some graphical blanks so as to speak, so I fear I can’t take credit for it in any way - it’s pretty much all Peejay’s work.)

Along the way, of course, the question gets asked “what can I do to improve this?” and whilst the answer was pretty much “actually, very little. It’s quite alright how it is bar a few tweaks”, idea’s starting popping into my bonce of what could be added to the game. It didn’t take long to realise that I wasn’t in fact thinking of GWAN with these idea’s but more that they were things I’d like to see in a game. Some of them were things I’d long planned to include into VI first time round but due to clusterfuckery fell by the wayside.

And hey, another game for the CD wouldn’t go amiss as we’re currently shy of the anticipated ten. Fuck it, time to get the nose to the grindstone and write the bastard.

At first, I was wary of committing to it. After all, I’d fucked it once - who wouldn’t be wary of repeating the same sad charade all over again. So I started with a title screen, left it a day or so to see if I still had any momentum on it. I did. So I started modelling some basic nasties, and the momentum was still there. So I started framing the nasties in a game environment, the momentum was still there. Time to start taking notes, plan shit out, get a roadmap and keep going then before I lose heart or get embedded in JSWO v3.x and Scott fires George over to me for my levels. Which I did, which brings us to the now.

VI Reboot Thingy

As you can see, it’s looking quite different from the original. At the time of writing there’s currently 8 different enemy types in and working (that’s near double the amount I managed to cram into the original VI in it’s long drawn out history) with around about 8 more “normal” enemies to be done, doodled and placed. Then there’s the bosses to be done…

Essentially, aside from being an arena shooter and retaining the gem/zombie gem system of the original plan it’s an entirely new beast. Well, about as new as an arena shooter can be given I think everyone has touched upon just about every mechanic possible in one way or another since The Great Geometry Wars Explosion.

Oh, and there’s bullets. Lots of bullets. I like bullets.

Visually, one thing certainly helped shape the look of the game so far and that was not having to worry about the old crippled code for trails given that GearGod has already managed to create something infinitely more efficient than I could ever manage that still looks sexy. If you’re interested in seeing it in action then take a nip on over to Messy Mind. (Regged GM7 required, I think…)

I’ve opened up a tumblr account so I can keep track of things as I finish them as well as post random shit somewhere to amuse myself. If you’re looking for head fucking but reasonably irregular updates to the progress on VI - you’ll be wanting to look over here. But be warned, it’s probably a scary insight into my mind. I’ll post more fleshed out updates on here, mind.

In other news, I’ve just picked myself up a copy of the latest release from Cronosoft which I intend to have a proper look into in a mo. I’ve had a quick glance and for what it is, it’s an incredibly impressive piece of work. It is, of course, Shoot Em Up Designer. For the ZX Spectrum, obviously. I plumped for the emulator image myself as I have little interest in cluttering the house up with old hardware, but for those more possession-ally inclined, you can buy a fully fledged actual real proper cassette with the game on. Which is nice.

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Speak your brains

3 Responses to “Infected Again…”

  1. Richard Phipps on April 13th, 2008 9:37 am

    Good luck!

  2. oddbob on April 13th, 2008 11:16 am

    Cheers Rich, I think I’ll need it ;)

  3. gnome on April 14th, 2008 7:38 pm

    Very, very promising.. BTW, don’t you think any of the TIGSource lot would be interesting in contributing to the RRCD?

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