TroyHepfner
November 8th, 2008, 08:50 PM
It's been a week since I posted the last screenshots (http://www.mygamecompany.com/forums/showthread.php?t=216) for Rick Rocket, so I wanted to bring you up to speed on our progress over the past seven days.
Ryan, our artist, has nearly completed all of the artwork for the various ships and space-faring objects in the game. He still has one more capital ship and a space station to create. He also needs to create the terrain graphics for the alien world that Rick Rocket will fly over in the game's final level.
I have finished implementing the game's menu system, player profiles, and the save and restore game feature. With that, the game code is done. I plan to have Ryan revisit some of the menu system's artwork, because the artwork I originally produced just doesn't fit the rest of the game. But everything is functional at this point.
I also started building the game's remaining levels. I finished 2 levels today. Here is a screenshot from one of the levels, which takes place near Jupiter:
http://www.mygamecompany.com/blog/rickrocket18_500x389.jpg
In this screenshot, you can see the player has shields - when you acquire shields, your ship glows blue, and the status indicator in the upper left now shows blue shield strength.
In the upper half of the screenshot, you can see two of the game's power-ups - the blue shield power-up, which gives you shields, and the green repair power-up which repairs one damage point. You might notice the repair power-up appears skewed; that is because the power-ups rotate. Some of the other power-ups that aren't shown here equip you with armor, additional cannons (so you can fire multiple shots at once), heat-seeking missiles, concussion bombs (to help against big capital ships), and various weapon upgrades. The heat-seeking missiles are a lot of fun!
You can also see two new alien ships: the bigger, tougher version of the basic alien fighter (on the left), and the little red Sputnik-like satellite that serves as a stationary turret.
Our internal test team will be receiving their first copy of the game tomorrow. While they are testing, I will be building levels and fixing whatever bugs they find. At the rate we're going, I think we are still on track to have the game in beta by Thanksgiving. Stay tuned!
Ryan, our artist, has nearly completed all of the artwork for the various ships and space-faring objects in the game. He still has one more capital ship and a space station to create. He also needs to create the terrain graphics for the alien world that Rick Rocket will fly over in the game's final level.
I have finished implementing the game's menu system, player profiles, and the save and restore game feature. With that, the game code is done. I plan to have Ryan revisit some of the menu system's artwork, because the artwork I originally produced just doesn't fit the rest of the game. But everything is functional at this point.
I also started building the game's remaining levels. I finished 2 levels today. Here is a screenshot from one of the levels, which takes place near Jupiter:
http://www.mygamecompany.com/blog/rickrocket18_500x389.jpg
In this screenshot, you can see the player has shields - when you acquire shields, your ship glows blue, and the status indicator in the upper left now shows blue shield strength.
In the upper half of the screenshot, you can see two of the game's power-ups - the blue shield power-up, which gives you shields, and the green repair power-up which repairs one damage point. You might notice the repair power-up appears skewed; that is because the power-ups rotate. Some of the other power-ups that aren't shown here equip you with armor, additional cannons (so you can fire multiple shots at once), heat-seeking missiles, concussion bombs (to help against big capital ships), and various weapon upgrades. The heat-seeking missiles are a lot of fun!
You can also see two new alien ships: the bigger, tougher version of the basic alien fighter (on the left), and the little red Sputnik-like satellite that serves as a stationary turret.
Our internal test team will be receiving their first copy of the game tomorrow. While they are testing, I will be building levels and fixing whatever bugs they find. At the rate we're going, I think we are still on track to have the game in beta by Thanksgiving. Stay tuned!