Hello Blender Artists fans and loyals. It’s been years since I’ve been to this forum and posted anything. As a young lad over ten years ago, Blender (and Elysium at the time) was my focus. A career, kids, and just life have occupied most of my time since then, but Blender has always been a part of my life to some extent. After a very gruesome catch-up, I was able to get back in and give all the new rendering parts a go. The cycles engine is a beast (and the real-time rendering crashed my laptop several times) and the node material system took some research to get accustomed to. Boy do I miss the old layered materials of the blender 2.2x days, but an old dog has to learn new tricks at some point. Kudos to those who have been able to stick with it for as long as I’ve been missing.
So, one of the ways that Blender has been a part of my life is my dives into creating video games. Back in the day, I wanted to develop an entire game using the BGE, of course back then it still hadn’t scratched the surface of shaders, and was convinced that it was the future. Since then, I’ve been a part of a few indie titles (mostly from the “running a business side”) and even ported a copy of Frozen Bubble to the iPad (I took it down since the updates to iOS made browser games run incredibly slow, even with CSS hardware acceleration). Now I’m back into game development but this time with a helluva lot more experience that only time gives you. While I’ve abandoned using BGE for game development (almost, I’m planning on redoing Frozen Bubble in Blender), I’m still a diehard Blender fan and am making it a standard in my new studio for modeling and rendering. One of the projects I’m working on is a side-scrolling shooter game, that takes you back to those old school Contra/Super C/Mega Slug days where the only way to beat the game was either a cheat code or to never die. While the gameplay is similar, we’re changing things up for the platforms we’re targeting (mobile, PC, console in that order). We’re adding full 3D environments (confined to a 2D plane of course), great sound, music, animations, and graphics. Hopefully, we can add voice over work, but financing is a constraint to that idea.
So, I’m here to do a couple of things: First, I want to introduce you guys/gals to the game my team (consisting of my brothers and some great artists and programmers around the world) are developing: GunnIt. Second, I want to ask for your feedback, criticism, and support for the project.
First, the game. Like I said earlier, GunnIt is a 2.5D side-scrolling shooter, based in the 22nd century. In gameplay, you control one of four characters: the leader, a tank class character, a technology specialist, and a medic. Each character has their own advantages on their own, but with cooperative gameplay, the game really shines. For example, the leader has the ability to call for air strikes as long as you’re on Earth and outdoors. The tank character is more than a bullet shield, he can also control large enemy weapons left on the stage and control explosives. The tech specialist can deploy a stationary turret or a small drone that shoots nearby enemies. The medic has the ability to heal himself over time, something the other characters can’t do. When pairing the characters together, interesting things can happen. For instance, pairing the lead with the tech specialist allows the leader to call airstrikes on an alien planet. Pairing the medic with any other character allows the medic to heal not only himself, but also his teammates. While this game is short (it only has four levels), its replayability comes with the difficulty, increasing when using power ups and coop play. The game takes place across four stages: a war-torn Earth mega city, an arctic enemy factory and base, an alien spaceship, and the aliens’ home planet, each in full 3D with their own unique environmental dangers. But enough talking, let me show you some concept art.
First up, box art. This is a WIP (it’s missing our heroes) that was used for our Kickstarter campaign. Big thanks to Albin and yoji from blendswap for the base model for the menacing robot. This isn’t a robot that will make its way into the game, but it will be similar.
Second, our heroes. From left to right we have the leader, the tank, the medic, and tech in their default outfits.
And in their alternative outfits.
A couple of the robot concepts
Some of the alien/robotic tech
And finally, a very rough draft of the gameplay mockup.
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Now that you’ve seen where the game is headed, this is where I ask for your support. Currently, we’ve started a Kickstarter campaign to raise awareness of what we’re doing and to help raise a little cash to finish up on the game. While we’re offering several goodies in the campaign, we’re needing feedback before we take this further. You can also help support us by simply telling your friends, family, and loved ones about the game.
Your support is humbly appreciated and I’ll be available to answer any questions you may have about the game or the development studio, Four Brothers Interactive. I can’t wait to read what you guys think. Thanks in advance for taking a look.
Link to our Kickstarter: http://goo.gl/SDxT87
Thanks,
–Yeshua
Update 1: Added a concept of part of the first stage.