Well, a few people here were probably already aware that I was working on a fast-paced space themed vertical-scrolling avoid-em-up called r0x.  The sprites and main game gfx were all complete (by me) and the design document was coming together nicely, but the coder I was working with suddenly got snowed under with proper paid work and it didn't go anywhere after that.  Shame really - I even found a selection of suitable music (nicked from YM Rockers) and had an ace game complete screen by C-Rem (who gave me his permission to use it).  I designed all the menu screens, wrote a plausible backstory, and put on paper all of the game mechanics and basically put in hours of work - but alas, that's where it stopped.

It was going to be STE enhanced and make use of the blitter, but unless the coder has a sudden window open in his schedule or someone else is willing to help, then it's doomed to remain as a WIP project on my hard drive.  The game itself was simple in concept (on a par with other casual score-attack style games), so if anyone is interested then drop me a line.

I'll post up some random screens later.

And an in-game mockup...

As you can imagine - that lot took a fair while to draw

The reason for the old-school low-colour style?  Well, when I started I was originally planning for r0x to use vector style graphics, but then I changed my mind and decided on traditional sprites.  I was planning on changing the pallete on the menu screens from shades of blue to red to tie them in better, but havent got around to it yet.

Very, very nice graphics!

I've been approached by a new coder (http://tomchi.free.fr/) who is interested in creating this using GFA... so GGN, we'll probably need your help sometime soon!

(heehee - I'm sure you instigated this "Stay 50+ posts ahead of HS" game just because you wanted more action in this forum.  I'll have to hold one of my random 'ressurection of old threads' spamathon sessions to catch up now!  )

Heavy Stylus wrote on 30.12.08 at 15:38:13:


* ggn hides in the corner

Well, I've received some promising WIP 0.00...01 test builds of r0x so far with a joystick controlled ship and lots of fast sprites to avoid (but no collision detection yet), so some progress is being made.  In fact, at the current rate, r0x might actually see a 2009 release!

There's also the possibility of dropping the side panel and using the full screen (err, not the borders though!), which will make the game work much better with the menu colour-scheme without me having to tediously replace all those shades of blue in the pallete.

I've also added some new sprites and actually typed up a proper 5 page design doc from my scribbled notes... I'll attach both to this post tonight.

This will basically be an 'open source'-style production, as such that WIP builds and data will be posted here for D-Bug forumites to test and give feedback.

The gfx look lovely, and I know that Tomchi is very skilled (and he almost didn't learn anything from me, yay!), so this is going to be good

...and here's a full-screen mock-up and the WIP design document.

Another little teaser just for fun

BTW, if you guys want, we can chip in with an intro or title screen or hiscore screen or whatever

Heh - I told you guys before - advertise on wayofthepixel.net asking for artists.

Most of the guys there LOVE working with limited palettes and old hardware, and if you big up your project, explaining it's features and why it's so good, people will apply to help out.  Artists like seeing their work used!

I would help myself, but all my sprite gfx are basically based on sprites from other games - and I think a DBug game deserves something better than that!

How many tilesets do you need? How many enemy sprites?  Etc. Etc. - If people know exactly what's required and how complete the game currently is (without gfx) then it'll be more appealling for people to help out... no-one wants to sink hours of pixel time into a game that will never be finished, so all that info is helpful.

Likewise, I doubt r0x would ever got off the drawing board if it wasn't for the fact that I'd drawn up most of the gfx and worked out the basic design concept beforehand!

OK, and here is no mock-up but an ingame screenshot

Ooooh!  Is it Tetris?  I LOVE Tetris!!