Hi all – just a brief and somewhat sad notification to say that due to time constraints and constant schedule clashes I’ll no longer be working with the excellent up-and-coming 3D artist Chris James – which means our planned top down shooter Robo Attack will have to be trashed for now… quite frankly we’re both so busy with our day jobs (or evening freelance work) that we don’t have time to work in collaboration on our project – such is the way of ‘grown-up’ life!
But it’s not all bad! – because this now frees me up to work on my other game, currently code-named Johnny Neo.
Johnny Neo will be a top down adventure/puzzle game which tells the story of an everyday IT guy living in the distant future. Like most average guys Johnny just about manages to handle his relationship with his girlfriend but struggles to pay the bills – which leads us directly to the plot of the game… in the intro scene we see that Johnny needs to pay a huge electricity bill to get his lights switched back on – and if he doesn’t his girlfriend will leave him forever… so poor old Johnny has to take on the somewhat dangerous job of cleaning out an infected computer system on a far away space station which has been overrun by killer robots and BOOM! That’s the basic plot, I’ve got plans for a much more in-depth storyline scribbled down but right now that’s all I’m going to reveal for now.
As usual I’ll be coding the game in GML which is the language behind Game Maker Studio. Stylistically I’m planning to go for a super-retro look which some modern twists including (I hope) some advanced lighting, particle effects and perhaps some physics based puzzles – although in all honesty I’m not a fan of the built in physics functions in GML so most likely I’ll be making my own system for this if I do go down the physics route. In order to get that real retro feel I’ll be pixelling all the artwork myself and presenting the game in glorious 240p (I know – but trust – It’ll look like pixely heaven I promise!) which should res-up nicely on most peoples monitors ( assuming 1080p is the most common resolution for desktops) without the need for black borders.
Anyway that’s all for now folks – keep your eyes peeled as I’ll be updating the blog with my progress much more regularly now.