Foreign Legion Carrier Level

So here we are back again posting whats going on at the front lines. It’s great to see people are still happy about the update. But we thought you guys and galls might be interested in some more social interaction. Killing bad guys all by your self does tend to be a bit lonesome after a while. So how about a bit of a get to getter where you all can kill bad guys and even each other. Well with that warm thought in mind we are working on the multi-player. Bit by bit.. no deadline for now just doing what we do best. In the meanwhile the retail version is in stores soon for Germany, Switzerland and Austria. We are also selling the game on some other sites now by the way. We will list them later on. Anyway we also got an interview on Rock Paper Shotgun whoohoo :). Please tell everyone how much you like the game and that they should buy it so we can pay next months rent ;)

Ah and here is a little dev shot of the a level that is reaching finalization

Update: January 21, 2010

Buongiorno, we rolled out another update for the game on Steam, this update adds Italian and Polish translations to the game. We also added due credits to everybody who worked or helped with developing Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood, these can be found in the help screens in-game.

We’ve also started a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about the game. You can find this (among many other interesting discussions) on the Steam forums.

Arrivederci & na razie!

Bug Fixes

Hello everybody, we hope you had a great new year! We’ve been out on a holiday for a while now, which was a joy after putting the big Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood update out there. We did try to keep an eye out on the forums however and we saw a few bug reports popping up here and there. Have no fear, we’re already working on getting these fixed! Some of the major bugs that we’re working on are our initial translations for the game (big thanks to everyone who sent in improved translation files for that), the Rocket Man achievement, the incorrect amount of money being displayed or being rewarded in the game, tweaked the accuracy of the Minigun, and many more! We’ll roll out this update pretty soon, so we hope this puts your worries to rest.

We saw a big boost in the amount of people playing the game during the last two weeks. So I would like to thank everyone who gifted the game to a friend or to a stranger on Steam during the holiday sales!

The Update Is Live!

As I’m writing this, the big update for the PC version that we’ve been talking about for a while now just went live on Steam! This means you only have to click on Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood in your Steam games list and the auto-updater should take care of the rest for you. Make sure to tell all of your friends, family, neighbors and perhaps even your pet goldfish, Foreign Legion is back and it brought the big guns!

We’ve worked hard on this update and we couldn’t have done it without the amazing support you have given us throughout the last few months. A great big hug goes out to the people at Valve as well, for helping us getting our game out to you!

Feel free to leave a comment on your thoughts about the game, or head on over to the Steam forums for more in-depth discussion. Don’t linger too long however, the rebels are closing in!

Tomorrow Means Business

With the update closing in (tomorrow actually!), we decided to give you another video showing off the many new features of Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood. Hyped up yet? We know we are. We’re in full crunch mode right now, tweaking everything to the best of our abilities and squashing every little bug that remains so that you can play the big Foreign Legion update tomorrow without any worries.

Stay tuned!

The Weapons of Foreign Legion

Do we have a surprise for you today! Last week we showed you a preview of all the new levels which will be included in the upcoming update. Going on these new and dangerous missions however requires the appropriate gear for the job. Therefore we would like to present “The Weapons of Foreign Legion”. Enjoy!

Your Objective…

With our upcoming update, we’ve got a whole list of additions planned! However, as you all love the game world so much, we decided not to add any new levels. ... Just kidding! We’ve got a whole batch of new levels with their own unique objectives planned, and today we would like to give you a glimpse of these. Excited? We know we are. Instead of one mission, we’ve got a whole campaign prepared for you.

The Date

Monday brings us all to a new and exciting week, while we bring you another update about Foreign Legion. We’re still working hard on adding a lot of new content to the game, coders are clacking away on their keyboards, concepts are being brought to life and new environments are being created. In other words, we’re spending our time on new levels and features that are based on the wonderful feedback you’ve given us so far. A big shout out to the community for that!

For a while now we’ve been promising that updates are coming soon. Therefore I’m happy to say that December 18th will be a date to keep your eyes open for, as this is the day we’re striving for!

In other news, one of the Steam community groups BucketsOfBlood has been rapidly growing and have given us a lot of feedback and support so far, thanks guys! If community groups aren’t your thing, be sure to check out the forums as well!

We want to clarify on one aspect of the update however, as it will not include the highly anticipated multiplayer update just yet! On December 18th you will receive a of great deal of improvements and additions to the game automatically through Steam for free.

New Maps

If you’ve been wondering what we’ve been up to the last few weeks, then I’m happy to tell you that we’re still working hard on improving and adding to our game. Today I’d like to show you a developer preview of one of the new maps that we’re creating. This map will feature a different style of gameplay and a different atmosphere than what the game currently offers. This level is still in development of course, but we will happily show you further progress in the near future.

Be sure to check out our previous post which featured another preview of a different level we’re working on. As you can see, we’re really trying to create a lot of diversity for this update. Not only will it become be a larger game, allowing for a lot more re-playability, it will also become a lot more fun! On top of that, we’re adding in some other bonuses that we know you’ll love.

Update

First of all, thanks again for the great support! We are really super juiced by all the positive comments. To make sure you get what you deserve we hired an extra programmer to give you the best we can. We surely agree that we should pick a date for the update. But hey ask your self this; do you want a proper update or just a quirky one. For now we are just working our balls off to put all those great ideas in the game. Just to show we are working hard to make this game better here is a little screen from one of the new levels. As you might notice we added some flair to the legionair. Just look at the amount of enemies! That should keep you pretty occupied, we think. We are adding a nice load of weapons as well But please realize that all of this effects a lot on the game, gameplay wise and flow wise. As I said before, we want to give you what you deserve. A good and fun game.

Note: The screenshot is from the game in development. The town hall and the civilians are still displayed in the HUD, but that’s just because we haven’t been working on the HUD yet! This is a “kill the endless amount of enemies level ‘till you die” sort of level.

Chicken Slaughter(er!)

If you’re curious about what we’re currently working on, we’ve got a fun little sneak peak for you. Aside of the multiplayer update that we’re working on, a lot of players have been requesting if we could do something extra with the chickens as well. So we were thinking, what if you were on a battlefield, surrounded by hordes of chickens? Enjoy! We hope you like it.

Work is continuing each day on the new content and multiplayer update of our game. The urban city level is shaping up rather nicely, right now we’re focusing more on the gameplay side of things rather than the visuals, so it doesn’t look all that great yet. But we’re pretty excited to show you more about it in the near future. Hang in there!

In other news, the first reviews of Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood are coming online. GeneralGames just posted their thoughts about the game, an interview about Foreign Legion will be going along with that in the near future as well.

If you haven’t checked out the Steam discussion forum yet, make sure to do so! Its the perfect place where you can discuss your thoughts about the game, share tactics and much more. Be sure to take a look!

Back In Action

Phew, it’s been a while. We’re finally back from our vacation in France, GDC Europe ‘09 and Gamescom! So we’ve been going through all our mails, comments and suggestions that you’ve sent us so far. Needles to say (for better or for worse) we love all the response that we’ve received. The main criticism with the game is that it’s a bit too short. Therefore we firmly believe in making our games grow, we created something that we believe is fun, now you’ve been able to play it as well. With your feedback, Foreign Legion will grow in to something we can both enjoy even more.

Our first goal is to add a multiplayer mode, along with some additional maps. There’s a little preview of the level we’re working on right now, hope you like it! We’re going for an urban setting, something different than the open dessert theme we’ve been using so far. Such an environment allows for a lot more cover, but a lot more danger as well. Having a friend to cover your back is pretty useful in such a time…

Since our game has been available on Steam, there is also a Steam discussion forum where you can discuss your thoughts about the game, share tactics and much more. Be sure to take a look!

Steam Users Rock

Its an exciting time for us here at Sakari Indie. Earlier this week the PC version of Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood went live on Steam. We’re on a short vacation right now (we really needed this after the initial Mac release). Yet we do keep an eye out however, as we’re typing this from a café in the heart of France. So as you can imagine, we are freaking out! Our inbox is being filled with so many comments and suggestions and we are super thankful for all this feedback we’ve gotten so far. Thats what we’re doing it for after all, with your help we can make the game even better in the future.

So rest assured, starting next week we will be replying to all your response, hop on the Steam forums for more in depth discussion and work on making Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood an even better experience for all. You’ve given us so many great suggestions for DLC, we would be fools if we didn’t go through with that! Oh, and please be kind to the poor defenseless chickens!

Mac Release!

Well, sort of! This week marks the launch of Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood for the Mac. Needless to say, we’re super excited about all of this! We created a game in only a matter of months, and today a handful of online distributors are selling our game (with more and more distributors joining them soon). The response so far has been great, but what are you waiting for, though? Go on and get the game already!

With the things we’ve learned from this release we’re steadily preparing the PC version for a near-future launch. Right now we’re in the process of making the game play nicely with Steam (and all its beautiful features). As you can imagine however, its quite a task on the programming side of things. Luckily our programmer Sander is really pulling through and making things happen. I think we have a well earned vacation coming up soon.

As we firmly believe in supporting our community we’re already planning the future updates of our game. These updates will be completely free and will include additional content to Foreign Legion. We’ve got some cool things in the works and hopefully we’ll be able to tell (and show!) you about these really soon. If you’ve got a crazy cool idea that could work within our game, feel free to make a comment or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)!

In The Spotlight

Just as we’re about to send in our release candidate , we appear in the spotlight by our good friends at BlenderNation. Thank you all very much for the positive comments. As for the less positive… well, we understand all of your concerns. To me, games are a bit like cookies. And when I go shopping for cookies I tend to like the unhealthy chocolate chip cookies with 20% real fattening butter. I see that the other package next to it says “no-fat healthy fruit cookies”. But it seems that they always end up in the back of my closet until the final expiration date; I throw them away. Now when it comes to these cookies. The unhealthy ones just win. Are they harmful? Well yes and no. I like unhealthy cookies but I’d never consider them a meal replacer. So my common sense still seems to work even after developing a very, erhm, violent game.

There is also quite some feedback about the setting of the game. Every game starts as an idea, these ideas are most of the time a reaction to way the world looks. We’re not trying to make a statement with our game, it’s just a setting the majority of people would recognize. Don’t forget, deserts are a lot less work than an entire city. Hmm a city would be kind of cool on the other hand… maybe call it Blood Flood City… With multiplayer… or coop… hmm.  Well, the game will be ready soon. You will be able to find it on game portals such as Steam, Direct2Drive and GameTree.

Nearly Getting There

Ohhhh dear, oh dear, here we go… we’ve set ourselves a little deadline and although it seemed so far away, its getting REALLY close. We tell ourselves that its a release candidate, but that’s not really any different from a complete game that has been play tested through and through with a tiny amount of bugs on the surface. So far there are only small bugs, hurray for that! This means no crashes, showstoppers or any other scary stuff. A real big relief for our programmer, Sander.

We’re not there yet, though. Things can get messy towards the end, our experience tells us. Still, Unity has proven a really good game creation tool and the more we work with it the more flexible it seems.

The game itself, well, it’s getting really messy (but in the way we want it to be!). Foreign Legion is slowly earning it’s rightful sub title, Buckets of Blood. The amount of gore is getting so over the top that its becoming really hard not to grin when yet another enemy blows up in a haze of fire and debris (thanks to one of your carefully placed rockets). Noel did a really nice job on the accompanying sound effects. The best way to describe it is the sound of a bathtub full of left overs from the slaughterhouse, blown up with a bucket of C4.

Powered By Beer

Here’s a little update on our development. Last 2 weeks have been all work and no play… Well, in games there’s always some play involved but still, the animation system has been troublesome in particular. Using Blender and the Unity engine there is a little sidestep to make when getting characters exported properly. The FBX format that Unity uses to import assets does not always give the results we had in mind.

The idea was to reuse the walk-cycle when handling the various weapons, but that just did not seem to work out so well. The IK used in Blender had to be baked in for the FBX format. And because proper animation starts from the hip bone this was kinda impossible. The bottom line was that all animations were redone for each weapon, giving back the control to the animator but adding a lot of unexpected work at the same time. On top of that the guy that we planned for the animation had other plans… so even more work for the three of us.

Indie Software

I thought it would be nice to make a small post about the technology we use for Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood. Since its an indie game, we try to keep the budget low: we don’t use expensive software packages but instead look at open-source software and products targeted at indie developers. Currently we’re using Blender and Unity for developing our game.

Blender is probably the best example of such an open-source product, being just as powerful as other 3D packages while offering many of the same features. Its available for Windows, Mac and Linux completely free, which basically makes Blender the ultimate dream for every indie developer that wants to bring 3D into their games. On top of that, Blender offers its own versatile game engine. While we’re not using the Blender game engine for our current project, its definitely a viable road to travel if your looking for a powerful engine that doesn’t cost a dime. We’ve played around with it ourselves, its great.

Sakari Indie’s Birth

We’re happy to announce Sakari Indie and welcome you to our new abode on the internet. This website will serve as as a place for publishing our small indie games, keeping you up-to-date about the development and news of our games. Maybe in the future we’ll build up an entire community as well, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

The first game that we will be releasing soon here is titled Foreign Legion: Buckets of Blood. A third-person shooter where you must defend a town hall full of frightened civilians from local rebels. Riddled with blood, gore and violence, we hope Foreign Legion will make a fun little game for people who want a quick gaming fix for 5 to 10 minutes.