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. With any computer games, from Tetris to Foxy Bingo (www.foxybingo.com) and many others, there are always different tweaks and changes, various versions of the same great idea. You have to balance the graphics, sound effects and design before feeling that a version is just right. Unity is a tool that helps you create that perfect game.
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.
More good stuff like this is making it into the game every day. Just gore alone doesn’t make a game complete of course. The Mechanics and the pacing of the game is shaping up as we go. Merlijn really shows off his flexible side since features are added as we go and a lot of them have a BIG impact on what’s already in the game, gameplay wise. Tweaking damage and how the enemies react to the player is his daily job now.
Sander is going in overtime on the code side of things. He’s basically doing every single line of code for the entire game. And that includes everything you could think of; from the animation system, enemy AI, game logic, user interface, tutorials, highscore systems, multilingual setups and at the same time keeping our nasty source control in check… I’m doing the help screens (god they are a pain) and fiddling with the pixely bits of the HUD and the gory particle effects that still need an extra gallon of blood. And last but not least, Elise is going through the pain of explaining that our beloved non-violent female friendly game studio Sakari Games is making an independent title that’s so gory that it will not just show the complete opposite of what we’re about but will also feed the whining masses with even more reasons to blame games for violent behavior.
Now, do you feel like taking a guess if we’re going to make our deadline or not?
By jurrie on June 12th 2009
Hard to guess whether you’ll make it or not, since the deadline date is unknown to us non-initiated ;-)
Eagerly awaiting some media / preview. Good luck making your deadline!
By Douwuhhh on June 19th 2009
Hey Pepijn and Sander,
This looks great! I am very impressed with what I see so far! And of course the use of Blender!
Hope it all works out!
Good luck!
Douwe
By KhaaL on June 19th 2009
Looking good, though I question the use of middle-eastern climate and setting. Islamophobia is bad as it is. Otherwise it looks fun, just dont forget the linux crowd!
By hizaro on June 19th 2009
WOw…great job!
Simple and elegant artwork with blender3D.
By SwitzerBaden on June 19th 2009
Super cool, guys! I can imagine the cartoon look really lends itself to some great übergore fun, and and always happy to see Blender used in production.
By Patrickme on June 19th 2009
Niiiice!!!
i’ll waiting for it!!
do you have demo or beta? interesting to see it!!..
cool idea and great work :)
By Merlijn on June 19th 2009
Hey everyone!
Thanks for all the nice comments so far. We really appreciate it. :)
While the game looks violent, it all boils down to a funny cartoon shooter. So we hope people will enjoy that!
By dread_deimos on June 20th 2009
Very interesting project!
Could you please enable some RSS or Atom feed on your site so people could track your progress in handy manner?
By David on June 20th 2009
I like the toony style, now lemme give it a spin :p
By ethana2 on June 20th 2009
In the demo video I saw a Windows and Apple logo, but no Ubuntu one. Are you going to test the game in WINE?
By Merlijn on June 20th 2009
Dread_Deimos,
Thanks for your comment. RSS (along with a whole batch of site updates) will be coming online later this week!
Ethana2, since we’re using the Unity engine, we can’t offer a native Ubuntu version. We’re Ubuntu enthusiasts though, so we’ll probably test if WINE runs it properly. :)
By Yoaio on June 20th 2009
+++ !!!
good work
By Merlijn on June 22nd 2009
RSS feed along with a few other website updates are online, enjoy! :)
By DevilInsane on June 22nd 2009
It looks like Lego? Kind of cool, but you should show more of your game.
By Dave on June 22nd 2009
Looks awesome!
By .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 22nd 2009
Good question about the ubuntu, I’m a big ubuntu fan to and done some testing using wine and ubuntu. But it was on a very crappy laptop with no 3d support at all. So it worked but performence was poor. If you want to know if FL will run on your machine. try downloading one of unity’s sample demo’s like:
http://unity3d.com/gallery/live-demos/index.html#avert-fate
and run that under wine. You are very welcome to share your results :)
FL is designed to leave as little people out when it comes to specs so if your results are good with the sample you can assure FL to run on your system.
Cheers!
By jorge eduardo adana castaño on July 9th 2009
Como y cuando se puede jugar
By Ben Alderson on August 6th 2009
Oioi just thought we should say hello from Trashgames, we also use the old Blender and Unity Engine. We just bought your game of Steam and would like to say nice job, it’s good to see a small team like ourselves cook up something up that’s enjoyable to play and good look at! We hope to see more quality goods from you in the future.
By Boomhauer on August 7th 2009
I bought this game yesterday and its great but it keeps crashing.
By GonzoRS on August 8th 2009
Love the game…But need’s to be online…Mmmmmm deathmatch.
By fol1n on August 8th 2009
I bought this game today I thought there were gonna be a bunch of levels and Online play, but sadly no none of that I love the variety of weapons I just think it needs some Downloadable Content (DLC) But Please make ONLINE Everyone will buy this game if it was. But it is totally worth it for the 7$ but for me I got discount 5.26$ or something like that Thanks for making a great game Can’t wait for more!!
By Bucky on August 10th 2009
Hi!
The game looks very promising and I was about to buy it for some multiplayer fun with my mates - then I realized there is no multiplayer.
Please, please, please with sugar on top, think about creating a deathmatch for it. :))