4 posts tagged gamedev

Hey everyone! Burton here. It feels so good to be posting again. We’ve been hard at work on the game in our nights and weekends around some full-time and contract work. I’ve been blessed to be able to position myself where I don’t need to take any work for the next 3-4 months. This is going to allow me lots of time to focus on making Robots Love Ice Cream (RLIC) as incredible as all of you guys deserve.

I hereby promise and pledge to keep this tumblr posting ball rolling and I’ll post something a few times a week. There’ll be some cool screenshots. Sometimes it might be a video showing off something in particular that I’ve been working on. Sometimes it will be just some quick notes about what we’re up to or write-ups on aspects of the game we’re working through presently. I’ll try to keep it interesting, but I want to give everyone a great look into all of the effort that goes into make the game and all of our strides to make it something special. If there’s anything you guys have questions about or want to see, let me know!

On the code side:
Currently, I’m working on getting the gameplay well represented. I’ve got practically all of the gameplay mechanics created, but not juxtaposed against and with one another. I’ll be working on creating as many cool movement patterns mechanics as possible this week and then I’ll get together with our lead art guy and between the two of us we can come up with a really cool timeline of gameplay for the first level.

On the art side:
Art guys will be working to construct the first environment out in Unity. We’ve built this environment up and torn it back down again a few times. Through this process, we’ve been learning a bit about what we can handle in the game performance-wise, how we think the level will read in gameplay (this is super important for a fast-paced experience), and what steps we need to take in the order we need to take them.

I’ll leave you guys with two characters. The first fella’s name is Spinston. He captures a planet’s citizens and holds them for a king’s ransom in ice cream.

This guy’s name is Scrambles and he’s a stationary turret type robot. He hovers and fires from his bottom-mounted turrets to impede the hero’s defense of the planet.

Have a great one, :)

Hey friends, here’s a cross-post from our Kickstarter page that we originally shared on Thanksgiving Day. Just to give you a window on what we’ve been up to:

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Hello everybody,

Since today is Thanksgiving day here in the United States, we at Addo Games wanted to take the opportunity to reach out and say how thankful we are for your support. While we’re at it, we also have an update on Robots Love Ice Cream.

Even though most of our progress has been behind the scenes, we’ve been hard at work on both the game and the Kickstarter rewards. We’ll be sending out surveys for mailing addresses and T-shirt sizes this coming week to help us fulfill your rewards.

Physical rewards will be shipped soon, depending on the level at which you backed—right now we’ve got awesome vinyl stickers and postcards ready to go, posters at the printer, and T-shirts in vendor selection. Digital items like the soundtrack and wallpaper pack will be released when the game launches. If there’s a rewards item you liked that wasn’t in your pledge pack, we’ll also have a few things available for purchase online later this year.

Without your help, this endeavor wouldn’t be possible and we owe you our profound thanks. We’ve set a high bar for this game and we are looking forward to giving you a glimpse in the next month or so. Development has ramped up more slowly than we would have liked because of the usual indie developer challenges, but trust us, we’re as impatient as you are for the release of Robots Love Ice Cream, and we’re as determined as ever to make our game something truly memorable and special. As of right now, the plan is to get the game onto your iPads in April 2012.

In the spirit of the holiday, here are a few things we’re thankful for:

-The incredibly talented creative people who are contributing to our project
-Fresh ground/brewed coffee and our ancient-but-irreplaceable Starbucks coffee maker
-Online supplier coupon codes
-Skype
-Rooster cookies
-Tools like Smartsheet and Evernote that help us keep our heads on straight
-Sincere words of encouragement from friends and family
-The Unity community
-Internet radio (especially the game music channels)
-Fellini’s Pizza - site of creative/strategy summits
-Twitter
-The opportunity to pursue our dream and have all you amazing people volunteer to come along for the ride

Again, thank you for supporting and loving Robots Love Ice Cream!

I thought I’d put together a survey to see what people thought would be the best locations to showcase in Robots Love Ice Cream. You can vote for one you see or enter your own. I’d love to hear your thoughts. The Sweets planet idea came from Chris Rickwood, who just did the music for Orcs Must Die and the theme for Madden 12.

Full disclosure, I’m intentionally leaving planets we’ve already fully decided on doing off of this survey. I want those to be a surprise, :).

Update: I added some of the “Other” poll answers to the main poll (votes intact). Keep sharing this and get your friends voting! If you’re visiting for the first time and don’t like any of the options listed, you can write in using the “Other” option. Thanks!

We are planning on unveiling some of our already selected levels prior to the game’s release. We want to make sure we get them perfect before we share them with you guys!

Hey guys,

I’ve put together a few new promotional shots that show off some of the fruits of our labors.

Ice Cream Truck (Hero)

This is still very much a work in progress, but I think it’s a great start. I’ve got the truck rigged and animated with suspension and chassis rocking that speeds up and slows down depending on the speed the player spins the planet at.

Koi Fish Robot

This little guy is one of the characters for the Japanese feudal level. Our current plan is to have him capture Citizens through his mouth from the inhabited buildings on the planet below.

In-Game Peek

And lastly, here’s a screen from the current build of the game. Not everything is represented in this shot and the buildings are definitely placeholders, but things are moving along and it’s starting to look a bit like a game, :)

Please feel free to share these with friends and game blogs. We definitely need your help meeting our funding goal for Kickstarter. The project ends in 12 days (July 31, 3a EST)!

Robots Love Ice Cream on Kickstarter

Thanks,

Burton