GunnSwitch

GunnSwitch: Sega Genesis Shooter Research Part 1:

Tonight 6 PM Eastern! We will be doing live development of GunnSwitch, playing with different prototypes and trying out a few courses to run our tanks through!

Watch it HERE:

http://Twitch.tv/CidadeAP

This morning 8 AM Eastern! We will be doing live development of GunnSwitch again, playing with our first control scheme prototype and testing it.

http://Twitch.tv/CidadeAP

Here is a look at some concepts of the Vampiria, an alien race in GunnSwitch:

Its been a year and a half since I last posted, the project is still alive but has morphed into something different than what was outlined at the beginning of this thread. Here are the new goals for GunnSwitch:

The game will feature:

• A deep story with multiple characters from different factions, now will be single player only but for good reason,
• Metroidvania/platforming like areas that you can explore that lead to "shooter stages" like Metal Slug and other shooters etc.
• These hub areas will be open for you to find/complete quests, find and fight mini-bosses and collect gems that you can use to upgrade your tank like:

HP tanks that extend your health, WP tanks that extend your weapon meter and allow you to use different limited main weapon types like spread shots, laser shots and

other familiar shooter game types.

• Like Blaster Master you will be able to jump out of your tank and explore areas that your tank cant fit into. There is a new interesting grapple mechanic for your tank, that lets your tank hang onto platforms and walls sideways and upwards, which then your player will jump out and use your tank as a platform to cross gaps etc.
• As well as the different optional upgrade able main weapons there are special progression weapons that are unlocked as you get further in the game that open up new areas in the hub worlds and add meaningful and fun functions to game play.
• A Gravity grapple will unlock as well that lets your tank stick to certain surfaces and go upside down and all around.
• HD hand drawn art, particles, physics, and other little cool things to see
• Psytrance music by some awesome artists that go so well with shooting action

There is more yet to reveal but this gives you an idea of where we are headed now. We wont have anything to show for a little while but many of these systems have been prototyped for months now and are really fun to use.

Cheers and happy game making friends

We are making steady progress refining our game systems and trying to perfect the little things before finishing the levels.

Our plan is to release a half hour long demo with four playable sections sometime next year following it up with some attempts at crowd funding on KickStarter or other platforms. The demo will feature two small exploration areas and two action stages.

We will be sharing some game assets sometime soon, these won't be final versions but will give you an idea of the art style and look of the tank. This project is shaping up nicely with lots of game play abilities and variation.

GunnSwitch is coming along nicely, many of the games systems and game play features are already implemented and working just as we imagined. Development and testing the prototype has surprised us with the depth of new game play ideas that come about as we get further into development. Here are two very early screenshots of the prototype, testing some lighting and particle effects. Most of the art in the screenshots are just placeholder while our artist works on making Anime/Heavy Metal Comics stylized graphics and animations. The tank is hte only artwork in the screenshots that will be in the game and is still being polished. More updates to come soon.

Here are a couple concept art pieces to give you an idea of what we are going for:

Crystal Caves Concept

Rebel Base Concept

Along the way randomly I will try to drop some tips I learn through development. I am learning and using families effectively, functions, lerp scaling and lerp camera movement. Also enemy spawning and AI, using tile sets, lighting, particles, physics and a lot of optimization tricks to share and more. Right now in the process of getting rid of very small and short frame drops during lerp scaling and at the beginning of a layout. After a few seconds of the start of a layout the game runs perfectly at 60 frames per second and is better once its exported to PC. More soon, cheers.

You always hear that prototyping your game is important before going into full development of your game all the time in game dev circles. Nintendo comes up with their brilliant game play mechanics through their constant prototyping of ideas. Usually I will prototype the initial idea for a game and once that works I then just run with it. With this project I've gotten over the need to rush in and now am taking my time to learn and understand what I'm doing and what I want to accomplish before starting to deep dive into development. I've been prototyping ideas and game mechanics for GunnSwitch for a year now and its amazing how much smoother the development of the game goes when you build a strong foundation through prototyping and writing out ideas. Along with prototyping I write in my note pad, drawing out ideas and game mechanics as they come to me and plan the story. I also write the character bios, world areas, Hud ideas, menu systems, enemies and spawn ideas and more. I have a full notepad that I refer to as I go as well as when I have extra time I compile that information into a game design document that I share with my brother the artist on the game. Another part of the prototyping experience is going back over the game mechanics and refining them and adding and taking away from them as needed. Making smaller games before this project I also learned many new skills with each project that are all contributing to the fluidity of making GunnSwitch. Happy game making friends.

Here are a couple more sneak peeks into the prototype. Graphics are mostly placeholder.

First is a look at an action stage.

Here we have a look at Gunn, the main character. This is only a test graphic for the character but gives a good idea of how Gunn will look.

Here is a look at a couple of concept animations of the character Gunn that you control in the game.

We are using 8 frames of animation for the run, later on we may double that to 16 frames if the game can handle it after everything is in place when we during our polishing phase.

As development continues we find ourselves going back and tweaking or even changing the logic, the artwork, mechanics and refining them. Its rare when you get everything perfect on the first try. Learning to use tile sets in imaginative ways and making everything line up is challenging but we're getting our heads around it. Tile sets are efficient for keeping the object count down but are also awesome for putting levels together quickly.

Here is a new tilemap for the cave we are testing:

Small Update:

First pic is of the newly added green mushrooms and the new crate sprites.

Second pic is a hint at a cool mechanic in the game.