We are very interested in your opinion about G, please send us some feedback, it will help us a lot with the development of IMPACT!.

However the development of our games has not completely stopped during this month, we’ve been working on impact and a commissioned project… And we’ve been fixing G.

Yep G. As some of you may have noticed, the current version of G on our website is not working very well. So we found some time to fix and update the game. As I write this post Duke and Xevian are hunting down some nasty bugs of the 1.0.0.2 version, so we will see a new XNA 2 updated version of the game quite soon.
The development of IMPACT requires some feedback from the users, and we think that a WORKING version of G can be a nice playground…
So if your are willing to help us, stay tuned for G 1.0.0.3!

Prototype tiles with test “microscope” shader.

Since our last update on Polpette we added new behaviors traits to the creatures AI, such as aggressiveness, obedience and altruism. Last time we wrote about the game they had only a simple path-finding algorithm, and a basic “hungry -> get food -> wait -> get hungry again” philosophy.
Now we have our little bastards running trough the map in search of something to eat for themselves or some food to share with their brothers. They attack without fear (for now) the enemy faction and sometimes they even obey to their queen, of course when they feel there is nothing more important to do :).
To better understand what they are actually doing, we implemented “intention” icons that float above the creature’s heads, so it is easy to know when they are hungry or when they think it’s time for a little carnage. Knowing the creature’s attitudes is the key to choose the right “specimen” you want to be the template for the creation of new units.
As a finishing touch we decided to give a name to every creature, so that you can recognize your favourites, and you can be really sorry when they are killed.
With the creatures basic behavior working, it was time for the queen to make her appearance in-game. The queen act as a mobile “base” as many creature behaviors refer to the queen’s position to operate. The queen is the only creature mouse controlled directly by the player and has the ability to spawn new units assimilating the DNA of the creatures chosen as genetic “templates”.

With two groups of creatures and their queens roaming the map, our 3×3 play-field was a little too small, and one of the two factions was systematically annihilated in a matter of seconds. Looks like even in Polpette small spaces lead to aggressiveness ;)

We needed to build bigger and more complex levels, so we had to stop the development of the game in order to build a rough but functional level editor … Too bad we could not use the Puppeteer … but it was built for an entirely different engine.
However, in a matter of days the mini-editor will be ready, and we will finally move forward to the multiplayer part of the game.

Now, let me run a little test with a super secret mesmer-o-pattern i accidentally blended into those textures … “Would you kindly …” :P

While the team is almost completely focused on the development of Polpette, we still manage to find some time for IMPACT!.
Just to show you that we did not forget our game with starships we updated our website … you can find a very misterious screenshot and some concept art visiting the game page.
Well that’s all for now, I’ve got to go building some tiles for Polpette, or else Duke is going to test our collsion engine with my face, with 500+ real asteroids. :P

Small update

We found thet the G installer was corrupted and re-uploaded it. Please let us know if you encounter any problems installing the game.

Both IMPACT! and POLPETTE will use our “EVIL engine” and share the same tools we are building to improve our production pipeline. This situation should allow us to bring them both near completion within this year.

POLPETTE looks like an RTS, with two opposing factions of “creatures” fighting fo supremacy. The player does not have complete control over them, they will likely act accordingly to their “personalty”.
Every unit has a peculiar set of skills and properties, that you can clone or mix in order to produce future generations of units. Cloning or mixing creatures with different behavoirs the player decides how it’s “swarm” is organized and behaves. Cloning the aggressive or the obedient, mixing the strong with the smart, will they obey your orders? Will they be aggressive? Will they be strong and Brave? Fearful but fast? It’s up to the player, and his decision will determine the evolution of the swarm and it’s survival or total annihilation.

We can’t show you any complete screenshots of the game, but here is our first game concept, and a screen taken from the prototipe playground in action.

Our other “super secret” project is a really very simple game, IMPACT! is a multiplayer and expanded version of G.
It will feature team battles, several game modes other than the basic “deathmatch”, different starships with different abilities, multiple arenas and powerups, and a faster gameplay.
IMPACT! is really giving us some headaches, expanding the ultra simple orbital-smashing gameplay of G is not an easy task as we initially thought; every addition will likely ruin the “flowing” of the game or make it too complex and less responsive … but testing ad reinventing this game is teaching us a lot.

It was a great day because here, in Italy, it is very rare to have such an event about videogame development; it was a great day because we saw something new about XNA 2.0 and because we had a chance to hear people from the industry talking about how they make games, and what it takes to get the games done, but above all it was a great day because we listened-up to professional people.
This may seem not so uncommon to people from other countries, but let me say it again, here in Italy these things do not happen frequently … they almost do not happen at all… but I will stop my writing, before I complain MORE about this situation.

At the end of the day we were very happy, the speakers were absolutely great, the atmoshpere was full of enthusiasm adn we had a chance to grow our network; too bad we did not win the X360 elite … but at least we got some Vista DVDs! We also had the chance to meet our friend Brago !

Let me finish this post with slightly disappointing note about the project in the works. We regretfully HAVE TO change the name of the project we just called IMPACT! We thought it was an original and funny name, but it is not. There are 300.000.000.000.000 things out there called “IMPACT!” or “impact” or “ImPaCt!” or whatever and we just have to find another name. I know, it’s lame to change the game’s name after it was announced, but we will live with it.

Something like “Super Fun With Asteroids and Starships with Shileds and Other High Tech Stuff, Multiplayer Edition Ultra” should be STILL unused … at least we will not have to change the logo too.

I think it’s pretty good … but my opinion is not exactly the best term of comparison, considering that I designed it.

As people from Naples use to say “ogni shcarrafone è bell’a mamma sua” (that in english sounds something like “every cockroach is beautiful for his mother”), so learning from their wisdom, I’m here to ask you, beloved readers: “What do you think of the IMPACT! logo?”

I’m also very glad to see that you are finally enjoing our little content packs (this also thanks to Ziggware.com that kindly broadcasted our “update”!) so I would really, really, really like to hear some feedback about the texture and stardust packs.

Do you plan to use them?
Are they working fine?
Is the content good enough for you?
Do you have any suggestion to improve our future “packs” (Or to fix the two we have)?

I was thinking of publishing a “Vegetation Pack” using the content from TNOTP; that means a couple of trees and bushes, some grass … and rocks … and perhaps other tiles … but I feel like this one will not be exactly free like the others … I’d rather make it “feedbackware” … that means the more feedback we receive for the existing packs, the more likely I will take some time away from the IMPACT! development to polish and prepare the vegetation pack.

Yes I know, I am a bastard, but what else would you espect, we are the STUDIO EVIL.

(Did you notice that we improved the evilness of our evil-logo by 36.51%?)

Impact! is a funny game because involves a large number of objects collding together in the game arena, it was even funnier when we tried the first version of the engine on the 360 and we looked at the framerate …
I was SO amused that I decided to code the engine again, from skratch, using a different data structure, completely throwing away the years spent at school for the sake of frames per second … but the game prototype is running really smoother now, so we have more precessing time for special effects, increasing DIT’s happynes by 34,15%.

In the meanwile Xevian is becoming a complete Guru in realtime rendering of planetary systems, celestial bodies and asteroids and DIT is writing an hollywood-production design document for Impact!, that will require the next 10 years of development to be completed, this because the project had to be really, really simple.
But we love him the same, bacause he just finished to upload another free “pack” into our downloads page. This pack, named “Stardust”, contains particles, animations, and other 2D stuff that we created to build the space arena of G … so, if you need stars, shields or explosions you may want to check it out!

Raven is in a secret misson in a secret country, so we can’t divulge any information about his current occupation, but we are confident that he will soon return with a luggage full of secrets that we will use for our evil plans of world domination.