We are pleased to announce that we are working on hosting Alien Antix at our studio’s website which can be found at plutoniumpixelproductions.com.  We will make another post once the build has been posted and is ready for download.

For Alpha, there are a ton of improvements since our last post on the state of the game!

On the art side of things:  For the player, we have more polished animations and textures, and the player is now lit via a three-point lighting system.  The first of our enemies, the G-Runt, is featuring a new model as well as new textures and animations.  We have also added the rest of our enemies into the game which include the G-Rammar, the G-Oober, and King Izzy.  Our first level has had another layer of polish added to it and it’s really looking fantastic.  Featuring new geometry, textures and plenty of ground breakups to bring things to life, the game is certainly easy on the eyes.

For new game features: We have overhauled the main menu and added loading screens for longer transitions.  Our combat system has now been fully implemented and both attacks, the Jump Boom and Side Bam, are fully functional.  Probably the biggest addition to the game is the gravity platforms!  They are in and not only working with transitions from basic terrain and platforms, but they are working with each other as well.  We have also changed crystal collection so that it is less tedious by having the crystals come to you!  Finally, we have added in plenty of effects and sounds to give the player plenty of feedback for their actions and what’s happening in the world around them.  (On a side note: Custscenes have been temporarily removed since we spent our time on higher priority features.)

We are in a great place right now.  Our game looks great and just keeps getting better.  We’re motivated to keep working to improve the game and making it as good as it can be before the completion of our project.  We’ll check back in with you all after Beta.  Thanks for keeping up with us!

Since PoC, we have changed so much!  On the art side of things, we have integrated a new and greatly improved level, a new model for the G-Runt, and have the first of our gravity platforms.  We also have implemented all new animations for our player.  In terms of gameplay, we have the first of our attacks implemented which means the beginnings of combat are now in the game!  Our movement system has been overhauled, the camera has been greatly improved, and crystals collection will now give the player an extra life once they have collected enough.

The game has been getting positive feedback from persons outside the team who play it and it’s great inspiration for us to keep improving the game.  We are certainly excited about the game as it exists now and are definitely looking forward to Feature Fragment II and Alpha so we can show off our progress once again.

To stray from our game a little, I’d like to congratulate Limitless Entertainment on their milestone as well.  Their game, Tension Rising, is looking good too and it’s great to see their progress.

Thank you for stopping by, and thanks for your interest in Alien Antix!

Second, I’d like to congratulate Limitless Entertainment on what I would consider to be a very successful PoC of Tension Rising. I was happy to get a chance to play, if only for a few minutes, and thoroughly enjoyed my experience.

Two days ago was our Proof of Concept expo. Generally speaking, I’m very pleased with the build we were able to produce for that milestone. In terms of our core gameplay, we were able to get a great deal of that in. In fact, we were able to get a very solid pass at all of the core player movement into the build, which is outstanding. A lotl of thanks goes to Nate for having so much technology in place as we moved into development which allowed us to really start focusing on gameplay early.

I hope to be able to create a video of Alien Antix and get it posted for everyone to see within a few days.

This past month has had a whole new set of challenges for us to overcome as a team. While it was difficult at the time, I feel that reworking our technical document on a crunched schedule may have been the best thing for our team. This happened after our initial turn-in for our technical document was unsatisfactory. It seemed, to me, to be a great reality check to us all that helped to refocus our efforts on creating the best possible game we can. Another issue that we have seen come up this month is individuals becoming at odds with each other. While differing opinions is generally a good thing in terms of getting new ideas out, sometimes those two opinions may cause conflict between two parties that requires outsiders to solve. Thankfully, these are disputes that we have been able to identify, address, and resolve in as timely a fashion as we could muster. I feel our ability to get past these issues is a testament to our dedication to our end goal and keeping a focus on our game.

Moving out of PoC, we are eager to implement more features into our game as well as polish and tweak features currently implemented. I am encouraged by what we have been able to achieve to this point and I hope that the trend continues into Feature Fragment I and through the completion of Alien Antix.