Thursday, February 28, 2013

BugPlanet (Sneak Peek)

This is a game that I've been working on for quite some time and have quite literally lost quite a bit of sleep working on it.  It's my 2nd bullet hell shooter, Bug Planet!  Using a more enhanced engine used to create RyuAwai (speaking of which, I haven't blogged about this yet), Bug Planet aims to be a challenging shmup/bullet hell shooter pushing the user to his/her greatest potential under an ever increasing difficulty!  The longer you stay alive, the harder it gets!

Story: "On a newly discovered binary Earth-like planet in another galaxy, you are an elite spacecraft pilot assigned a mission to accompany the team of scientists hired to investigate the newly discovered planet and determine if the planet is hospitable for human colonization.  Very soon after your arrival, you are attacked by a swarm of hostile giant insects who assume you and all other humans as a threat!  It's time to hop in your ship of choice: one with great maneuverability or the other with heavy artillery!  You, and you alone are the only hope (because the military didn't want to send backup)! Choose quickly, before you and your crew are destroyed!"

I started putting this project together in late November of last year (2012) but at the moment I was busy with other things and other game projects.  Now I've been putting the majority of my development time into this game to get it working in a more stable state.  Most of the game's mechanics and features are ready and working.  It still has some fine tuning and additional things to be added before being released.  All of the required resources have been gathered except sound effects.  It's not easy finding the right sound effects for a particular game genre sometimes.  I'm still improving my sound editing skills as I go... -_-

There are a handful of extra features I've been working on.  I won't say what they all are (just in case I see the need to drop any number of them and avoid disappointments , but one troublesome feature to add to MacOSX apps is force-feedback.  Unlike Windows via DirectInput or XInput for 360 controllers, or even iPhone's rumble feature, MacOSX does not have a straight forward means of implementing force feedback or any means of joystick support.  It can be done, but it isn't very easy and the process is fairly long and requires a large amount of code.  Sure, I could always use SDL 2.0 for both, but not only is SDL 2.0 not yet stable, but using it actually broke BugPlanet completely.  Therefore, I'll be setting out on my own to write my own code to implement this feature.  Joystick support is already added and works well with my 360 gamepad (after installing the right driver, of course).

Working on this game has been a good experience, but I hope it doesn't resemble Bug Princess too much.  When I started writing this game, I did not have Bug Princess in mind at all, but it still slowly but surely grew into a game that started resembling it.  Now, I hope I don't piss off any Cave employees ^^;

Release Date: Soon, but when it's ready!

Target Platform(s): iOS, MacOSX (obviously) and Windows.  Maybe more.

Screen shots (beta):


If games like this interest you, please share.  Your opinions count! ^_^

Shogun.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Metal Skull



Metal Skull: Shogun3D's next 16-bit style Sci-Fi thriller guaranteed to leave you absolutely fascinated.  Blow  your enemies away, or be blown away yourself.  Either way, you'll love it!

Coming soon to a PC, Mac, and maybe even an Xbox near you!  Be prepared...

Shogun!

Super Milk Chan!

A game that was once thought to be lost forever... has now been recovered and greatly improved.  Now it's finally making it's way to the App Store!

I've been spending much of my time perfecting this iOS game that I thought would never be completed after my first Macbook Pro was stolen my a methadone addict.  Fortunately, I did remember that I backed up the source code somewhere and have been building upon it ever since!  I initially wrote this game to test the waters of iOS app development by first writing the game for windows and then porting it to iOS.  It was a messy, but awesome learning experience.

"What is Super Milk Chan?"  It's an anime show that originally aired in 1998 starring a spoiled and sometimes greedy 5 year old heroine named Super Milk Chan living in her house with her robot maid Tetsuko, and her pet Hanage.  Milk Chan receives her orders from the President (of everything), and then goes on some wacky adventure filled with goofy and sometimes crude humor.  Don't worry, the game is family friendly!

The game is nearly complete and just requires a bit more testing and tweaking before being released on the App Store no later than the end of this month.  It has a bit of a fast pace to it, but the controls should be easy to grasp.  The objective is to kill the invading blob monsters with your shurikens while collecting various pickups (i.e. food, valuable items, jewelry and money).  Take a look at the screen shots below:





After releasing this app, I plan on making an update for a second "episode" based on one of the anime's actual episodes (of course I'm not going to tell you what it is, it's a surprise).  So look for Super Milk Chan hitting the App Store very soon, and as always, be honest with your critique.  Be it positive or negative, it's always welcome! :)

Shogun!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Welcome to Shogun3D's blog

Hi there reader, welcome to Shogun3D's company blog.  The purpose of this blog is to keep people informed of Shogun3D's latest developments, discoveries, random on-topic tid-bits and such as consistently and as frequently as possible, while allowing followers to voice their feedback, opinions and critique (all of which are greatly appreciated).  Up until fairly recently, I never did understand the importance of having a blog for your company.  These days, it's always good to have an method to post news updates about your upcoming game projects and releases while keeping things as interactive as possible.  I'm sure it would please the fans greatly knowing that the company owner is willing to answer their questions directly while considering all forms of feedback personally.

1. What is Shogun3D?
This company arose out of the interest of creating fascinating game content for a wide variety of users and platforms while keeping the "fun and creative" element while giving users the power to influence parts of the game's development process!  Shogun3D currently has 5 games being actively developed on a daily basis.  Although only one of these games has been unveiled, they all promise not to disappoint when the surface!  For logical reasons, Shogun3D will not announce any titles until they are proven to be both working and feasible concepts.  Those concepts that aren't will be canned without controversy.

Now, one that Shogun3D is NOT, is some random indie developer who just learned C++ or C# last week with a game idea hoping to "make it big" off one single iPhone game and retire after making millions.  Shogun3D's vision and expectations are more realistic than that.  This company has it's own marketing strategy, sales projections and business plan with resources to continue into the future.  Targeting one platform with one "run-of-the-mill" game is not likely to succeed, therefore, it's logical to expand the horizon with multiple and well-executed multi-platform games.

2. What types of games will Shogun3D make?
This is difficult to sum up in one sentence or small statement.  Shogun3D prefers to build 2D and 3D games of all types while not catering to one specific crowd.  Currently, Shogun3D's games consist of 3 arcade-style games, 1 puzzle and 1 3D simulation.  Games that anyone, regardless of age, gender, etc. can pick up  and play with a minimal learning curve.

There's no plan to create some run-of-the-mill multiplayer FPS with the intention to be the next Halo, Killzone, or Unreal Tournament killer.  Shogun3D stays away from the more "saturated" game genres because by statistics, those games are likely to be failures that are superseded by larger companies.  In order to build a successful track record, it's best to make smart business and marketing decisions and avoid common and unfortunate mistakes made by many startups.

In short, Shogun3D prefers to target the casual as well as the more serious gamer, but while making logical decisions as to what genre to pursue.

3. What platforms will Shogun3D's games be available for?
Shogun3D's games will be developed for Windows, Mac OSX, and various mobile platforms such as iOS and Android.  Console distribution methods such as Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network will be considered in the future for specific games.  Steam is also a distribution model of interest, for all of you Steam fans out there!

4. When do you plan on releasing your games?
Well, when they're ready, you'll know.  Release dates will be confirmed and announced once the proper preparations are made.  Nothing will be released without prior warning or previews.

At the moment, it's a bit to early to start estimating release dates.  They could surface a month or two from now, to even 6 months to a year.  Even though Shogun3D has working concepts, it's still a bit too early to tell.

5. Where is Shogun3D located?
Shogun3D's location is currently in downtown Seattle, WA, USA.  The exact location will not be revealed except to those with serious inquiries.

I'll go ahead and leave it here for now.  Right now, I have many things besides source code to write.  Thanks for reading.  Be sure to subscribe and leave comments.

Shogun.