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Author Topic: Project of the Month  (Read 2252 times)

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Project of the Month
« on: February 11, 2010, 11:35:16 pm »
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Project of the Month - January 2010

Surface




Forum Topic | Site Page

Developer: Mamoruanime
Language: BlitzMax
First Posted: November 25th, 2009
Last Update: February 9th, 2010


    Surface is another non-Zelda project which has emerged and prospered on ZFGC. Actually saying that makes it seem run-of-the-mill which it is not by all means. The project combines the styling of Cave Story with the gameplay of Megaman and Metroid. It is also coded in Blitzmax which while not totally uncommon here, it still is a rarity for a project made with that to have made it as far as Surface has.

    Previous Project of the Month winners were chosen by the staff, but from this one on all Project of the Month winners are decided by the community as a whole. And overall doing this has been a success. There were three projects which were nominated for the month and those are (with accepted vote totals):

1st: Surface by Mamoruanime (10 votes)
2nd: LoZ: Sword of Divination by MG-Zero (5 votes)
3rd: LoZ: Horn of Balance by Martijn dh (1 vote)


Voter Comments

Nomination
I nominate Surface. Besides it being somewhat the only game that has had any work done this month, it is also an incredibly cool looking game. The graphics are still tentative, but it show already some sweet animations, particle effects and physics. But best reason is that, although most work on the project was done in the programming and thus hard to show, Mammy has kept everyone promptly up to date on the progress.

One thing: Thumbs up for Surface  :P

Votes
I vote Surface for winner.
It will be a really fun game.
computer games are really cool.

Haiku~ also 3 sentences :p

I vote for surface,
since it is a cool guy, and
afraids of nothing.

I vote Surface for the kick-ass graphics and gameplay videos!

Voted for Surface
Cause I like the composer
Oops, I said too much

Surface, because progress has been ongoing and consistent since the minute the topic opened.

Also it's pretty.

I voted for Surface due it's consistent updates and all the features it's going to have. It looks like a lot of fun. =)

On ZFGC
cause Mamoruanime
made me vote surface

Honestly, I would've voted for the game I'm helping with (Horn of Balance), but progress has been a little too slow. I voted for Surface because it has been making some really awesome progress and it's looking to be a game with tons of potential.

Nonetheless, I'm very sure that HoB will get PotM some day in the future; it's a solid beta so far. Maybe next month. I'm sure Martijn understands; I'm just trying to vote fairly.

I voted for Surface. It's the most original and it seems like Mammy's really poured his heart into this one. :)


Recent Media

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58iZgsP8hM0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58iZgsP8hM0</a>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do1AALuh0t4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do1AALuh0t4</a>


Developer Q & A

Q. How did you come up with the idea of Surface? Does the name have any meaning yet?

A. Surface was based on a few story concepts I was working on. I wanted to change up the standard exploration mechanic of "Start on the surface and make your way to the center" by reversing it a bit. I like the idea of "crawling out from the depths" instead of digging into them.

Q. Is there anything in the game not made by you?

A. So far it's pretty much all me with the exception of the guiding eyes of Windy and DJvenom both critiquing and giving advice. It's been a considerable help in getting the project to where it needs to be. The music (which has yet to be added) is going to be the work of Surasshu.

Q. What games influence the style of the game in terms of art and gameplay?

A. For style inspiration, I'd have to say just about every retro styled indie game in the past 8 years. Normally I would say "Cave Story" inspired the game artistically, but that isn't entirely true. The determining factor for me making a game with scaled back graphics was the Trucker's Delight video by Flairs. The artistic presentation in that is pretty much my new driving force for anything Look at me, I'm invisible!

Gameplay is homage to classic games of the late 80s early 90s.

Q. When can we expect a demo?

A. Not sure. If I do get around to releasing any demos, it will be to show an entire beginning area to the game. I don't plan on releasing any demos before I've perfected my vision.

Q. How many thought processes did it take until you finally decided on Surface?

A. Well, I consider the game to be a melting pot of just about every 'mergable' idea I've had over the past few years. It was a matter of sacrificing individual projects for the sake of having one project I can remain interested in. There have been countless ideas prior to Surface, so I guess the easiest answer to this question is "countless" Look at me, I'm invisible!

Q. What were you working on prior to Surface?

A. Not too much. I don't own my own computer anymore, so I'm working with limited access. My side of development on NaviBlast temporarily ceased the moment my laptop died, so I was pretty much projectless until I could get a new PC. Thankfully, I was able to find a project to fill in the gaps that I can work on from any PC.

Q. What does it mean to you to have the Project of the Month spot?

A. More inspiration.

Q. Cool How will having the Project of the Month spot affect your project?

A. Honestly, it won't affect it in any general way outside of making me want to work on it more.

Q. Do you plan any mod-ability?

A. Well, I'm designing it with modders in mind. I've left things fairly easy to edit, however I'm not going to officially support game modification by making the tools for them. I am going to leave certain "in-game developer" systems in with locked access that I encourage modders to heck access to.

Q. Do you have plans for multiplayer?

A. I've coded the actor system to support it, however I'm not sure if I'm going to add it or not. If I do, I'll work in some form of Co-op. BlitzMax's multiplayer support isn't really the greatest though <_<...

Q. How experienced in BlitzMax are you?

A. Learnin' something new every day :p

Q. What other languages did you consider for this project?

A. Pretty much just Blitz. Blitzmax is one of the only IDE's that I could use anywhere, without installation.

Q. What made BlitzMax the right choice?

A. Portability, expandability, and speed.

Q. If this game reaches high popularity, will you port it over to a more used language such as the C family?

A. Probably not. Blitz offers me the option of building to Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. I don't think I would port it over to any other languages unless it needed to go onto a console.
« Last Edit: June 17, 2010, 07:01:17 am by 4Sword »
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