Developer's meeting #2

Yesterday it was a great day! Myself, Nooly and MarK met together, to discuss additional details for music and sound setup of Chaos Guns. In a nutshell - you will hear music only during menu, intro & outros. During the game, audio channels are going to be used exclusively for sound effects and environmental sounds. You can expect some extra samples announcing, when your character level up, find secret area and similar. I was personaly surprised, how many options regarding mixing sounds we have - but of course it costs some computing power as well, so we have to be very carefull. Unfortunately - I'm no musician at all, so can't really properly explain all advanced details. What I can say is, that MorpOS version of the game will use high quality MP3 music, while classic Amiga will use high quality XM ;). Nooly demonstrated on fly differences between formats and I have to say - I was personally really impressed by quality of output.

Singleplayer mode announced!

Mockup screenshot with actual ingame graphics, made by Tsak.

Hi guys, I think I've got some good news for most of you. Chaos Guns is primarily a multiplayer / party game. But as not everybody has enough fellow amigans around as we have, we decided to modify the concept of the game slightly. What you can expect is, that each character can now succesfully finish their own goal - at least. And with 12 characters to choose from, I think it is a nice portion of game accessible for single player. Also - while controlling only one guy, viewport will be expanded to full screen.

We are currently evaluating an idea about controlling the team of characters by one player. There are some options - switchting between characters (via keyboard shorcut), controlling them in each independent viewport or maybe we will make possible to "merge" characters into one, as traditional JRPG are doing this. I think, that at the end, player can select his own prefered way, allowing other players to join and leave the game anytime during game session. But again - this will be investigated further, to deliver best gaming experience possible.

Full beauty of Chaos Guns is hidden within cooperation of four characters - so the main storyline or side quests  will be revealed only partialy, when you control less then 4 characters. As controlling 4 guys with one joystick might be cumbersome, we have to figure out ideal settings first - it will be clarified later.

Important notice - in the demoversion there will be no fullscreen mode and you have to have at least two characters, to finish it. Announcment above is only for full version of the game.

I hope that this is exciting news for you, feel free to share and post comments.

Character introduction - Draina

Coming from long line of cybernetics mages, Draina is a perfectly designed all-purpose support android. She might be not the most powerful on the  battlefield, however if you are looking for backup,she is not a bad choice. While she is not unique among her kind - she is basicaly a soldier from a small  cloned army - her task is superb. Because her creators already have to cutting edge technology, Draina was selected to gather the  most advanced alien technology, which could push the evolution of advanced replicants forward. While Draina explores the  known universe, she discovers a chemical trail ofan  abandoned ship. And therefore one day, she descends to the surface of the  planet N-6981, to find out remains of... something. And she doesn't know yet, what she is to become a part of. Her spaceship just landed.

World creating process

Chaos Guns are set in a vast world on a distant planet, but it is not a secret, that I took inspiration from real enviroment of the planet Earth. Whole game can be divided in two parts - countryside and dungeons. To give you an idea, how designing and creating process look like, I have decided to write a short article. Let's start with dungeons.

Dungeons are designed manually. It all starts on the paper - I have to draw overall design, define size, number of floors, doors, walls etc. For each of seven dungeons I have already a list of puzzles and other details prepared in the main design document, so on the paper I'm preparing boundaries. When I'm happy with the draft, I start to implement objects and also I have to make decision of wall types and floor types. At the end, I have a list of objects, including sizes. This list then goes to our online Google Docs table, so the guys responsible for graphics can start to do their magic. This is how one floor of demo dungeon looks like on paper (it's not final version by the way):

Character introduction - Rachael

Rachael was born on the planet of New Europe to parents of political power, 32 years ago. Her parents, both senators of the old republic, introduced her early to the intrigue of the inner cirlces of political power. Over her formative years exposure to the intrigues and plottings of the political warped  her morality and view of life. As with all things times changed and the movement of the malfeasant and foul lawmakers forced the imprisonment and eventual execution of her parents. What was little known even to those at the very top was the level of corruption shown by her parents was beyond that of even the most nefarious powerbrokers of the time. Consequently it was near impossible to accuse or hold them in judgement.

Paypal donations

Hi guys,
we have decided that now it is right time to have the possibility to accept your kind donations. You should see a Donate button below and also on the right side of this blog. We really appreciate any support, as it will motivate us with development I.E buying more beer etc ;). 

Preorders will be opened after we release a demo, which we are working intensively on.

Thank you very much to all of you!

Video update #2

After two months of hard work since last video update, I'm proud to present current status of the development. We are still finalising graphics, sounds, some smaller elements are still missing... but generaly speaking - we made a huge progress!

I have used WinUAE to capture video in full speed, on real Amiga with Blizzard 1260 it has around 20-25 fps, but some optimisation is still needed before demo release. Feel free to post comments!