Svenn's death

SkjellyJelly idle

Troll roar and idle

UmberHulk confused and death

Kobold roar and death

Minotaur idle and death

And a few characters we haven’t shown in the game yet… Leif the Thief, and old rival who tries to make off with Svenn’s gold:

Leif idle and vanish

Bjorn the Bjounger, a lad who follows Svenn into the Maze and sells him supplies:

Bjorn idle

Yngrid the Ynsolent, a damsel with a mysterious past who may or may not be in danger:

Yngrid idle

And another new monster, the Stone Golem:

Golem idle

Enjoy!

The deadline for the IGF – the Independent Games Festival – is a week away, and then the other competition we are excited about, on IndiePub.com, is at the end of the month. So we’ve been working non-stop to get a build out for that. I’m really excited about the new build: It’s got a nice smooth progression, none of this throw-everything-we-have-into-every-level stuff. Instead, it walks you through it gradually, so that each new level adds just one new thing or trick or weapon or skill. It keeps the forward momentum going at a nice pace. My friend Joe, who is a designer at Paragon on ‘City of Heroes,’ mentioned getting sucked into the “Just one more level, I want to see what’s added in this one” mode, which is exactly what we were shooting for! How many levels do we have? A full 24! 7 tile-sets, 6 monsters, 2 traps, one power-up, 4 weapons, and a whole mess of dialogue! There’s still a lot to do for the final game, but I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and how well it holds together.

(Oh, and wait ’til you hear all the new music that Nick’s been working on. It just rocks! (In a Nordic folksy kind of way, of course.))

Here is a loading screen for going between levels:

To share some process with you, here is some line art for the Game Over screen if you are defeated by Yngvarr or one of his many minions:

…And here’s the final painting done from the line art:

Game over, man, game over!

Here are some screenshots of the latest version:

tutorial level

level 01

level 02

endless level

RoboDojoLogo

… and now we have a spiffy logo to insert into the beginning of our game. (Our sound company, Output Audio, has one, so we had to keep up.)

I start with a particle spray in Max (‘though you can use whatever 3D app you want.) Here I’ve made the particle system render with spheres and set the lighting to be high and centered. I export the entire animation out as separate frames with an alpha channel and bring them into Photoshop to compose this animated GIF:

fight cloud - 3D render

In Photoshop, I come up with an action to turn the sprite closer to the colors that I want. Here I took every frame, adjusted the levels, and multiplied by a yellow-tan color.

fight cloud - processed once

I take that animation and save it off as an animated GIF, mapping down to 4 colors. Here’s the GIF with the very limited palette:

fight cloud - mapped to 3 or 4 colors

Lastly, I re-import that file back into Photoshop and hand-paint the rest. I add a single pixel-outline, I adjust the colors more, and I make it look all nice. The clean-up can be a tad tedious… but it beats animating the entire thing by hand!

fight cloud - cleaned up

This isn’t the final sprite for the game: In this instance I’ll layer other puffs and things on top of it. But it does show my process for getting 3D particles to fit the style of the game.

Here is our arch-villain, Yngvarr, along with a bunch of face doodles that I went through before ending up with the final version of him in color in the upper left.

Anyhow, hope you like. Thanks for dropping by to see what we’re up to!

Finally, our development blog for the game MageMaze is up and running!

MageMaze is a small indie iPhone game developed by Kristof Minnaert and Michael Dashow, two veterans in the game industry who have joined forces to create a unique game with the emphasis on fun gameplay using traditional sprite-art techniques. As we are both huge lovers of the sprite games of yore, we decided it was time for us to have a go at it ourselves!

Turned-based strategy is the core of MageMaze’s gameplay. You’ll need to think strategically to navigate the maze… but don’t take too long, as the monsters won’t hold off forever. So stay on your toes! The wrong move can result in a painful death, whereas the right move could bring you fame and glory… or at the very least, more funny dialogue and advancement into deeper levels of the catacombs.

This blog is to be our main development communication channel towards you delightful people who want to know more about our brave speech-impaired hero Svenn the Svaliant, his vile arch-nemesis Yngvarr the Ynvoker, and what comes to play when developing a game for a device such as the iPhone using Unity3D.

Keep checking this blog for updates on Art, Code, Design and much more!

And in the meanwhile, you can just keep playing MageMaze on the almighty intarwebz! (Click the image)