Imperial Nostalgia - Retro Arcade Pack

My current paying gig is an RPG (using Cocos2d, not Unity) so I wanted something a little lighter weight for my next personal product. The talk here on the forums a while back about old Atari games had me a bit nostalgic so I decided that a collection of them, similar to what Pangea did a few years back, would be a great project.

I've got two of the four planned games finished. I probably should have posted earlier, so everyone could have followed along with the development of those, but working on two projects kinda zaps forum posting time down to a minimal.

The first game is a top down, time-trial racer. Atari fans will probably recognize the inspiration. Anyone who isn't ancient like me probably won't. Haha.





The other game is an asteroid mining game. You have to blast apart the asteroids to reveal minerals that you collect for points. There are three different ships with slightly different handling and different defenses. There is also a two player mode with versus and co-op options.




Right now both of the games are using Lux shaders. Because I have an asset on the asset store, I do have temporary access to Unity 5, but I have no idea what will be free and what won't when it is released so I didn't spend too much time trying to convert the project over. I did pop on some bloom and soft shadows though. I had never been exposed to the goodness of Unity Pro, so now I'm hoping to raise enough money to purchase it before the game is released, because after seeing the Pro-ified version, the free version just doesn't look good enough! ;-)

I am having a go at my own direct early access sales, but I'm not sure what the best way is for further funding. Right now I'm pricing the early access according to the amount of games that are playable, so people don't pay for something they aren't getting. I'm thinking of maybe doing a Kickstarter, but I don't have a lot of faith in those actually getting funded, even for the $1500 or so I'd need for a Unity Pro license. A newer computer would also be nice. My poor 5 year old computer with the 7 year old graphics card does not like those Lux shaders! I was counting frames per minute on the Unigine Heaven benchmark. haha. I had to record the videos at 720p to get an acceptable frame rate. Ooh, I forgot the videos.

I'm apparently really bad at making trailer videos. The quality didn't turn out like I wanted, and the footage doesn't seem to capture the fun of the games. But here they are anyhow for anyone interested:

Since this is my first desktop game, I'm also not sure of what distribution route to look into. I feel like a more casual games such as this would do better on the Mac app store than a place like Steam, and is guaranteed to get on the store whereas something like this might not even make it onto Steam, but then I leave Windows and Linux users out of my customer pool. Plus, I can't afford to give $100 to each of them and my iOS developer license doesn't cover Mac apps. I guess I still have a few weeks to figure it out though.

Okay, I'm done rambling now. I'll just leave the link to the indiedb page here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/imperial-nostalgia

 

Looks awesome! The asteroid mining game sounds cool. The concept reminds me of Sinistar. I will likely buy your game upon release if you put it on Desura. I used to support Steam and the game devs using it way back before it was popular. Once it became very popular and everyone started using it I knew it was time for me to leave and find another platform to support. Just a personal quirk of mine. So yeah anyway consider Desura in your distribution plans.

EDIT: Ah... never mind man. I missed the bit about the Early Access and you selling it directly. That is even better. Never understand why so few game devs do this these days via PayPal. Anyway, I just got it.

Now back to work on my own game and I will be sure to try these two out later!

 

I never played Sinistar, so I don't know how similar they are. I didn't want just a straight Asteroids clone though. Partly because I think there are enough of them out there (many for free) and partly because I want some part of me in these games and not just straight clones. The mineral pick ups change the dynamic nicely I think and reduces the button smasher feel. I also feel like they'll add tension to multiplayer (or increase the team work for Co-Op). I don't have any one here to play with so all my multiplayer tests have been me awkwardly trying to control two ships by switching between the gamepad and the keyboard. That's enough to make sure everything works as expected, but doesn't really let me enjoy the game as it was meant to be enjoyed. It takes a while to develop the skill to pick up those minerals with the momentum of the ship acting against you though. I think I've tweaked the controls to an acceptable rate, but even with dodgier controls I had gotten pretty good at putting the ship where I wanted.

Thanks for the purchase! Yeah, Sendowl makes it really easy to accept payments, so I don't know why more people don't. I'm also using E-Junkie for other things, but they are more limited.

 

I just tried them out and wanted to let you know both games worked fine. No problems at all. And very glad to see you supported the arrow keys in addition to WASD and game pads! I think you did a great job on these. Simple retro style games and both are very well done! I thought I'd like the Asteroids game the best but I like the racing game just as much or more. That is surprising. You definitely have a unique style that retro gamers should appreciate.

 

That's awesome to hear. I was worried that the racing game wouldn't really be as enjoyable as the others. I'm still a bit nervous that the games are a little too retro. Even GOG with its old games lineage seems to be more early 90s than early 80s. Hopefully it can find an audience though. Maybe there not being a lot of games out there that go this far back will be more of an advantage than a disadvantage. Particularly if I can drive enough 30-40 somethings to a Kickstarter page.

I've never particularly liked WASD, so I definitely wanted the arrow keys in there.

I'd like to have something besides a Geforce 9400m to test these things on. I thought depth of field would look nice when crossing the bridge in Open Wheel Racing, so I added it with the copy of Unity 5 they sent me. But I'm pretty sure I heard my computer cussing at me when I tried to run it! haha. It became a slideshow. I'm still not sure I'll be able to afford Pro but I should probably play around with it a bit more before 5.0 is released and the temporary license expires. Just to have a feel for what is possible. Enlighten really seems to bring out the colors in the racing game and bloom looks really nice on the diamond plating at the rear of the cars.

 

In between the debate over the splash screen, I've updated the two finished games to use Unity 5. I wasn't thinking when I linked the images in my original post to the ones on my website, so they'll be replaced with the new ones now. I'd have preferred it if people could make comparisons. But I don't think their will be too many more comparison shots, so I don't guess it's a big deal.

I do want to talk about a couple of the screenshots, so apologies if the above blunder results in duplicates.



This was the first use that I really wanted to make out of the previously only pro features. In addition to the obvious soft shadows, I added a bit of bloom to make the diamond plating on the rear of the cars pop. I think I still may need to adjust the bloom and some materials a little. I like the way it looks on the cars, but the bridges with the metal railings bloom a bit more than I'd like, even after adjusting the roughness of their material as much as I dared.



Here is a depth of field effect added to the overpass. In the still shot, it looks a little more intense than I'd like. But when you are zooming across the bridge at speed, it looks about right.



Asteroid Miner benefited less from the new features. All of the lights now have soft shadows, as opposed to just the one directional light having hard shadows. And a bit of bloom on the gems makes them twinkle a bit as they rotate around.

I've decided that the next game in the four pack will be a Q-Bert-esque game named Launchpad Leap. I've got some of the models done already, and will hopefully have some screenshots soon.

The updated Unity 5 graphics will make it into the early access build whenever Launchpad Leap does. I'd like to say that'd be around 2 weeks or so, but I've got some catching up to do on this RPG I'm doing for a client. There won't be a video this time around. My GeForce 9400M doesn't really like the bloom and depth of field effects and I don't want to have to turn the quality down to get a 720 video up to 30fps.

 

Here are the first screenshots of Launchpad Leap, the third game in the pack. As I said in the previous post, it is a Q-Bert-esque game. You'll need to jump out of your rocket and turn all the blocks a certain color before you can return to your rocket and blast off.



This is the first game based on a 2d game that was mimicking a 3d game, so the camera is straight on to the action in this one. That will allow me a lot more leeway to create a set of environments. The shot above shows the base of the launchpad as it will always appear in the game. The shot below shows the launch tower extending down below the base, which will be masked by the floor or ground in the actual game.



This is one of the two player modes for the game. In this mode, you'll compete with a friend to be the first one to turn all the blocks the correct color and blast off in your rocket. There's also a two-player cooperative mode where you share the same game board and work together to get all the buttons pressed and power up your rockets. There are still two rockets though, so each player will have his or her own starting and return place. A screenshot for that can be seen below.



There are 8 different game boards, three different block shapes, two textures for each block shape and a number of randomized locations for the rockets and the empty blocks, so there should be a lot of variety. I'm hoping to create 6 different background environments to further add to the variety, similar to the way Asteroid Miner did.

 

Looks awesome! The first game board looks like a bunch of drums. Might be kind of cool as the player jumps around to hear some snare or other drum sounds.

 

Awesome modern creations on some retro concepts HemiMG. I can't comment on launchpad because I never played the original, but I really like the pleasing aesthetic improvements in the racer and the asteroid-like game. Not over the top in any way - just perfect in the visual quality increase.
Very nice.

 

Thanks guys. I'm actually a bit concerned that the graphics for Launchpad Leap are shaping up to look radically better than the other ones. It's not really intentional or any change in my style, but having a camera angle that isn't straight on makes everything look tons more realistic. I briefly thought of just using a flat background, but I don't want to dumb down one of them just to match the look of the others. And the others don't really use flat backgrounds, just flat camera angles. Besides, I don't think super snazzy graphics will turn off any customers, but that one game looking beautiful might bring in a few extras.

I should have some screenshots up in a couple of days. I haven't gotten much work done on the scenery because I was busy working on a fur shader for the main characters. I have to try really hard to work within my limited character design skills and still avoid a block with legs so it doesn't look too much like QBert. I'm thinking of going for the feel of Orbity from the Jetsons minus the springy legs. That should keep me safely away from mimicking that orange fellow too much while still allowing for a simple to model and animate character.

 

Hey HemiMG, went to your site and the indiedb site looking for demos of the asteroid and the racing game for my son to play and I couldn't find the link. He was really interested in the asteroid game.
If I missed it just let me know.
- also QBert isn't a terribly hard character to alter since he wasn't much more than a circle with stumps for legs and a snout.
If you only need a couple sprite states or semi-simple 3D model, drop me a PM with your concept and I could work something up for you in a couple hours.

 

There isn't a demo yet, but I'm going to put one up soon. I want people to be able to play it when I put it on Steam Greenlight. I haven't quite decided how to limit the demo for the asteroid game though. The car game is easy because I can just allow one or two tracks. The asteroid game has different locations, but they are for appearance only. I guess I can limit it to a certain number of waves of asteroids. I always find demos tricky because if you limit it too much people complain, but if you don't limit it enough there's no need for them to purchase.

I was half joking about the QBert model. Every early idea I came up with just happened to look a lot like QBert. Once he is in your head, it is hard to get him out. haha. I think my latest idea is sufficiently different. I'll get around to modeling them soon.

 

Agree 100% about demo lengths. I think waves is acceptable, or timed as long as you let the player know in advance.
Like "timed 20 minute demo, don't answer the phone or go #2"!

I giggled slightly too when you mentioned QBert because I wasted a lot of quarters on that easy to play, difficult to control game!

I'll look for an update when you do. I showed him an original asteroid remake last night. I feel a little ashamed I've never shown him that before. Got me thinking what other classics he is missing out on.

 

I think I'll go with wave limits for the asteroid game and something similar for Launchpad Leap and the as of yet unstarted maze game. Giving people a feel for the gameplay should be enough for them to decide if they want to purchase. It isn't like there's some complex storyline or anything that people need to evaluate.

Most of the time since the last update has been on getting the fur shader done and uploaded to the asset store. Hopefully that will help fund the game a little as well. I haven't had a chance to model my characters and try it out on them yet, but I'm pretty excited about what the height map and separate skin texture features will allow me to do with them with regards to styling their fur to give each character a unique look without having to change the base model too much.

I did just finish up the first world for Launchpad Leap. As I mentioned earlier, the graphic style looks different just as a side effect of having more perspective in the view. Depth of Field and high quality water pretty much kill my 9400M graphics card, so I've attached those to the "Fantastic" setting. But I'm sure that people with cards that get better than 14 frames per minute on the Unigine Heaven benchmark will be able to run it with no problem. I've got a new gig coming up that should allow me to buy a cheap laptop with a more modern card so I can get a better idea of what modern low end machines are capable of. My card drops to 20fps with just the empty cornell box from my fur shader demo scene in it. I'm pretty sure 6 polygons and albedo only PBR textures isn't enough to stress most cards modern that much.

In addition to the obvious changes, I also added a light inside the rocket. I felt that it was getting a little lost in the scene and wanted the floor to be a bit more defined. I'm figuring on having two water levels and two terrain levels.

 

I see your point on the rocket getting a little lost. May want to consider a small hose or something blowing a small particle/sprite of fumes/exhaust, and maybe a couple little blinking lights. Just a couple visual extras that say "hey - see me".

 

Yeah, when you finish the level and take off I plan on having particles for the exhaust. Hopefully I can make it work right with the way they'll need to collide with the platform before it gets clear of it. Once those are in I'll probably want some kind of resting exhaust or something to help set the rocket in the scene and make an easier transition to the actual launch.