Hey TA'ers - this is se7en from h.grenade games and I thought I would drop some new info on the progress of the game and open up the lines of communication in my last few weeks of development and let everyone share their $.02. I wish I could say that things were moving quicker, but I am only one guy. I work pretty much 12+hrs per day on this game and have since Nov. Does that mean it's going to be the best thing since the wheel? Probably not. Will it sell as well as iShoot that was done in 6 weeks, maybe not. But, at least you know I have put my blood + sweat into cs.one because it is the kind of shooter that I have always wanted to play. I don't like to compromise and I think that too many iPhone games just don't push the capabilities of the device. Instead they design around it or rely on gimmicks often letting the device dictate what they produce. Trying to push the envelope is seriously challenging, but worth the effort in the long run. The guys at Firemint have absolutely blown everyone's minds. They could have been done 6 months ago if they wanted to be as lame as most of the existing racing games in the app store. Lousy framerates, bad controls schemes, etc. But they pushed and I think the will be well paid for thier effort. iPhone dev feels a lot like the PS2 when it first came out. The games were fun at first because it was new, but look at the difference in year 2 and 3 titles. They don't even look like the same hardware. So anyway, here a bunch of screen grabs from the iPod Touch of the close to final UI. I have been working on a full online connected profile system with career stat tracking and leaderboards. Additionally, there will be 3 difficulty levels that have to be unlocked in sequence and 36 achievements. You can see the new pause menu where you can set your ship acceleration, rotation and aim damping in game. I personally hate when the options are in the main menu because it takes for ever to fine tune the experience to your personal preferences. Set something, go try it, quit and change it. Over and over and over, etc. In the next few weeks I will be switching to a sprite based system for the enemies because right now more than 5 or 6 starts to really tax the iPhone 3G. The enemies look cool rotating in 3D space but it is much more fun when 15 enemies can be chasing you down especially as the game advances. If you guys have any feedback or questions I will do my best to answer them. se7en
I would sell this to ngmoco. but Chillingo already has it. Well, I am REALLY looking forward to this. Thanks!!
Holy ****ing shit. (yeah I might get banned but I don't care). That is purely insane! I simply can't wait!
Wow! Man, you sound EXACTLY like me. I'm a one (2 with the help of a friend) man developer team. I'm also putting everything I've got into developing the game I've always wanted to play. I'm also spending the time to push the hardware as far as I can make it go. And it is producing results exactly as you mentioned with the PS2. SciFly1 looked okay for it's time, but I never could have imagined SciFly II's graphics were remotely possible at the time. I've currently been up for 31 hours implementing interleaved arrays into my engine instead of VBOs. I'm about to crash for tonight, but some time I'd really enjoy talking with you. Good luck on your game, man! The impact of the 3D main menu is fantastic. Sending PM.
Shay!!! Glad to hear from you. Can't wait for CS.ONE. It's going to be awesome. I've been watching what I spend in case it pops up on the app store one day.
31 hours to implement interleaved arrays? I'm assuming you're talking about landscape and building rendering here. ouch man! ever thought of outsourcing some code? se7en: everyone is comparing cs.one to Rez in their heads. nothing beats putting the 5th level of Rez on the highest volume you can physically handle (past where it gives you a headache) and playing it with some real skill to make beautiful music. it turns into a surreal trippy synaesthetic journey. will cs.one be capable of that? your recent video looked promising, but then there were all these silent parts, and some of the music was a bit repetitive...
Sparks - Haha yeah funny you mention ngmoco... but I shouldn't say more : ) Lets just say that Chris at Chillingo has been one of the coolest guys I have ever met. He keeps me going emotionally when I am ready to give up and always has great feedback. That's what I wanted in a publisher is a relationship based on friendship and mutual respect. Beside a publishers name will help sell the title but it isn't a guarantee. I still have to make a game that doesn't suck : ) arta -Sparks nailed it ; ) You can find more info around this site and on my site or on Chillingo's for that matter. ktfright, spamboy, Haephestos, The Bat Outta Hell, yourofl10 - Thanks dudez Im glad that you like it so far! You won't be disappointed when you get to play it. jshmrsn - Damn dude the graphics look so much better in vII. Keep up the great work. le'deuche123 - Haha. Did you notice your name in the screenshots? No. 3 on the leaderboard : ) writingsama - Good a tough question! I have been trying to get as much of the "interactive music" experience as possible into each build. Two bugs in the engine have stopped the progress so far. A major memory leak and problems with audio play back on the device. A fix is on its way so I will be able to warp the sound on longer compressed .mp3 files very soon. Right now I am limited to .aif files and they are huge so I had to create a system that would sync and alternate the looped files. The overall goal is for the music to progress as you advance and then things that you do in the game will effect the audio track that plays and the sound effects set. I cannot get to the level of audio sync that Rez yet. But I am trying to get as much out of it as I can. I love to sit and chill with any level from Rez. I have a pair of Astro Gaming headphones and it is simply amazing. Sadly I cannot get past that big running guy in level 4 yet. He keeps stepping on me from behind. wtf! haha
Off-topic but anything to help you experience the rest of Rez (lost level is great, too). A part of the robot will be glowing as he charges at you (remember you can swivel your camera to always face him), destroy those glowing parts (you don't have to load up 10 lock-ons, just spam your laser all over the colored area) and he'll back off. He was easily the hardest boss for me until I figured that one simple thing out. I'm very much looking forward to this game.
Benegesserit - Thanks I will try spinning the camera around. I always use the laser spam in crazy spots : ) That tunnel is so disorienting its really hard to see what you are supposed to be shooting!
Holy crap I just noticed!!! That's too freaking funny!!! It's a sign.....that I'm meant for Circuit Strike greatness
off-topic also. if you haven't played the 5th level, you haven't experienced the real joy of Rez. the others pale in comparison...I developed a specific way of playing it so that I had just the right upgrades to have the right instrument at the right time (I had to purposfully avoid a lot of things), and enjoyed freestyling somewhat...sure the only variations you can do are rythm and melody-based-on-combo-number, but there's a lot of potential there if you get really into it. I can play 12 instruments so I got really into it I remember that I would use the clinks of a lock-on to time/choose melodies instead of on-screen cues. little details like that are important to the experience. it was awesome. le sigh. I miss my hands. you owe it to yourself, just as inspiration even! to BEAT that 4th level boss and get the 5th level! btw I played it on the Dreamcast...no idea if the xbox one is the same anyway, as for mp3 files, I'd go with AAC. decoding them is alot easier and less computationally expensive than mp3 - basically just an iDCT, as opposed to iDCT + filterbanks. Encode your audio at a constant bitrate, then you can very easily skip around with perfect precision. you only need a small bit of the file loaded at any time, and can pop in and out all over the place, and decode on-the-fly with almost 0 latency. making a C decoder is relatively easy for (constrianed environment, like this) AAC. You could make the entire memory overhead for stereo 44khz streaming sound mixed from 4 different AAC files at a time around <500k (if you decode and mix directly into the streaming buffers, and are very constrained with your use...i.e. just make your decoder for the specific purposes you want it). then you really only need to keep the AAC-encoded bits you want cached, you can do so with a sort of paging system...ooh, I miss programming audio engines!
The screens for CS one are like having LSD poured in my eyes while sitting in a bathtub with a toaster......I haven't done that in a while...
