ponderings of a beatnik......

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve got now, these fucking characters – they look like postman pat- they’ll change. The game you’ll finally make will be something totally different to what you’ve got now – it’s just the computer games way.”

I didn't believe it at the time - but it's true.

For the first couple of weeks, Plain Sight was a multiplayer stealth based combat game with a super advanced mêlée fighting mechanic. It was gritty, it was mean, it was “the most amazing game in the world” and we couldn’t believe that it hadn’t been made. Unfortunately, it could never work. Firstly, because it would have cost about 10 million to make. Secondly because online mêlée is, and you can quote me on this, FUCKING HARD.

Let’s take an early build of Plain Sight. You press the button, the player slashes his sword. Looks great and, on level ground, works. Now, give those robots the power to jump around a planet and move at the speed of Thor, God of Thunder. The likelihood of your player being within a certain radius of your opponent is pretty darn small. This makes it hard work for the players involved and, as work is no fun, the game is no fun.

“But but but but” I hear you say “I was playing Soul Caliber and Heavenly Sword – and they were the awesomeness”. Yes - Soul Caliber = two axis and single player games have the enemy AI throw caution to the wind and swarm you. So, it’s a problem.

Have we fixed it? Yes. We think we have. How? Sea otters. Lots and lots of sea otters, working around the clock 24/7. I guess we’ll find out tonight at the XNA:UK show and tell. If it gets the thumbs up, I’ll post a gameplay video on Monday – swank! EDIT: going to do a proper video, it'll be up by the end of the week.

PS: The above image was the first of Declans commissioned pieces for us... the original (found here) had a girl in the image. I personally prefered it without - what do you all think?