Warp speed! Here’s an early shot of one of our cutscenes, as Max travels to another galaxy in search of enemy Dredge miners. It’s pretty hypnotizing in motion.

This week we’ve got something a little more behind-the-scenes: the game with some debug data. While developing, having these features turned on helps us see what’s happening behind the curtain. All the lines mean different things… the tri-colored axis-looking things are matrices. They help identify orientations of items, from enemies to planet objects. The green curved line with all the red spikes is the path that Max takes when he blasts into Orbit. It helps give Max a more fluid look when he transitions to space. The sharp tan line on the bottom left is a path for one of the spaceships in the background. It only uses a few data points, but the ships know to form a round path through them. The long red lines are the shooting directions of the enemies. They’re all shooting to the right because they’re either really stupid or they were shooting where the player last was. Probably the latter.
On the right side of the image are three of the game’s frame buffers. The top is bloom, which represents the higher values of the image, isolated and blurred. The middle image is the god rays, which is a stencil image blurred along the direction of the sun’s rays. These are both added to the main image. The bottom is the shadow map (blue because we only use one channel of the render target).

We’ve got a few updates in this week’s image! Most apparent is one of the newest enemies, complete with flamethrower. He’s trying to burn our hero, who just ran out of the way (you can barely see the top of his little helmet). The background galaxy is the Dredge Faction’s home base. Pollution is everywhere, oil clouds block the sun, and Dredge refineries are mining in what few planets remain. This is where Max Blastronaut nears the end of his long journey defending the universe*…

*spoiler alert, sorry

A hovercraft appears! On one of the planets the Dredge use this hovercraft to get around. Its powerful fan blades can blow back any enemies approaching from the rear. And just in case, player 2 can drop mines to get any leftovers. This 4-seater Dredge hovercraft can accommodate all available Blastronauts. Something about it makes Max look like a movie star…

We’re going to start a new tradition around here… Frame Buffer Fridays! A few of you were reading our weekly updates on behind-the-scenes game development, but pictures speak louder than words. So every Friday, we’re going to post a screenshot with a quick description for those that want to see some work in progress. This week brings you a status update on Galaxy 4:

Galaxy 4 is where the Dredge Faction have set up their hardcore mining operations. A few planets have mining derricks that bore to their cores, digging up Spacefuel. Others (like the one right above the ring) have stray asteroids that you have to watch out for when pummeling the miners. Galaxy 4 is close to the Dredge home galaxy, so they’ve been here for a while!

Pat:
I was out of commission Friday through Monday for a long overdue trip to Illinois to see my family. After getting back to Phoenix and fighting off a cold I resumed work and made some progress on the second boss and our new floating space mines.

Dan:
Busy week! Spent many hours working on two brand new vehicles for your entertainment. First vehicle is 4 player hovercraft that shoots missiles and “hover-mines”, it looks pretty bad ass if i do say so myself. The second vehicles is something like a miniature 1-seater tank. It’s got a pretty slick design to it that will have you shooting the Dredge Faction in no time!

Panya:
Production continued on Galaxy 2 this week. The level got laid out, and I animated the new awesome Boss that Dan made last week. There are some new environment obstacles in Galaxy 2 that I coded up with some help from Pat, like a sun flare that occasionally hits the lit side of a planet. Your best bet is to run to the dark side when you hear the flare go off! Here’s a preview image of the second level so far, with a new enemy (that’s even funnier in motion):

While Pat’s been plugging away at garbage collection, Dan’s been making his own version of space garbage… leftover debris from the Blastro/Dredge battles. Our mothership just exploded, and the molten steel pieces are shooting sparks everywhere.

We joked about having corpses floating in space, but that would change the game’s rating… probably from E (everyone) to A (awesome).

There are a bunch of tweaks we’ve made to the game over the past few months.  Here’s a little update of Max Blastronaut:

A few months ago, the game looked like this. We had a vehicle in with basic (boring) physics, a few enemies, an empty galaxy, a working radar, and some pretty rudimentary gameplay.

Now, we’ve got much more! Shown here are Max’s new look (involving a fancy shader that includes a working fuel meter & thrusters), updated enemy shaders, animated background elements (earth, ships) and floating nebula clouds, screen-space ambient occlusion, shadows, blinking headlights, and you can’t see it in this screenshot, but a new-and-improved melee system and much more satisfying vehicle physics. Next up on the task list is an update to the HUD and adding more variety to the enemies and their behaviors. And that scary boss guy, of course. Can’t wait.

We’ve been talking about the melee combat improvements lately, without going into any detail. Originally, the on-foot combat system was pure button masher. While this is a pretty proven mechanic, it organically evolved into a more elaborate (and humorous) system:

Yes, enemies can be used as weapons; and if the enemy is holding a weapon, even better!  The characters also got a little upgrade, courtesy of a normal map and rim lighting.  It’s all coming together…

Oh yes, these grunt guys have some serious firepower as backup. It’s not all just punches and kicks… you’ll have to master your weapon skills to take this guy down.