Pat:
Most of this week I did things that are too nerdy to discuss. No seriously. If the words “garbage collection” make you think of a big truck showing up at your curb once a week to take away your trash, then you obviously don’t know the joy (pain?) of managed programming. Regardless, I can say that things I improved/unbroke this week include our 4-player join-anytime co-op, ammo pickups, sparks, more shadows, damaged enemies, and throwing weapons/bombs.

Dan:
This week, I worked on the trailer for our second game. Oh, and I made a new droid enemy. And, Panya got my UI artwork working in the game this week!

Panya:
I’ve been trying to take some tasks off Pat’s plate, and one that is somewhat independent of the game code is the UI. With some of Dan’s artwork and ideas, we now have a flashier HUD. No more static images: these things will have motion, shine, animated glows… pretty much anything that can be done in a shader. Right now it’s only working for 1-player, but I’m sure 4-player is just a few “if” statements… (famous last words)

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.

Pat:
I spent the majority of my week working on updates and bugfixes in the melee combat system. Also implemented a nice little cubic spline setup to smooth out the movement for when Max Blastronaut jumps from the planet out to orbit.

Dan:
Two more enemies, that’s what i made this week. Ohh, and two new grenades.

Panya:
I jumped around all week again. Got animations done for a new enemy that Dan created, put in more sound effects, and made a special class for Galaxy objects. Now we can have much more than just a skycube in the background, which gives us great potential for fancy shaders on stuff in space (suns, planets, asteroid showers). I also put in a bunch more hours on Call of Duty 4, and Prestiged once.

The Bosses in Max Blastronaut have gotten a facelift, a little more personality and wide variety of attacks. Watch your back!

Pat:
One word: shadows

Dan:
This week was spent mostly at the doctors… don’t worry, I’m fine, I just didn’t get to work on anything too substantial… In between my doc appts I worked a bit on a new enemy model and a bunch of small miscellaneous art tasks like new grenades and headlights!

Panya:
Galaxy 1, the first level of the game, got a revised layout. Planets, motherships, and ship paths were all organized to frame nicely with the cinematic cameras. I also got a volume-light hack working in the game with some art help from Dan and code help from Pat. Now all the enemies can have headlights, which will be a useful indicator of their health. Gives new meaning to “punch their lights out!”

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…

Pat:
This week saw some interesting additions to the melee combat system in our game. In the most recent of updates, I added the ability for skilled players to grapple with bad guys, pick them up, punch them, spin them, or turn them into living projectiles by throwing them at their evil cohorts.

Dan:
Another week gone in a blink! I spent a good amount of time this week fighting some battles against Flash and in code, prepping the soon to be launched MaxBlastronaut.com website.

Panya:
A lot of development this week, with a side of design. I did a ton of new animations for the ever-improving melee combat system. It’s a blast to play and even more humorous to watch. A bit of shader work happened here and there, as we polish up the game for our “first” playable… the game’s improved so much, it feels like we’re already working on the next version! So it’s really like a fourth or fifth playable.