Happy Birthday, Jetpacks! Today we’re going back in time, to exactly a year ago. We had just gotten Max’s jetpack animation in game and were testing it out. The radar may have been working at this point also, but we cut it a couple of months later along with the entire Freespace mode. It turned out that making an open-world game is A LOT of work, especially for three developers building the engine at the same time. We chose to cut it early and focus on the fun parts of the game, punching and shooting. Max’s blasters emerge from the jetpack when he needs that extra firepower, and they animate in and out accordingly.
Here’s another behind-the-scenes look at Max Blastronaut. This time we construct a scene, node by node. Starting off extremely basic (which is pretty much how the game looked a year ago), it quickly builds into what we have today. In order of appearance, this clip shows: the skycube, background ships, sky objects (asteroids, planet rings), planets, enemies, players, weapons, headlights, transparent items (nebulae, particles, laser beams), post-processing (god rays, bloom, lens flare), and finally, depth of field.
Another group of local devs have just released their latest iPhone hotness to the world. In 2XL Fleet Defense, you play the role of a lone naval aviator tasked to defend a carrier and the lives that depend on it. There’s some backstory about impending nuclear war, but I certainly don’t need a reason to blow stuff up! Easy to get into, there are some nice strategy elements about how you pilot your F-35 and navigate the battlefield. Pick it up for $1.99 and start laying waste to the DLP!
The latest fun feature we’ve added is the ability to shoot while on foot. Originally you had to blast into orbit to engage in shooting combat, and planet combat was reserved for hand-to-hand* fighting. Now when you destroy a mech, his arms go flying off and you can pick them up and go all Smash TV style!
After taking over 10,000 images, our time lapse camera has finally passed away. He served us well, documenting our daily progress in ten-minute increments. He died at the young age of six. A point-and-click shouldn’t have had to endure the life he did. You will be missed, Canon.
