Blog – Page 8 – Gnomic Studios

Old Stuff: Part 2/3

Around the end of July 2008 I drew a little picture of a skeleton shooting a ball into the air. The weapon to shoot the balls also sucked them in, and so the challenge was to fire and retrieve your ammo. The skeleton was just a doodle, and yet it stayed around as the main character for Balls Unleashed.

Original skeleton drawing.

I did a mock-up screenshot of what the game would look like. Balls Unleashed would be a 2D multiplayer platform game where you would shoot at ball like enemies. There would be combo and bonus shots, so there was a reward for pulling off “tricks” to bring down the enemy.

Attack of the giant swamp chicken!

Playing the game.

Next was a screenshot of how the game could work on the iPhone. It started to become a mix between Space Invaders and Peggle.

iPhone mock-up.

Old Stuff: Part 1/3

This is the first of three posts I will be doing looking back at some of the old game screenshots and prototypes of the past.

In July 2008 Aranda wanted ideas to create a game; I can’t remember what it was for. There was a simple handheld LCD game I owned years ago that had a naval ship shooting aerial fighters that would attack it from all corners of the screen. It was a simple, yet addictive idea, and so I went and made a screenshot of something similar.

I used sprites from Starcraft and Advance Wars to show a character manning a turret in the middle of the screen. Creatures were coming from all sides to attack, and it was your job to keep them at bay. Another man would walk around and collect various items off the ground for extra weapons, ammo, and health.

Screenshot of what the game would look like.

Aranda made a prototype to see if this would be any fun. The game consisted of a turret shooting bubbles. This test proved that this wasn’t going to hold your attention for long, so the idea was abandoned. The only fun element to the game was ‘juggling’ the bubbles by grouping them together. This spawned the next game idea, which I will be covering in the next post.

Aranda's bubble shooting game.

It’s Time to Get Animated!

anim

The Animator's Survival Kit

Just about to start animating a run cycle for this little guy above. I’ve recently been re-reading a book called The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams, and it’s proven to be invaluable.

I will be animating his legs in the traditional hand drawn approach, with the rest of his body in a cut-out style. The helmet and backpack should make for some good looking secondary animation, giving a bouncy cartoon look and feel to it.

Unfortunately, I wont be animating the gun, as this is controlled by the player. It wont look too bad, it just means the character will be running with really steady hands. If I were up against a throng of the undead, I’d want him on my side!

My First Blog

Hello. This is my first blog, ever. It’s up and running so I thought I should post something.

Changed the header image of the site, sent Aranda some characters to put into the game, and drew a little picture. Enjoy.

onfire

Better stuff in my next post. Promise.

Throng

Welcome to the Gnomic Studios development blog.

We’ve set this blog up to show off progress in our first title, code named Throng. It’s going to be entered into this years Dream Build Play contest before being released on Xbox Live Community Games.

You can expect to see some teaser images soon, courtesy of Scott and eventually some videos.

– Aranda