Must be Love

Im thinking I might aswell rename the blog ‘Sorry for the Lack of Updates’, I should really try and find someone to make these updates for me, rest assured though development continues. I’m right in the middle of some significant developments that will be chronicled on grassrootsgames.co.uk when i get closer to completion, I thought I’d lay down some more awesome art work from Maher in the mean time:

These are two shots from our opening cinematic, these two are both from the opening, but there’s also an ending scene which is currently, in my opinion, the best looking thing in the whole game. Click on them to view in the gallery, be sure to check out the full 1280×720 images by clicking the link at the top right of the screen.

I say cinematic but really, due to the lack of video support in XNA, we have taken a more stylised approach. The idea is to borrow some ideas from Homeworld and use subtle transition effects, animated portions of the screen, and some well placed audio cues to create the illusion of a cinematic in what is in an everyday 2d scene. Luckily it doesn’t take much to make Mahers work look amazing and my only role will be making sure it all fits together nicely and provides an atmospheric start to the game.

This is a real labour of love because I doubt whether most players will even notice how much work has gone into it, but my general approach with Maher’s art has always been ‘More = Better’. This stuff has been sitting on my hard drive for a while just begging to get added to our already somewhat bloated asset directory.

Probably wont make a start on the creation of the scenes for couple of months, right now the focus is on getting the weapons in, getting the enemies acting in an entertaining way, and putting all the stages together (aka The Game). But once it’s together I’ll be sure to give you all a sneak peak (if Maher lets me).