Juha wanted animated burning VOUDS logo for the teaser video. He asked if we could pre-render it on top of static background, which would have worked, but was way too limiting for my taste. So, I started to play around with Cocos2D-x RenderTexture. It works fine for rendering, but is way too slow for recording images at 60 fps. By using RenderTexture and saving each frame immediately to PNG file my MacBook Pro (2013) achieved 10 – 15 fps speed. Needless to say it did not look good enough for 60 fps video.
Next I created simple threaded consumer – producer system and added my own CustomCommand to the rendering queue. Threading allowed me to save frames into list and process them out of the Cocos main thread, keeping rendering at steady 60 fps. I also integrated lodepng – open source PNG encoder/decoder – with which I encoded and saved the frames as fast as possible in the consumer thread.
With these simple arrangements I managed to capture PNG images with alpha channel (for transparency) in good resolution and at constant 60 frames per second speed. The end result was 600 PNG images consuming almost 400 Mega bytes of space for ten seconds video. Below, one frame from the final image set. Looks great, doesn’t it? (Click the image to see it in full resolution).
Please, watch teaser video and see how good it looks in live action.
Official Teaser Movie Released and Some Afterthoughts of NGDC2017
I am proud to introduce the official VOUDS – The Bloody Wars Teaser Movie and The Theme Song: King Frog! The tune rocks like beast. Also introducing the dance moves of three of the main characters King Frog, King Wolf and King Moon. Just can’t beat those steps!
The Nordic Game Discovery Contest is now behind and it was a blast, literally. Pitching the game in short notice was almost unbearably exciting, but the audience responded well and we got lots of valuable feedback from the judges. But not all of it was that easy to reconcile one self to. It was quite a roast =D
The judges pointed out that our business model needed clarification, which was true and we have been working on that quite hard. VOUDS being a remake carries all of the design features of the past with it and it is not that easy to adopt the new microtransaction policies to it. One thing that got some of the judges quite upset was our planned target group of gamers. Of course we are planning to direct VOUDS to everybody but mainly to retro gamers who have warm feelings of the Amiga era. One particular notion kept on echoing in my head when a judge said that “It is pointless to target 40+ people since they are going to die soon!” Well, eventually we are all going to die, so why not die playing VOUDS – The Bloody Wars with a happy smile on Your face!
Our design philosophy has always been to make games that we love to play and to our point of view our games have to stand out for their own greatness, playability and entertaining values. We do not believe in designing games in order to maximize the profits. That said, a some reasonable compensation for our 25-year efforts is expected, but we try to keep the price tag low and offer a fair deal to gamers who love to play for the sake of playing.
Special thanks goes to John Romero. It was a great privilege to receive constructive feedback from him as well as from all the other judges too, but Romero kindly gave some suggestions for our release options. He also introduced us to Spiderweb Software which many of you may already know as being dedicated to making terrific games but also for their customer support and money-back guarantee. Maybe their approach would suit us too…
Other important notice considered the UI. One of the judges was clearly with us (thanks for the slogan: Play until You die), but he pointed out that text based buttons in UI were maybe a little too old school. This remark led to some very constructive discussion later between I and Make resulting a decision the make a TOTAL REWORK FOR THE WHOLE UI! We have now re-designed all of the UI buttons to work with icons instead of text. Also the whole graphic scheme has been changed to a some what more appealing and theme oriented look. Please take a look at the mockup below and decided if it is for the better. Any comments and feedback would be very welcome. Stay in touch!
We have been busy implementing new interesting special events to the game. Without spoiling the excitement, I just wanted to mention that scripted quest engine bends really well to all kind of twists and turns which Juha has scripted. We also revamped encounter user interface to support richer story telling that the new events contain.
Stay tuned, I guarantee you will love these changes.
WE are happy (and also terrified) to announce that VOUDS: The Bloody Wars was selected as a heat finalist in Nordic Game Discovery Contest at the Northern Game Summit 2017. We will be presenting the game concept to a live audience 5 October at 11:20-12:20 – at the Bio Rex room at the venue (Kauppakatu 38, 87100 Kajaani). And now off to work with our keynote presentation… no hurry, just sheer PANIC!
