The Nuclear Family Beach

I just realised that we haven't even put an image up of 2nd level yet: The Nuclear-beach.
If Tom was writing this he'd probably tell you everyone that has seen it so far has given it a 'glowing report'. And if you want a meal there you can have Fission-chips. And before fighting the players can say "Let me Atom!"...oh god...

It's not quite finished (the joins between sand/tarmac/cliff-face/sea is the main issue) but it's been long overdue a feature on the blog.

W.H.A.L.E. stands for 'Weapons hatch and launch equipment'. The plan is for the silo door to slide open and a whale strapped to a rocket will fly out every few minutes.

Oh and bonus points to anyone who can name the 3 logos on the towels.

New lighting system

We've put a new lighting system in today, and you can see the changes above (older is on top). We've also taken time to optimise everything in time for the Intel Visual Adrenaline challenge, and the eagle eyed of you will have noticed that our frame rate has over doubled as a result, and (we think) it looks better.

Needless to say we're pretty chuffed with this.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No it's a Bear. It's 10 feet tall and weighs a tonne and a half, how could you think it was a bird?

In 1972 a crack Bear pack was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These Bears promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as Bears of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Bears With Jetpacks!

Emo Unicorn

Say Hello to the Emo Unicorn!

The Emo Unicorn comes from a loving family who live in the Unicorn Palace far up in the mountains. Unfortunately his parents have spoilt him rotten with Skate Ramps, Drum Kits and rare collection of Lances. This has caused the Emo Unicorn to turn into a spoilt, selfish little brat who cares only about himself.

Don't upset him or he will blind you with his magical ability to sick up deadly rainbows!

Hallam newsletter

Have just seen that there's an article about the two Sheffield Dare teams in this months Alumni newsletter:

http://www.shu.ac.uk/news/release.html?ID=664

It's alive!

Today Grrr! went alpha. The first two players were Mark and Tom, and Tom absolutely hammered Mark with 4 kills to none. He was so happy when this happened he actually danced a little, but then we realised that due to a bug Tom's team had been invulnerable, so he had to stop dancing and go back to work.

A few minutes later the bug had been patched, and the second match was played, with Stefan beating Mark, and then going on a winning streak of 3 games unbeaten before it crashed again when one of the crabs tried to teleport outside the level. Needless to say there are a lot of bugs which need patching, and lots more stuff needs adding, but it was a great to see our game come to life.

The picture above and the video below are of our test map, and as such looks a little bit rubbish. Soon though we'll have all our art-assets in and it'll look like the renders we posted up last week. Obviously there is a lot more to add (powerups, death animations, particle effects) but when they are all done we'll get to see exactly how good our game is, and that's what we're here for.

Our team image: The smoking gun

Above is our team-image as submitted for the protoplay program etc.

We've gone for a Frankenstein/Skynet type thing. Thankfully so far the only casualties have been Tom and Stefan, my least favorite group members.

Introducing...

The Emo-unicorn!

He's now been handed off to Tom for rigging and animating, so hopefully we'll see him in action before too long.

One thing we're still not sure of is how he should attack, we have 3 options. Should he shoot a rainbow out of his:

• Horn
• Mouth
• Bum

Answers in the comments or on twitter please.

Emo-Unicorn's Castle

Above you can see the asset set we'll be using for our first level, the home of our Emo-unicorn. This is just a quick layout to get scale right and see how everything fits together, but soon we'll have it ingame and will modify the layout for gameplay.

The unicorn prince is a spoilt brat who lives with his royal parents in what can only be described as a bloody huge castle. Since he turned 13 he started listening to the kind of music that makes the Beatles cry and subsequently decided that he wants to be more alternative, hence the half-pipe and ridiculous Hifi his parents have bought for their heir. The usually well behaved prince was left home-alone (apart from the 234 live in staff) when his parents went on holiday to Nania and he decided to hold a party, unfortunately this party was gatecrashed by various evil doers, and now a fight has broken out. A fight which you must win.

Here are some closeups of some of the assets:

Shark Animations!!!!

Introducing RoboShark!

RoboShark's goal is to infiltrate the human world by creating the perfect land suit so no one will suspect that he is from the sea. However, this isn't easy as he has a huge blue head full of evil teeth and has to shower every 10 minutes.

BEWARE!

He is very resourceful with disguises and can blend into any environment, he may even be standing next to you right now!!!!

Develop-online

This morning we woke up to find a feature on Develop-Online about all the Dare teams, which you can find here.

We will be writing a 500-800 word article about our game which will be published around the 16th July so keeps your eyes open for that.

We're nearly at the stage now where we have something properly playable which will be a huge relief as so far we've had nothing to really show for our efforts apart from art assets and lots and lots of C++.


Edit:

The blog is now online and can be seen at:
http://www.develop-online.net/blog/135/Dare-Blogs-Bears-with-Jetpacks

The Scuttle!

As promised, here is our much beloved Cannon Crab scuttling around. You will usually find the Cannon Crab loitering outside Seafood restaurants, attacking any customer who orders crab sticks or doesn't tip properly.