Pitfall! Blast Furnace! Job! Exclamation marks!

danr

good to finally be able to say i've moved jobs after 12 or how ever many years ... and very happy to say that after joining a brand new company that was just a few guys in an empty room with zero equipment only a handful of months ago, here is the first breathing product of our many, many labours :

Pitfall!

trailer

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XceNy4ZMCi8"]Pitfall! iPhone/iPad Trailer - YouTube[/ame]

reasonable commentary

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUHpQifo_QM"]TA Plays: Pitfall! - A New Endless Runner Based on The Classic - YouTube[/ame]

go buy. I want a boat.

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/pitfall!/id547291263?mt=8

bits of company press ...

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-09-the-blast-furnace-rebooting-activisions-ip-for-the-tablet-generation
http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/09/the-blast-furnace-by-activision-mobile/

shout out to Jonny at http://www.allthingsunlimited.com/ for the ace logo. Sorry that someone outside ran a blur over it before adding it to the gamesindustry article ...

much more to come from us in the near future. Frankly, i'm fucking knackered ...

DrunkShaman

Nicely done sir;

Looking forward to it!.

Chunkey

Congrats to you and the team! I thought you'd never leave R* Dan, looks like you've landed on your feet though!- looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with next Will give Pitfall a bash after work, loving the retro look to it

rooster

oh! hey Danr is one of your programmers called G? (Graeme)

danr

Dr Love? Yeah, you know him.

Visceral

I dont know what to say here, after watching the trailer i think its pretty cool game. But the artstyle is something i felt i had to comment on.
Im sure you spent alot of time and effort into the graphics but the art style in general seems to me as beeing pretty lazy.
Its just flat colors and sure you can say its stylized, but it dosnt have the nostalgia of say, Pid where you have this cute 8 bit style.
It seems moore like programmer art, and that really turns me off.

Fomori

I wouldn't say the flat colours are lazy as it might have been a smart optimization choice. But I think they are too bright and saturated in places. Lots of patchy tonal changes. All that flat bright colour spinning past the screen kind of hurts my eyes a bit. Looks fun to play though!

Andreas

Visceral wrote: »

I dont know what to say here, after watching the trailer i think its pretty cool game. But the artstyle is something i felt i had to comment on.
Im sure you spent alot of time and effort into the graphics but the art style in general seems to me as beeing pretty lazy.
Its just flat colors and sure you can say its stylized, but it dosnt have the nostalgia of say, Pid where you have this cute 8 bit style.
It seems moore like programmer art, and that really turns me off.

I can safely say the first time I saw Wind Waker, the words 'lazy' and 'programmer art' never really crossed my mind. And that's the most famous example of flat colour usage there is. Not to mention games like Killer 7 etc... this game is going to look just fine on any iOS device. And the animation is great.

Great effort guys, actually looks properly intense, which is so rare in casual titles.

DrunkShaman

Visceral wrote: »

I dont know what to say here, after watching the trailer i think its pretty cool game. But the artstyle is something i felt i had to comment on.
Im sure you spent alot of time and effort into the graphics but the art style in general seems to me as beeing pretty lazy.
Its just flat colors and sure you can say its stylized, but it dosnt have the nostalgia of say, Pid where you have this cute 8 bit style.
It seems moore like programmer art, and that really turns me off.

Its either that or they maybe just working on the prototype and yet to implement the right texture.

danr

well now, i think 'lazy programmer art' is a bit strong. Its most definitely a stylistic choice - after 13 years i was adamant to work in an entirely different way and keen to make something pretty unique looking while still having certain requirements handed down - but its also got huge practical implications. Apart from being minimal data size, its a very free and easy way to create 3D, the turnaround for new stuff and changes to existing geometry is incredibly quick. When you're by yourself for ages and staring down the barrel of a constantly evolving world that already started off pretty damn big, do you want to be cracking open the UVW Edit all the time? I know i don't.

anyway. Go play. Up to #3 on the iPhone chart already!

Andreas

So you guys used a lot of vertex colouring? I'm planning on doing the same with my first mobile title. How big does the finished game come in at?

SHEPEIRO

i like the art style alot vertex colour is awsome...could have done with a nice bold shadow blob instead of the soft one though

xvampire

I don't mind with the art style,

but is ios/android game control and development budget is so restrictive that it has to be another-auto-run-and-touch-to-jump game?.

Andreas

Isn't it something they worked on with Activision? They probably wanted a similar game to compete. I think it's a perfect match, that gameplay style and the Pitfall IP.

Visceral

Andreas wrote: »

I can safely say the first time I saw Wind Waker, the words 'lazy' and 'programmer art' never really crossed my mind. And that's the most famous example of flat colour usage there is. Not to mention games like Killer 7 etc... this game is going to look just fine on any iOS device. And the animation is great.

Great effort guys, actually looks properly intense, which is so rare in casual titles.

This is not Windwaker.
Im getting out of this thread while i still can, i stand by everything i posted.

rooster

I think you're off the mark, Visceral. It's a clever decision when you need to produce a lot of assets in a short space of time.

fmnoor

I was playing this game over the weekend, really nice take on the temple run style of game. Lots of variety and I dig the flat colors / faceted kinda look

Andreas

Visceral wrote: »

This is not Windwaker.

You're absolutely right, it's not a game that took several hundred people several years to complete, and yet still had to have its content slashed almost in half due to time constraints. It's a project a few guys undertook in a space of a few months.

And yes, you are very off the mark with your posting. Especially considering the graphical quality of 90% of mobile games out there...

danr

Andreas wrote: »

So you guys used a lot of vertex colouring? I'm planning on doing the same with my first mobile title. How big does the finished game come in at?

i think the dsta comes in about 25mb, then there's a couple of overheads.

There's some vert colouring going on, but mostly its material colours that are auto-UV'd to a palette texture to get the drawcalls down. Then it's got an unfiltered, banded toon-ramp off the light direction, and a faux-shadow map on top of that on world UVs

shep - i know what you mean about the shadow, there's a marriage of hard and soft going on throughout thats not always easy, its one of the things to look at i think.

Joseph Silverman

To jump into the discussion about the art: I like everything but the color choices. I think the palette is weak and it's flattening out everything pretty badly -- some mood paintings to pick more careful harmonies of colors couldve made these assets shine a LOT more. Loving the shapes and designs otherwise though, and the gameplay looks fun! Grats dude!