Creature Profile – The Rhinoturtle

The Rhinoturtle has the head of a rhino and the body of a turtle. Business in the front defense in the back. With that huge shell you can imagine it has a high armor but walks around pretty slow. Don’t let that fool you though, if you piss it off it can charge. Then it is hard to take it down, so it can spell disaster. Rhinoturtles also really really hate vehicles, so if you want to damage your car, just drive it up near one of these bad boys and find out how much damage it can take. Overall this creature isn’t dangerous as long as you leave it alone, so steer clear of them and everything will be alright.

If you enjoyed this article please follow us over at Violent Sol World on Indie DB.

And if you want to help support our progress we have a little side scrolling shooter for sale that is kind of fun on Itch.io called Cornflower Corbin. Check it out.

As always, follow me @Viedt_EL on Twitter.

Creature Profile – The Buffalpug

The Buffalpug is a gentle beast. It’s basically meat for the grinder as every creature that can attack them will. Hey there has to be food somewhere right? They are your standard cattle variety creature. Plenty of them planet side just roaming around, so there shouldn’t be any issue gather resources from them. Their hides make some decent armor, but when they stampede it can spell disaster. So choose your shot carefully so you do get trampled.

If you enjoyed this article please follow us over at Violent Sol World on Indie DB.

And if you want to help support our progress we have a little side scrolling shooter for sale that is kind of fun on Itch.io called Cornflower Corbin. Check it out.

As always, follow me @Viedt_EL on Twitter.

Creature Profile – The Fire Lizard

You look at this dog sized lizard and you would be correct to be afraid. These creatures are called Fire Lizards, mostly because of their bright red skin. They are not pleasant creatures. They tend to agitate easily and once angry will begin spitting at everything that moves. They do not attack at close range, they like to take things out from afar with their spit. Take care when walking through the jungles because these beasts will take you on as soon as they notice you are in their territory. Enjoy this little video of one attacking a newly dropped off settler.

 

If you enjoyed this article please follow us over at Violent Sol World on Indie DB.

And if you want to help support our progress we have a little side scrolling shooter for sale that is kind of fun on Itch.io called Cornflower Corbin. Check it out.

As always, follow me @Viedt_EL on Twitter.

 

Creature Profile – The Stalker

The stalker is your classic brainless, relentless, stone cold killing machine. An Insect at its core, It will attack anything it sees and take it out to feed off. Weather that’s a Bufflepug or you, it doesn’t really care. It will strike out as it chases you while you run away. Taking out one isn’t bad, but even with a turret to assist you, a couple of them can easily overwhelm you and make for a bad day.

If you enjoyed this article please follow us over at Violent Sol World on Indie DB.

And if you want to help support our progress we have a little side scrolling shooter for sale that is kind of fun on Itch.io called Cornflower Corbin. Check it out.

As always, follow me @Viedt_EL on Twitter.

The Chase is On!

So we are chasing something fun here.  There’s a site called IndieDB where a ton of Indie games go to publish articles and show off what they are doing.  Essentially a place to promote the creation of the thing you are working on.  There are many like it, but this is the one we focus on.  Our little game is ranked 58 of 38481 games right now.  It varies all the time and we have been as high as 6th on this site.  So I feel like we are doing a good job promoting it.  We can always do more of course, but for a game that is about 70% done, those are good stats.

So, what is the game?  It’s a top down tactical shooter open world survival game.  It has some RPG like feels to it too.  It’s a procedural generated world that is 6 times the size of the earth.  So it will have plenty of room for a lot of crazy content.  There may be aliens, there may be an evil corporation that takes advantage of you, and there may be some other fun stuff to see.

We still have a little ways to go, but we are trying really hard to get voted for the “Unreleased Game of the Year” award which could only lead to good things when we do release it down the road.  So if you have a minute, head over there and give us your support.

http://www.indiedb.com/games/violent-sol-worlds

You can follow me on Twitter @Viedt_EL

And our studio can be found here: http://afterthoughtgames.com/

Game of the Year

Every year IndieDB hosts a game of the year competition and this year we have a real shot at winning for the unreleased game of the year.  I am looking for votes from anyone I can get them from.  No registration necessary, simply go to the link below and click vote.  It’s just that simple.  Please spread the word and help me accomplish a life long goal of developing games full time.  Your all awesome!

Just follow the link attached to the picture here!

Or this one http://www.indiedb.com/games/violent-sol-worlds

 

Latest Alpha Release Coming Soon!

Violent Sol World has been getting a lot of work done to it the past few months. We got a little behind our regularly scheduled rollouts because we took on a little more than we normally do for an Alpha release. So, we are excited to share what we have been working on with all of you.

We added a box just outside of the starting crate and updated the look of both. Why? One is for sending stuff up to the space station, and the other is for the station to send your orders to you. Both of those will have a drone come down from the station to deliver or pick up the stuff. It’s the start of everything we need for our purchasing system to be in place. You send your resources up to the station, go to the store, and order what you want. If the station has enough resources, it’ll be printed and sent down to you. Fun, right?

We built the entire system for armor, damage, and all the other fun stuff that equipment can do. We wrote an article about a little while ago that explains a lot of it. You can find that here.

LET’S TALK MODS

The final big thing we did was completely gut the physics and start over. We have learned so much over the time we have been developing Violent Sol that we could get things running so much better. There used to be a bounce and pop when the player ran into anything, now, nothing. Just a stop, like you would expect to see. Cleaner crisper physics and now with the new effects system, physics handles all damage allowing us to have everything in our world get hit in some way.

We still have a way to go, and we will find more bugs we are sure, but this release is leaps and bounds over what we have done in the past. The bulk of the “systems” are in place with only a few more to go and things are working well. In one the next releases we will be adding a heavy amount of content to work these systems like they should be worked.

Hope you like what you see.

If you like what you are reading about us, follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook for more updates.

Also, check out our Steam Greenlight page.

Interested in helping our budget? We have a fun little shoot ‘em up for sale on itch.io that we are trying to get greenlit on Steam too. You can find out more information on that here on IndieDB

Running a studio

This week I had to put on my big boy pants and knock out some business deals in our little venture.  Two very smart people and I started a gaming studio about a month ago.  This is actually a peal off from another company that never got around to forming up the studio like they probably should have.  The games we are working on has been worked on for over a year now, so the studio part is really the new thing.  We needed to form said “real” thing to protect our products, and invest in our people.

Up till now everyone that has worked on the games, did so as a volunteer, learning about game development and hanging out with some fun people.  Going forward now, we are getting serious.  As the studio forms we have to figure out what that means for all the people that have been involved up to this point.  We also have to figure out what that means for the intellectual property that we feel is ours and someone else may or may not think is theirs.  I have been in partnerships working with others before, but it wasn’t until this week that I truly sat down to do business.  Making decisions that can effect others lives positively or in any way really.  It’s not the easiest thing to do but my hope is, in the end, it will all be worth it and everyone will come out feeling good about what we’ve created.  No matter what happens though, I am going to be working my tail off to make this whole thing great.

Keep an eye out for Afterthought Games.  It should be a fun ride.

If you enjoyed this article please follow us over at Violent Sol World on Indie DB.

And if you want to help support our progress we have a little side scrolling shooter for sale that is kind of fun on Itch.io called Cornflower Corbin. Check it out.

As always, follow me @Viedt_EL on Twitter.

Playing Games

I’m a developer by day, and a game developer by night, so I don’t have a lot of free time to play video games.  I want to, and when I do I enjoy doing it.  So I am blessed to be part of a great fundraising program called Extra Life.  Extra Life, if you don’t know, is part of the Children’s Miracle Network and uses gaming to help raise money for local children’s hospitals.  They do this by having a nationwide 24 hour gaming marathon every year.  This year that marathon was on November 5th.  The day of the time change, so it was actually a 25 hour marathon.  As the president of my cities guild I wanted to expand what we did a little bit more so I put together a spot at that hospital were gamers could come and enjoy the marathon together.  We got to play a bunch of retro games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Arcade on the old NES and Halo 2 on the original XBox.  We spent a decent part of the marathon playing the Jack in the Box games as a large group, laughing at each other and joking around.  It was great experience.  I already have ideas of things we will do differently to make it even better next year.

So no matter how little I get to play games throughout the year, I will always have my 24 hour marathon every year where I get kick back and play and forget out my developing responsibilities.  Now since I am talking about it, I am going to go play some Skyrim for a little while.

As always

If you enjoyed this article please follow us over at Violent Sol World on Indie DB.

And if you want to help support our progress we have a little side scrolling shooter for sale that is kind of fun on Itch.io called Cornflower Corbin. Check it out.

As always, follow me @Viedt_EL on Twitter.

Stretched Thin (figuratively, not literally)

 

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last week running myself ragged.  I am the President of my cities Extra Life Guild and we are running an event at the hospital this year.  So Saturday we will be doing a 25 hour gaming marathon to raise money for my local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital.  If that wasn’t enough I am also working to start a gaming studio, which I don’t mind saying, is a huge pain in the patooty.  This is all on top of my regular 9 to 5 job.

The one thing I have going for me is I enjoy the hell out of all of this.  It is all very rewarding in different ways.  The charity work is rewarding because I know I am helping to make a difference in someone’s life.  The studio build is amazing because it is mine and I am doing it with a couple great people.  And I actually like my 9 to 5 job too.  The only real downside to this is that it doesn’t leave a lot of time to be with my family.  Usually when I am sitting here with them I am working on the game, or marketing my self through social media.

Fortunately, the Extra Life thing comes to a close Sunday morning and then, after getting some sleep, I will be opening up again and have some more time for my kids.  These kind of weeks are amazing though, they are the kind of thing that test you and push you to do things better.  I am always looking to do better.  One way or another I will succeed.

If you enjoyed this article please follow us over at Violent Sol World on Indie DB.

And if you want to help support our progress we have a little side scrolling shooter for sale that is kind of fun on Itch.io called Cornflower Corbin. Check it out.

As always, follow me @Viedt_EL on Twitter.