2D Top-Down Retro Shoot'em'Up

Story Theme / World Concepts

Although I have not completely fleshed out the fundamentals of the general story line and scenarios within the story I have decided on some core things.

1. The game will be set around the "real life" Sirius star cluster. This star cluster also known as "The Dog Star" is one of the brightest features in the night sky.

2. The game will be set around a fictional star within the cluster simply called Sirius X. This system will comprise of 10 (X) key celestial bodies (10 Game levels), These bodies might include Planets, Moons, Large Asteroids.. etc

3. The game goal will be to start from the outer edge of the system and make your way toward the center of the system playing through 10 game levels. The last level will be some end goal on a celestial body that is orbiting closest to the Sirius X star.

4. The Sirius X system and other local star systems within the cluster will be essentially races of very old civilizations that once travels to our own Sol system to seed intelligent life. These times on earth are written in myth, so might have some relevance to some of the conspiracy theories you see around today. Based on this general concept.. the "Player" might start off in the game flying in earth orbit.. perhaps a shuttle or some recognizable craft.. Then something might happen that transports this earth shuttle to the edge of the Sirius X system. The early stages of the game might feature dialog in between gameplay pertaining to finding out what this strange system is, how the player got there.. .. eventually learning of the real history of human civilization, and the general goal for the player being to make their way to the center of the Sirius X system where there is some way to get back home to earth.. perhaps a wormhole or star gate of some sort.

Early Sprite Designs and Concepts

Here was one of the original designs I came up for 2 of the player ships.
Both designs here are 42x42 pixel in size. The game itself will be in high res, around 1024x768 or higher. So these players sprites will have a lot of room to move around. The wide space will become more apt when playing 2 player co-op.


A few more little sprite designs here. including ones double size so 84x84.. also trying out some small backdrop planet ideas here.

 

Here is an example of a small boss ship.. The turbine blades would animation ideally, and its still missing some gun mounts and other details that would be in the actual game.


Some Time-lapse videos showing me creating various assests.

Creating Player Ship Design VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

Creating Another Little Ship VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

Creating The Ring Ship VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

Creating the Boss Ship VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

Early Scrolling Backdrop Ideas
Here is some work on some example backdrops that will scroll in the game.
This scenario is a large asteroid that is being used as a research location for ancient structures. This asteroid is also being used as a location in the Sirius system for previous metal mining.

This is an example of a 2 panel backdrop (stitched together).. Its about 1 mins worth of game scroll.

A couple of time-lapse videos showing how I created various parts of the graphic I posted above.

Small Valley Ridge Feature VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

Creating The Dome Structure VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

Early Mock-Up Examples of Game Look

While I am working on sprite concepts I decided to create "Mock-Up's" of examples of how the game might look in motion, or in example game play screenshots.

Experiments with Lighting/shadow and some early shader tweaking.
The game will have lots of lighting reacting with the terrain in nice ways.

Creating The Mock-Up Example Select 720p To See Full 60fps / Quality

Here are some animated Mock-Up`s with some basic scrolling backdrops, player sprites, and some temp basic gui. I made these to get an overall feel of how all the assets are fitting together. Although these are made in flash, its likely the game will not be in flash. You might also note there a few spellings wrong in the gui ;) ... is it ok to blame a string of late nights?

SPACE MOCK-UP VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

ASTEROID MOCK-UP VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

Early Music & Sound Development

Ok so along with the gfx I'd also like to work on the music/atmospherics and sound effects.
Here is something I came up with I thought would be Ideal for a level, or even the start/game setting/level interlude part. I'm trying to aim for something ambient, minimal, with a twist of dark, and it has to written with a loop in mind. For this one I experimented with various synth and pads.. using the sharp chip tune type of synth to try invoke a slight retro feel.
So here is the first tune. its a bit thrown together, but I guess I wont go into to much detail with the music since there will be sound effects going on constantly over it.

I have Looped the track 2 times here to test how well the ends blend.

Untitled Music Track - Bright VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

Untitled Music Track - Dark VIDEO: Select 720p For Full Quality

Presentation & Promotion Concepts

Just a few things, Wallpaper, and some Logos