BlueGill Studios is pleased to announce Chicken Target (Beta)! This screenshot is the result of about four (more or less) weeks of work.

You can play it on the Beta Program web site.

Background Story*:

Two chickens José and Andres are co-pilots for Aireopollo flying a medium sized cargo plane delivering goods all throughout the chickendom. As they were flying a shipment of roller skates through a chain of small volcanic islands one of the volcanoes erupted and a chunk of hot lava knocked out the starboard engine. The two pilots were able to fight the plane and crash land it into the last island in the chain.
The two downed chickens consult their charts of the area and notice that the farthest island from them is home to a radio repeater tower, if it is still functioning it would be their ticket to call for rescue. The dilemma would be getting to that island. One of the chickens suggests swimming. As he approached the water he places his toe in it and pulls it out in disgust at how wet it feels. Just as he pulls his foot away a large toothy fish jumps out of the water snapping.

Turned off by the hungry toothy fish that populate the waters the co-pilots are left to devise their own plan. Eyeing the roller skates that are scattered all over the island and the steep volcano slope, Jose suggests skating down the volcano. This would launch themselves into the air, allowing them to glide to the next island. Andres eyes the volcano skeptically and then grins as he says “who ever said chickens can’t fly?” The chickens then proceed to locate a set of skates, and work their way up the island to get onto the volcano slope and launch themselves to the next island, using the crashed cockpit as a ramp!

* Story might change in the future.

Hi guys, Jeff here

 So its been a very full week for me, mostly to do with non game dev related stuff (blah). Thankfuly I did get a decent bit of work done on our next project! As Joe mentioned in a previous post I decided to take this next game (which we will code name CT for referencing in this and later posts) in a very different art direction than anything I have worked on before. Its going to have a rather cartoon look with bright colors and a friendly warm emotional value to it.

 I have started on the art style and have a number of art assets completed. I must say it has been a blast to see them come together, a far more artistic feeling experience than working on Open Fire Gold artwork. On CT I’m using Ambient Designs wonderful little painting app ArtRage2 for texture work. This in combination with my wacom tablet allows me to get a good painted/cartoon feel in a rather short time, my painting classes in University are starting to pay off, which in turn helps me to be more motivated and focused when I am in class.

 Something that will be new for me in this project is rigging/binding and animating characters. I have one character partially modeled out already and will be continuing to work on it until I’m done with the mesh, texturing and the many varying animation cycles that will be needed.

 In other areas I have been spending a large amount of time getting familiar with the Drupal CMS, this has more to do with some contract work I have been doing (have to pay the bills you know), the good thing is that all of this knowledge will in turn be useful for improving our beta program site!

Spent most of my time working on the flying code today, tweaked the work I’d done a few days before, made a new “placeholder” island to test on, added objects that get removed when you run in to them.

Current flying controls are, move left/right, up (a limited distance), down (down to the water), speed up, slow down (which makes you descend). I’m not sure if speed up should make you descend and slow down should make you climb a little or if it should be the other way around. Oh well.

I’m trying to use a race-car control script to move on the ground. It wasn’t working very well until I raised the rigidbody’s mass to 3000. Now it doesn’t fly all over the place like a toothpick with a jet engine strapped to it. :p

A good day’s work. Next step: 3D adventure gameplay! (And constantly tweaking the flying code/environment)

Day 1 has gone well, I’ve got the basic flying almost finished. I’ve only had to re-write the flying script about six times. :p.

We layed out some gameplay and prioritized items that need to be worked on first. Hopefully they won’t be droll, it kind of takes some of the fun out of game devving.

Using placeholder art is annoying, because Jeff’s looks so much better ;). I’ll have to remind him to upload his project folder tomorrow. Hopefully he’ll finish the basics of a <censored> soon so that I won’t have to use a truck model.

We tested basic multiplayer and it works… somewhat. It works better than the gameplay at the moment though. Had trouble getting the master server to connect us to each other though.

We’ve decided to enter the Unity Awards 2008 game competition. We’re using our next planed game design in this competition (it’s got a small enough scope and can be made even smaller if we run out of time). We’re looking towards a cartooney environment, art style, and game play.