Platform Combat!

After a great deal of internal debate, we have decided to move forward with the prototype I have been working on, instead of the one about moles. This makes me happy.

My team's trying to turn it into a game about chefs having a food fight, which I think is interesting, but I'm not entirely sold. I'm all for humor, but I don't think that's as funny as everybody else seems to. Maybe I lack a proper appreciation of puns.

We have support for up to four players, although playing free-for-all on anywhere but Temple turns into a hot mess pretty quickly. We desperately need more 4 player stages, we're all sick of playing nothing but temple.

I've also reworked movement, which I'll write about in-depth later tonight, and added seven new moves, bringing us up to a total of thirteen.

We have a new team name! We are now Quadratic Magic Industries. I like this name. It's hard to say but pleasant to hear, I think.

We haven't begun to think of a name for the game, but we're actively searching for a good description of the genre. Right now we're working with "combat platformer." I'd like to get away from the associations of fighting games, with characters, combo lists, thousands of frames of animation, giant scope issues, etc. A team tried and basically failed to make a traditional fighter here last year, which is part of why I don't want us to be associated with the fighting genre, but it's really mostly because I don't think the term is accurate.




We've been recruiting people for a competitive testing initiative. In the next few weeks, we're going to try to build the infrastructure to support at least a handful of expert players. I think this will be valuable going forward (Random testers are great for first impressions and bug hunting, but I don't think they're a good substitute for people who actually understand how to play a game.) Plus, as a semi-competitive gamer myself, I think it's exciting.

All in all, it's been a very successful week-and-change.

 I've added links to my teammates blogs in the sidebar, you should check them out!

We've registered quadraticmagic.com, but right now it's a GoDaddy "Under Construction" page so you probably shouldn't go there. I'm going to try to get Trenholme to point it to the prototype in the meantime.

The prototype, as always, resides at fighting.loulessing.com. It should be updated to the new version (1-4 players, 13 moves) any minute now.

I got sick of looking at a pink screen for our main menu, so I thew something together for it. here's a still of that background. Have a wallpaper.