R.E.D. is a game developed by…
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Category: ITU Copenhagen
You’ve seen videos of a videogame we are developing in my group at the IT University before. This game was tentatively named Cylindream.
But projects move on, things change, and as the final deadline for our game gets closer (May the 18th) the game is finally taking shape under the new name of R.E.D., which stands for Rolling Explosive Device.
While I won’t get into the specifics of the game here just yet, I did want to share the awesome work Giacomo has done with the explosion effect.
As a brief explanation, just note that when the time is up the R.E.D. which you control in the game explodes.
And now, here is the first video of the cylinder exploding (mind that the glass ground we’re using for this test is not final, and was only chosen to showcase the explosion better):
Now though, the explosion effect would look much cooler if that expansive wave actually had some force to it, wouldn’t it?
Well, here is the same test, but this time with a lot of added cubes!
Again, these are still prototypes and do not reflect the current state of the game. Stay tuned for more!
I just realized that in all the time I have been working in my Game Development project I still haven’t posted more than one single entry in the blog!
Well, to make up for that, I’m going to post some info about our game, tentatively called Cylindream.
The game is still very early in its prototype stage, but already some people have been able to test it out in order to help us refine the controls.
You should note that the areas shown here are not actual levels, but simply playtesting grounds to try out the control schemes and basic features.
Also of importance is the fact that the player controls each wheel of the cylinder separately with an Xbox 360 controller, adding to the challenge.
Graphics are, of course, absolutely non-final, and just mere placeholders for the moment.
In any case, here is a video of the prototype in action!
The results of the initial brainstorming: a whiteboard full of completely unrelated ideas with other connected concepts in the post-its.
How do you come up with a videogame idea? Sure, you might have in mind something like “I want to make a videogame like GTA IV but adding this and that!” or “my perfect game would be like Final Fantasy but with this story”.
But how about getting an entirely original idea?
That, folks, is what we have set out to do for our new project for the Game Development course at the IT University of Copenhagen.
With our new magnificent, marvelous Italian slave-driver (he made me do some errands, and he’ll pay for that!) Valerio di Donato in the lead as project manager, we started today with our brainstorming session in an attempt to think of something cool, fun and engaging.
Valerio holding the remains of today’s meal – Not even during lunch did we take a break!
While we still don’t have a definitive idea we sure came up with a lot of fun stuff. We will of course keep thinking about them and soon we will have a pitch to post around 
.
Wish us good luck!
Later on… our group presentation and more pics!
Well, it’s done! We finally submitted our entry into the Nordic Game Jam 2011, part of the Global Game Jam organized by the International Game Developers Association!
As you can imagine, 48 hours is very little time to do a videogame, so at the moment all of our team is pretty much exhausted (we need sleeeeeeeeep!!!), so I will not get into many details for this blog post, and instead I will leave you all with a gameplay video for Beat It!
Oh, and of course, you can try the game as well by going to its official page on the Global Game Jam website!
Here we are, a little more than 13 hours left to turn in our videogame project for the Nordic Game Jam 2011, and we still have SO MANY THINGS TO DO! (Mind you, I’m writing this during a small break, after all it’s impossible to work 48 hours straight!).
So how is this going? Let’s go back in time a little bit first:
On Friday, January 28th the Nordic Game Jam officially started with several talks by gaming industry professionals like on various topics (especially interesting the Indie Track, with talks from indie developers and a showcase of indie games made in Scandinavia).
It was later during the evening when we were set to meet the different participants, get to know them, and decide who we would like to work with for the following 48 hours. Some people chose to work with friends they already knew, I decided to settle with some guys I had never met before. That always keeps things interesting, whether for good or bad. We’re still nowhere close to finishing the game, but so far I can say that it was the right choice.
So, who are we? We… don’t have a group name yet, but that’ll come in less than 13 hours.
From left to right, Olli (Finland), Anchel (Spain), Thomas, Henrik, Kristian and Theis (Denmark)
And what’s our game about? Well, the world is about to lose the only thing left that is keeping everyone together: music! And that’s all thanks to the evil Dustin Lieber, a pop singer who is causing world chaos by destroying the beauty of music variety.
Now it’s all up to our main character, the rock star Beat! He will have to travel through the different game levels keeping the rhythm going to prevent the music from becoming extinct.
Game protagonist Beat and the antagonist pop singer Dustin Lieber. Original drawings and final touches by Henrik and digitalization and color by Anchel.
So basically the game is a platformer with rhythm elements to it, in which you have to get Beat until the end of each level without letting the music die. If you manage to time your jumps and other actions with the music, more instruments will be added to the mix, while if you fail to do so the music will become more primitive until it dies.
Here’s a screenshot of the current state of the game. Of course this is still a work in progress, and in fact this is not even an actual level in the game, but a prototype test version.
We have tons of ideas for the game, but obviously there is so much you can do in just 48 hours. And all the game engine, graphics, sound effects and music are done entirely by our group of 6 people.
You can also read the second part of this series of articles on how we created the videogame.
I’ll leave you with a collection of several pictures of our progress:
A very early version of our character Beat, and the final model that was later scanned and colored digitally
Early level designing and first prototype (which was actually a multiplayer game) – Click on the pictures to enlarge