It’s official - Send More People is moving on to bigger, better, greener pastures. We have a new website, which is soon to be sendmorepeople.com. Head on over and you can read about our recently finished game, Shaped (see image below as a teaser.)
Never fear - we haven’t given up on Drift. But in light of our recent experience working in 2D, eric and I have been thinking we might revise the the project. Either we’ll hold off for a while until he and I have a better understanding of 3D design… or we might remake the game into some sort of simpler project. Eitherway, not to worry - Drift is our passion project and we wont abandon it.
Check us out at the new Send More People website. See you after the jump.
Mostly, in Skyrim.
But I have also been working on the voxel-system which should make pretty procedurally-generated asteroids and make the game run really fast. Still in its infant stages (see below), but it’s coming along nicely. Our plan is to have that all up and running by the new year. Here’s to New Years Resolutions! …Right?!
Stay tuned Driftaz!
- Eric
Hey Drifters,
Eric here, just wanted to let you know I am hard at work on figuring out a voxel system thingy that will dramatically increase the size of planetary bodies and performance. Imagine flying your spaceship through massive, procedurally-generated asteroids, moons, and even planets if we’re feeling crazy. It’s a formidable task but it will be done, I promise. Meanwhile, Derek is keeping busy with aesthetic, musical, and gameplay improvements and polish so the pre-alpha will start to become far more enjoyable/comprehensible. We’re also going to put together a little tutorial video soon.
Stand by for launch,
- Eric
We intend to keep our Pre-Alpha Web-player online for the time being - free to play - until we’re ready to start charging for our releases. This means that you, the user, get free access to the product and get to give us feedback on where the game needs to go. Seems to be a successful model for the indie game scene, and frankly we’re just thrilled to have our work seen by as many people as we can.
I spent the evening polishing up the pre-alpha to be just a touch more user accessible upon loading. There’s a pre-fab ship, ready to use upon opening, so the player doesn’t have to figure out how to build his ship before he can fly around. I’ve repaired that god-awful mining animation and put a hand on the screen to signal to the player that he/she is in “interact” mode. Through little things like this, I hope to make it so the average person who hits the site doesn’t bounce away in frustration 2 seconds later.
Sooner rather than later, though, we’re going to have to master Blender well enough to make nice-looking meshes instead of boxy approximations. Animations, too, are on the horizon. All this means that we’re going to want to include someone on the team with real artistic talent… or grow it ourselves!
Eric and I are both deeply satisfied with how far this little experiment has come. We enjoy it enough to dedicate long hours after work and school and even throw our 8am-6pm Saturdays into the ring! What a fulfilling project.
Eric and I have been busy coding away and we’ve managed to cobble together a pre-alpha build of Drift. You can play it here. Leave comments!
Though far, far, from being complete we’ve included the first glimmerings of what will be, in the future, brilliantly shining components of the game. Some of these are:
- Mass for objects - hit an asteroid and you’ll send it spinning, and visa versa.
- Working ship parts - sit in your pilots char, grab a joystick, flip through a monitor control panel.
- build anywhere - slap on enough thrusters and you’ll be able to pilot even an asteroid.
- And more.
The game is admittedly rough and somewhat… shall we say, obtuse? in showing how things work. This will of course change over time. For now, please take an opportunity to try an early build of Drift. And give us your thoughts!
Hey listeners… for so we many now truly call you. Eric and I bit the bullet and went and registered for ourselves a podcast hosting service. Now you can download an RSS feed of us talking, and enjoy that. Copy this URL into Winamp, iTunes, or your favorite podcast hosting client: http://sendmorepeople.podbean.com/feed/
Please to enjoy!
Derek
asafpol11 asked: Hey, I have a few questions. 1. How many hours do you work on the game each day? 2. Are you going to sell the game?
Hours per day varies, somedays all day. Yes we are going to start selling preorders/early versions as soon as we have it in presentable form.
