First off, if you've been reading r.g.v.a. at all you'll probably know about it already: we are now back off CD and onto a cartridge format again. This means that you can kiss goodbye the redbook audio and the FMV intros and cutscenes and the interview with Uncle Eugene (although I could still do that as text, of course)... The good news is that it probably won't affect the gameplay too much; all that's really going to be cut is some bells-and-whistles. Fear not 'coz there are still going to be plenty of levels and cool new stuff in 2000 - I may do a few more algorithmically-generated backdrops for levels than I would have done if I'd had a shitload of space on the silver disk, but what the hey, I like that stuff anyway.
As regards the audio, you can still count on that being excellent, after all it *is* still gonna be by the same guys as did T2K's audio, and the cart size is likely to be considerably larger, so don't worry, it'll be top. Of course one side effect of all this is that we now already have an audio-CD of the D2K music, which will be made available much like the T2K CD. Also, I now have audio hooks linking the CD tracks to the game levels, so I'll lleave them in so that if you've got the CDROM, you can use the cart in conjunction with it and you'll get your redbook audio. I'm thinking of putting in a little edit screen which will allow you to use the tracks from *any* CD, so that you could set up the game to play with NIN or Floyd or whatever else you want. I think that'd be kinda cool.
Ruction no. 2 is that my artist has up and resigned from Atari right in the middle of the project, which as you can imagine is a bit of a pisser. We're looking around for new art talent at the moment, should be sorted in a couple of days hopefully. It's not as bleak as it seems, 'coz we have all the art finished for Classic and Plus, and the new guys can start fresh on 2000. One great thing that my artist gave me before he left was the finished version of the Robot Camel - it's *excellent*!
So, what's actually happening with the game? Well, 2K is fleshing out a lot more, the tile generator looks like it's going to work well with the game, I have six layers of parallax going at the moment, and an absolute shitload of objects in gamespace, and another shitload of projectiles and the resultant collision detect logic going, and yeah, it keeps that magic 60frames. The 2K equivalents of the main Defender enemies are in there - it was real easy to put them in with my new game engine, the control logic is probably about 1/10 of the size of the equivalent stuff in Plus. The Pods are particularly nice, as the Swarmers are now carried externally, orbiting around the Pod like electrons around an atom. You snuff the Pod and they all fly off and come after you. There'll be different kinds of Swarmers too in 2K, and as they're external you'll be able to see just what trouble each Pod holds before you open it, and hopefully be ready for the resultant hassles! It'll be kinda cool to have Pods with a mixed load of Swarmers...
Humanoids play a lot more of an active role in 2K. For a start they are going to be a lot more detailed, as with the vertically-scrolling play area, I can have all the game objects about twice as big as their Classic and Plus equivalents. The Humanoids jump gleefully and wave when you rescue them. Best of all, each successive Humanoid you collect dangles down in a chain under your ship, which looks really cool when you've got a lot of them up there. I intend to have different kinds of Humanoids too - at the moment the idea is that you'll have 'civilian' Humanoids, who will be like your classic Humanoid and passive; then 'soldier' Humanoids, who you'll want to pick up, as each one will carry a weapon which augments your firepower. Get a nice big chain of Soldiers and you'll be nicely beweaponed! A third Humanoid possibility is the 'General' Humanoid, who will be armed like a Soldier but also smart, so he'll aim and fire at enemies independantly. I may even give him the ability to 'command' any Soldier Humanoids you have and direct their fire, so you'll have quite a bit of AI on board.
As you know, I like to put nasty stuff in my games to take you by surprise, so how's this for an idea: the decoy Humanoid. What will happen is that occasionally a Lander will extrude a dummy Humanoid and go through the motions of abducting it. You will diligently streak to the scene of the crime, blow away the Lander and zoom to the rescue, failing to notice that the Humanoid in question looks *slightly* wrong. The moment you catch him, he'll begin *eating* his way up your chain of dangling refugees, killing as he goes; if you fail to dislodge him before he reaches your ship, it's dangling cloth window coverings....
Keeping your Humanoids alive will be a top priority for all you thumb-twitching space heroes. You see, whenever a Humanoid dies, he doesn't just disappear: he leaves behind a tombstone. These will be collideable, so they'll be a pain and obstruct clear flight near to the ground. Worst of all, should you lose *all* your Humanoids, and go to Hell, the tombstones will spew nasty ship-seeking ghosts whenever you're around. Hell's gonna be a bad place. Be sure and pack your asbestos undies...
Right, that's it for this time. I'm just about recovered from a particularly good party last night at the gaff of a couple of the Atari testers - I got absolutely hammered and had a splendid time. You know it's a good party when the cops show up.
Llater...
\ (:-) - Night after night, going round and round my brain, this dream is driving me insaaaaaaane... /