HEAVEN VARIANT - Now With Transforming Robots!

[Xenobite]

looks awesome <3

[zanrai]

Godamn, you guys are rocking this **** man, totally tearing it up. This game needs to get published, I'm so ready to buy this. Your music, gameplay, voice acting, SFX, VFX, design direction- it's all ****ing 10's across the board.
I'm showing this today to everyone in my studio, this is just too badass.

Do you guys know when you will release?

Haha, that's very kind of you to say, man. I'm glad you're digging it. We still have a lot of work ahead of us. There are a number of rough edges we need to sort out and as far as a release it really depends, but we're tentatively shooting for sometime in 2012 -if- we can manage to work really hard and get things ready.

Thanks Xenobite! We appreciate all the <3

And @evilmrfrank, I'm glad you noticed the bsod! When I added it I was worried no one would notice it with all the smoke everywhere. XD

One thing that we just recently got working that isn't in the video (that I wish we could have squeezed in at the time) are death animations. Different weapons cause the enemies to die in different ways (which logically makes sense, but shoot 'em ups don't do it a lot). We have your standard vanilla explosion (and if that enemy is small there's a % chance to toss the enemy vehicle) This particular death is what you see in the video. But other weapons can cause the enemies to have electrical problems and just turn off in midair, flame weapons can cause enemies to burst into flames and crash, and we have a special system that allows for a number of different ship specific deaths, in the case of those little fighters in the video (and our tests) the enemy pilot ejects. We also have a special animation for melee weapons, too, and it involves slicing enemies in half. :] And its all controlled by the weapon you're using, so some weapons won't leave anything behind and just cause explosions, while other weapons like a flame thrower primarily (and logically) cause firey deaths. It makes sense. Alternatively, the little police cars do different things, too, like spinning out if killed by an electrical weapon, or catching fire. The animations are all defined per ship, so it leaves a lot of wiggle room to cause different types of deaths per vehicle. How different everything will end up being in the end will probably largely depend on how much time we have, but its looking good so far. For instance, the flying ships right now when they catch on fire explode and drop to the ground. The police cars when caught on fire go into an overload, catching on fire, quickly glowing white and then exploding. It sounds convoluted and minor, but its cool i promise!

It's likely we'll highlight that in a video next time, but we'll see. It makes shooting things a lot more fun when you see them reacting to what you're killing them with, and it just makes things feel a little more lively.

[seenooh]

Haha, you guys are rockin hard! Love the updates.

[LordNelson7]

Cool models!

[Tom Shannon]

Fantastic! If you can keep up that level of pacing and fun through an entire arcade length game, you'd have a real winner. The BSOD is fantastic.

[White Paper Games]

Wow! Not checked out this thread for a while, loads of cool new things. Really did a good job with this project!

[juguefre]

when will be available for purchase?

[zanrai]

Thanks a lot, everyone! I certainly hope we'll be able to keep the pace, it really boils down to making crap happen all the time in the background, which I think we can accomplish as long as everywhere the player goes is varied with movement or blows up. One of those is better than the other! >

Right now we don't have a firm release date penned in, but we're aiming for sometime this year if all things go swimmingly. Fingers crossed. I'll try to keep this thread posted on any little updates we do, I want to do less massive updates and more small ones so, yeah, I'll hope you'll continue to watch us. :]

[windytree]

I don't even want to think of how many hours you guys have put into this. The attention to detail is absolutely amazing, I have no doubt that with the the proper marketing this game would be a big hit. I want to play it just looking at it.

Also, your voice actors are doing a really good job.

[zanrai]

Thanks so much for the kind words! We've put a lot of time into getting things into shape, and continue to do so, our team hopes people will enjoy playing it!

[zanrai]

New Weapons Video! (August 2012) :

Hey everyone! What this video primarily addresses is our new weapons and how those weapons can interact (see: kill) enemies. Outside of enemies exploding or getting tossed around from an explosion, certain weapons can cause enemy ships to short out and power down, burst into flame, or on rare occasions the enemy pilot might try to eject. Alternatively, you could just use our Energy Blade and slice everything in half (with a percent chance for the enemy pilot to fall out, which is ridiculous but oh-so satisfying when high in the air, haha). Our system also allows for special animations per vehicle, so like the police cars can spin out and have special animations like that. The way our weapons work is that they're attached to a rotating "weapon axle" and you can adjust the firing angle to a set of predefined directions. Generally, the more firepower you have in one direction, the less the gun can move, and typically these weapons aren't very powerful. So weapons that at first glance look less useful tend to have higher stopping power and more freedom in taking down enemies from weird angles and strategic positions.

[jak_carver]

Freaking awesome guys, you're rocking it man!

Keep it up- when do you guys plan on releasing?

[seenooh]

I demand that soundtrack to be on iTunes. I WANT IT!!

Impressive guys!!

[aRny]

wow. first time ive seen this and I must say, its brilliant! Great work guys

[zanrai]

Thanks a lot guys! Our team really appreciates all the well wishes. We're trying are hardest to get everything nice. We're just now entering our environment phase to start making our levels prettier, something we hadn't really devoted too much time, too. We're still pinning down a release date, but hopefully sooner than later. :]

lol @ the soundtrack. Hey, if enough people want the soundtrack, I'll consider some kind release at some point. I'm just happy people are diggin' my tunes. I appreciate it.

[zanrai]

Hey guys, we're up on Steam Greenlight! I hope you'll help us out by voting for us if you're interested! We'd really appreciate it.

Click right here to vote for Heaven Variant on Steam Greenlight!

[jak_carver]

voted for ya! I'm dejockamo on Steam!

go for da win guys!

telling everyone bout this friggin great game!

[zanrai]

Thanks a lot, man! We really appreciate it! Getting those votes is tough!!

[stevelois]

WOW, love the last video

Remind me of old arcade games when I was a Teen but with current music, visuals, effects, etc !

Good luck

[seenooh]

Just voted for you guys! You deserve it. I wish I could do more...

[zanrai]

WOW, love the last video

Remind me of old arcade games when I was a Teen but with current music, visuals, effects, etc !

Good luck

Thank you! That's -exactly- the kind of response what we're hoping for!!

Just voted for you guys! You deserve it. I wish I could do more...

Thanks!!! The most you can do for us is vote and tell anyone else you're friends with. Thanks for voting for us, it helps us inch our way toward Steam. :]

[bauriema]

I love this kind of game. I'm going to vote right away!

[jak_carver]

get this on Steam, PSN, and XBLA- I want to buy already


do you guys need any play testers or anything? If so, please PM me (would be so awesome!)

[zanrai]

Thanks for the vote Bauriema!

@jak - :] We're still testing things on our own for now, but if we do end up needing beta testers I'll give you a holler later down the line, or post on the here on the forum about it.

Thanks for the votes everyone, we still need more, so if you have any friends that might be interested (and you like what we're doing), please pass our name or our link along to your friends or a forums you peruse! We really appreciate all the help you guys have already given us! :]

[Schwarzleben]

Up Voted. Best wishes to you.

[jak_carver]

If you guys havent already- get a kickstarter going!

[zanrai]

Thanks for the vote Schwarzleben!!

If you guys havent already- get a kickstarter going!

lol. I know, I know!! I'm really considering it. I was hoping I could get distribution stuff (*cough* Steam *cough*) squared away before hand, but if Greenlight keeps going the way it is, maybe I'll consider taking the plunge earlier. I still have to think about it a little, but I really want to. It'd help a lot with little expenses that keep popping up. >_<

[zanrai]

Here's a new little screen of our docks area. I actually just added a "Supply and Distribution" sign on that overhead arch, so I guess this image is now out of date! haha. But you can also see some of our edge detection post process shaders in action, too. It looks really cool in motion, and because our texturing style is so cartoony it has a painterly quality to it. It helps us define our retro animation aesthetic all while making enemies more easily visible. I guess I can post a little progress shot after this to show the newer area with the minor alterations I've made to it.



Edit: Here's the new version with new post processing effects, some wip lighting, and new signs and meshes:

[zanrai]

Hey everybody, we have a new video up! I hope you'll take a look!

[Spoof]

Looking good

[zanrai]

Thank you very much! :]