In the summertime...

"Summertime... and the livin' is easy."

It sure looks like it when we look outside our windows. The sun is shining and today we had a great lunch outdoors. And when the weather is hot, we eat a refreshing ice cream or two.


Summertime = ice cream time!

But how's the game development life at Xform headquarters during the summer months?
Well, in fact the same as every other month of the year: we're still very busy creating cool new games!

Allthough some people will leave the office for one are more weeks to enjoy their well deserved holiday, it doesn't mean that there's no development at all during these weeks.




Summertime = game development time!

As you may know Xform is a small game company. There are no big sub teams. Our artists and programmers need to work together real close to get their game up and running.
So how do we manage to continue our game development when, for example, programmer A is on holiday? You would say that programmer B could take care of his work, but this simply isn't possible, because this programmer B has its own project and tasks to work on.

This means we need to schedule our tasks more efficiently. We schedule it in such a way that there is always enough to do and we don't have to wait until someone is back. For a programmer this means he need to make all elements tweakable before he leaves. In that case the artist can try out and see how his new character or car looks in game.
And when this artist goes on holiday he leaves behind enough (mockup) art for the programmer to implement. Even if the art isn't final yet, the programmer can still make it functional.

So, enough talking about us working really hard. What do we have to offer for you in the near future?
A summary:
- A car game with lots of explosions
- A racing game with lots of cars
- A car game with lots of destruction
- A sniper game without cars, but with lots of destruction

As you can see there are some really nice 3D games on their way to enter your web browser! :)
So keep on checking them at our Facebook Page!

Cheers,
Shirley

It's almost here!

Hi all,

You might have seen the top secret preview video, but if you didn't....... we're working on Burnin' Rubber 5!!! The ultimate and final part of the Burnin' Rubber trilogy. We're packing this game with loads of cars, tracks, challenges and of course.....explosions!
It'll have the most explosion density of all Xform games, and that's saying a lot!!

Explosions!

The past week I've been defining all the challenges and vehicle settings in huge text file. It's a lot of work and quite boring actually, but a crucial part of the games balance. Next week we'll start testing Burnin' Rubber 5 and no doubt we'll find a lot if issues (and bugs of course) with these initial settings. The following weeks are spend on tweaking these settings until we've found a good balance between the game's difficulty and progression.

And more explosions!

Another task we need to focus on next week is the balancing of the weapons. We added a lot of new ones and some of them are completely insane! Like the "Cargo Rocket", which clings to objects and enemies and lifts them up in the air before exploding. We already had a lot of fun just messing around with this weapon!

You guys just have to wait patiently for a few more months while we're trying to create the most awesome (and free) online action game! Just hang on!

- Matt

Creator of worlds!!!

Hello everyone!

Today I am going to tell you a little bit more about the upcoming sniper game! It is in full development now. Enemies are spawning like crazy all around the level trying to destroy our base, looking for cover and all. The weapons are getting done quickly and the level is ready for the alpha version.

I am going to show you the level where it takes place, from scratch till now! First we decided that the game will take place in a city. Then we are going to mockup the level: get the floor done and using simple boxes as buildings or other big things in the city.

Step 1: Mockup level

When that is done, I am going to replace the boxes by actual buildings with a building texture of course. Now I’m going to check if the buildings are not scattered around the whole level. So we are going to make groups of buildings, high office buildings near each other, old buildings with the old ones, etc etc.

Step 2: Adding buildings and textures to the world

After this we're going to make the city more interesting. Adding some “misc objects”, like power cables, trees, roadblocks and military stuff.
When this is done we're going to make the cover positions for our enemies, they have to get a chance to take cover so now and then... The purple stuff you see on the image below are the cover positions for the enemies.

Step 3: Adding misc objects and enemy cover positions

When those things are done, we are going to make a light map. I’m not going to explain this whole process, because it can be read in an earlier blog of Matt. I’ll just show the final result:

Step 4: Final Result

That’s all for now!

Hails! Eugène