Still Alive and With a Big Update

Long time no see folks, we should start off by explaining why it has been so long since a new blog update. Well truth be told, life is getting rather busy at this time of year for some of us, even though we have been working extremely hard on all our projects. Some of you may have noticed that I put out some little updates here and there via Twitter and Facebook, those are great sources for small updates that do not really need a blog update for.

On to some game news! Lets start off with Black Sun, first and foremost we have a ModDB and an IndieDB (their newly opened site) pages up and running, so if you are part of those communities then be sure to “watch” Black Sun on there, we could use the support. We have been working very hard on getting the engine up and running and recently running our very first stress test on actual Xbox 360 hardware with excellent results, in a nutshell let me say “lots of ships, smooth framerate”. Keep in mind that we do not have all our engine features implemented as well as it not being optimized for performance. Here’s a little sneak peek of what we had running during the stress test:

1024 ships @ ~4000 tris each, each ship applied with a test texture of 4096×4096 resoltuion running at ~55 FPS.

Off-screen pic taken showing only a fraction of the on-screen ships.

So far great results. We have much more done since that picture was taken about a month ago, more models being bult, ships being textured, etc. Still have quite someways until we can show off some actual in-game screenshots of the near final gameplay.

Next is Gravonaut. I’ve been putting my attention of Black Sun on hold for a bit so that I may finally get my focus back on Gravonaut. We’ve made some major improvements since our previous build, runs much better now, more levels, and our recent newly added feature of vertical gameplay! This adds a whole new level to the game, a feature that took some time to get working correctly but the results are worth it. The core features of the game are mainly complete, its just a matter of constructing levels now.

Vertical Gameplay!

As we are getting closer to releasing Gravonaut, we want to start spreading the word. We have a lovely Facebook page up and running and you can show your support by simply clicking “Like”. On there we have been posting new media before the website, so for the latest news on Gravonaut and to show your indie support, be sure to join the Facebook page.

That’s about it for this update, be sure to stay tuned to this site for some upcoming news in the next few weeks regarding some other projects we are doing on the side. As much as we love to, we really want to keep you guys informed and we do apologize for the lack up updates recently. To stay fully informed, be sure to follow us on Twitter and join us on the Nexus Facebook and Gravonaut Facebook.