OCTOBER UPDATE

We’ve been busy these last weeks, but not necessarily on the SHMUP Creator. We worked again for a big company on a cool project. It’s always frustrating because we can’t make progress on the SHMUP CREATOR while we work for someone else, but to be honest our contract was really interesting and we learnt a lot.
Then we took our summer holidays, in September :)
Now: back to work!

ASSETS MANAGEMENT
I wasn’t happy with the way users had to import 3D assets in the editor: you had to use an exporter to save a file from your 3D modeler in the Ogre3D format (.mesh).
Now, you can copy an .FBX in the asset directory of your game and it will appears at once in the Gamebox. You can immediately drag and drop it in the level and start to play. It’s quite simple and easy!
You can then modify any textures, meshes or sprites, and when you go back to the editor all the objects are updated!

BUGS, BUGS EVERYWHERE
We are testing every features of the game one by one.
Debugging can be excruciating: sometimes I spend ages on a simple bug. But most of the time, it can feel surprisingly good: I can feel the game and the editor becoming more stable and more polished everyday. I know more bugs are hiding everywhere, though…

WHAT’S NEXT?
There are a lot of features to test and debug : the bullets patterns editor, the start menu editor (which is a mess right now GUI-wise), the scoring system…
Then, there are features which are working well but which are too difficult to grasp for the user. Not because of the way they work, but because of the GUI and the way we are presenting the functionalities. We need to rework them.

We are making progress, the end is near, but there is so much to do….

3 Comments so far

  • Shaine • 2016/12/03 at 08:04

    I look forward to the release and further news!! Keep up the good work!

    Reply
  • Alex • 2017/01/07 at 06:44

    I too look forward to this, it’s EXACTLY what I need – just wanted to say I LOVED Fears on the Amiga, the level editor being one reason (though it has it’s limitations compared to the rest of the game), the other reasons being it ran silky smooth on my A1200 with a 68030 and extra ram, and also I found the game VERY atmospheric (some found it lacked atmosphere, not me – I played through and completed the whole game and want a sequel haha) oh man that game brings back memories.

    Reply
  • NetOne • 2017/01/15 at 18:55

    Kind of depressing seeing this, but also awesome.

    Depressing because I am an amateur dev who spent 2 years figuring out how to program and learn complicated maths to develop a simple editor to make my shmup and it will never be as good as this….

    but awesome cos I wanna see what I can do with yours……

    Reply