New Atari ST game, VergeWorld: Icarus is coming!

[RetroBones]

Hi all!

Just want to mention we're making this new Atari ST game, called VergeWorld: Icarus, a sci-fi shoot'em up/ racer in which you are a smuggler piloting an aircraft on a distant, desert planet ruled by a tyrannical corporation. This is just the tip of an iceberg, as we have very rich lore and cool gameplay ideas. The game is in development, but we got some recognition so far.

Well, if you're interested I'm going to post the updates, with the first one being the gameplay from Atari ST.

Video in the link below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG4nDzIEBIk

[swapd0]

Video not available...

[CiH]

I'm intrigued.

There's some Amiga proof of concept video footage around to give an idea what to expect.

[RetroBones]

Sorry folks, the previous link was faulty, let me provide you with the proper one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG4nDzIEBIk

[mlynn1974]

Interesting idea. The ground looks way too blocky to see the obstacles clearly and most of the journey is through a clear valley.

Is the intention for it to be a fractal landscape like the menu of Ooh Crikey What a Scorcher by The Lost Boys or a dot landscape?
That would be nice. At the moment it is really neither.

Are the dots above and below the spaceship sprite edge markers or a gun-sight indicator of some sort (like Afterburner)?

[farvardin]

I like the ship and the colors, it looks nice. The ground is a bit strange with the blocky parts, we'll see

[RetroBones]

Interesting idea. The ground looks way too blocky to see the obstacles clearly and most of the journey is through a clear valley.

Is the intention for it to be a fractal landscape like the menu of Ooh Crikey What a Scorcher by The Lost Boys or a dot landscape?
That would be nice. At the moment it is really neither.

Are the dots above and below the spaceship sprite edge markers or a gun-sight indicator of some sort (like Afterburner)?

The 'blockiness' comes from the way we generate the landscape, called voxels We continuously upgrade the engine, bear in mind this is the demo version The dots are supposed to evolve into the crosshair;)

[RetroBones]

I like the ship and the colors, it looks nice. The ground is a bit strange with the blocky parts, we'll see

Thanks! The blocky parts are called voxels, and it is the way of generating our landscape

[ST Graveyard]

Wow, voxel space on an ST? I remember it from comanche : maximum overkill on the pc. Thank you already for supporting the Atari ST. Looking forward to this and I will support you wholeheartedly on the Atari Legend website and youtube channel if you would like this. Btw, this looks and sounds amazing : https://youtu.be/c4tusUHuphg

Cheers.

[CiH]

Out of interest, can the voxel engine scale up the onscreen resolution if a faster cpu is detected. Say a 16 mhz 68000 for a Mega STE or 68030 for a Falcon or TT?

[StickHead]

Nice one, Retrobones! Always nice to see new developments on the ST. It reminds me of the flying sections in Captain Blood, only with voxels. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one!

[RetroBones]

Wow, voxel space on an ST? I remember it from comanche : maximum overkill on the pc. Thank you already for supporting the Atari ST. Looking forward to this and I will support you wholeheartedly on the Atari Legend website and youtube channel if you would like this. Btw, this looks and sounds amazing : https://youtu.be/c4tusUHuphg

Cheers.

Wow, all support is welcome! And it would be an honor to be supported by the Atari Legend! The same music will be featured in Atari version, we're now figuring out how to do it properly

[dma]

Oh, a great game concept and engine. Thanks for working on this!

[Cyprian]

RetroBones, your looks great.

just one observation, A500 version looks less blocky. Is it caused by a different method for generating a landscape?

[RetroBones]

Out of interest, can the voxel engine scale up the onscreen resolution if a faster cpu is detected. Say a 16 mhz 68000 for a Mega STE or 68030 for a Falcon or TT?

We've got this figured out on Amiga, with different rendering depending on the technical limitation oof different models. Hopefully we'll manage to do that on Atari as well.

[RetroBones]

RetroBones, your looks great.

just one observation, A500 version looks less blocky. Is it caused by a different method for generating a landscape?

The method is voxel-based in both versions, it's the rendering that needs adjusting to the technical capabilities of bare A500 and Atari ST. However, we're working on improving the engine.

[Cyprian]

RetroBones, is that github correct? https://github.com/kwahu/amiga_voxel_engine

[farvardin]

I like the ship and the colors, it looks nice. The ground is a bit strange with the blocky parts, we'll see

Thanks! The blocky parts are called voxels, and it is the way of generating our landscape

I've watched the latest video on your channel, on Macintosh, and it looks awesome. I don't know if you can come close to this on the ST, but we'll see

[RetroBones]

Hi there! We started VergeWorld devlog on Patreon. If you want to read some behind the scenes and know our workshop - our team members will prepare a post once a week. The next one is coming today!
https://www.patreon.com/posts/vergeworld-1-35593487

[Cyprian]

cool

[MM41]

We can't wait to see the evolution, well done

[RetroBones]

RetroBones, is that github correct? https://github.com/kwahu/amiga_voxel_engine

Yup. Guess we have to update it, though.

[RetroBones]

We'd like to announce that Mr. Gary Winnick, former LucasArts art department supervisor on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, co-creator of Maniac Mansion and Thimbleweed Park, as well as having worked on such iconic games as Rescue on Fractalus!, Defenders of Dynatron City and Star Wars, has decided to join our team!

You can visit his page and see his works for yourself: http://www.garyart.net/

Mr. Winnick will focus on the concepts, as well as creating some image art for VergeWorld project. To have such a game dev legend with us is an honor! Welcome aboard!

[Eero Tamminen]

Just a reminder, Hatari has a profiler: https://hatari.tuxfamily.org/doc/debugger.html

(It was used e.g. to optimize/rewrite Doom and DSP rcode for Falcon BadMood.)

Profiler is needed to get out last bits of performance...