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Dark Guardian
Episode 1: Unknown Enemy
Source: WWW.OMCGAMES.COM
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System: Atari Jaguar
Type: Shooter
Release Date: 4th Qtr 2001
Medium: Cartridge
Number of players: 1
Rating: Teen (13+)
Difficulty: Moderate
Genre: Sci-Fi
Plot: You are Clyde Witiker a professor of classical literature, who is
unwillingly caught in a struggle that's larger than he is.
NOTES:
I'm sure the first thing someone is going to ask me is "why this game when
you have The Assassin and Eternal Darkness on the plate?" Well, there's no
easy answer to this question. I toyed with this question for a long time,
and the only way I can explain it is to say that this game is space
filler. I was getting tired of people saying that we weren't going to get
anything done. Especially considering the amount of work I've done on the
Jag up until this point. To some degree I can't blame people. But on the
other hand, I've released bits of work and code to various people that at
least shows I'm doing what I need to do on my end. So to calm the masses,
I decided to do something quick so that I can prove once and for all that
we aren't some fly by night group who is only looking for attention. Let
the announcement at Jagfest prove otherwise.
What really inspired me was that I was having a conversation with Kain about
shooters and he was talking about the possibilites of doing one. At first I
thought it was a kinda neat idea, but after a few days of stewing the ideas
just started bombarding me. It was a freaky experience because things just
started falling into place. I really owe it to Kain for that. What I found
really compelling about the idea was that it was actually doable. And more
importantly, doable in a short amount of time. For some reason that very
notion was reason enough to do it.
But the biggest problem is that shooters have been done to death over the
years. They come in all sizes, so I had to find something that was original,
yet had the possibility to keep the player around for many hours. The trick was
to avoid gimmicks. Kind of like Mars Matrix. It's a good game and all, but to
unlock (purchase) extras you had to play an insane amount of games through the
same levels. This is classical shooter gameplay, and I take nothing away from
Mars Matrix, because it does what it's supposed to do. The best model I had to
work with was Radiant Silvergun on the Saturn. It's one of my favorites in
recent years and really has not been topped, but then again Treasure are the
masters of the genre. I am sure some of you Jagheads have not had a chance to
play that one. I highly recommend it. It's the only classical shooter I know of
that had experience levels. And they were well used.
So that was the idea I started with. Then it was just a matter of taking that
idea and running with it. I guess my next influence was Escape Velocity on the
Mac. That game is awesome. I still play it to this day. But it's more of a
slower paced game because you've got trading and searching for good parts for
your ship and things of that nature. Also, the story can be a little drab, but
some of the story plugins were pretty
awesome.
After lots of time going over the things that had been done, I came to the
conclusion that I would go for something that was a cross between mission
based and action with an interesting story thrown in for good measure. The
days of brainstorming produced what you are looking at now...Dark Guardian.
I believe i will be something different, and not just from a Jaguar standpoint,
but from a gaming standpoint. At least that's our goal. I decided to add simple
cinemas that were in the same vein as the cinemas in the NES classics Ninja
Gaiden and Golgo 13. There was just something cool about them. As you can see
from the screenshots we are doing them almost the same way, except the cinema
window is a bit larger in Dark Guardian. I figure it'll be something different
and it'll help advance the plot visually. The only real question is whether or
not we can do much with only 2MB of cartridge space.
I think I've said enough for the time being. Keep checking back because I'll be
doing updates as we make progress with the game. Hope you guys enjoy it.
MORE NOTES: July 14, 2001 by James Garvin
When I work on stuff, I generally pick a bit of music which gets me in the
mood to write, program, study, etc. Sometimes the music I am in the mood
for can dictate what kind of work I put out, and for this game for some
reason I've been listening to the Secret Of Evermore soundtrack. It's an
awesome piece of work from Jeremy Soule. I gotta give my man some props.
Worked some magic on the SuperNES way back in the day. But it calms me for
the long stints in programming I've been doing these days. The interesting
part is that this isn't the sound I want for the game. I did find a nice
piece that works for the title screen, but the rest of the game is pretty
much up in the air. Though, for cut-scenes I would love to have some
orchestrated work kinda like Secret Of Evermore. If I could keep the size
down, it would be great.
I've been on the lookout for a musician, because the task of creating
music is way over my head. I do have an idea of what I want things to
sound like, but finding someone to realize this is going to be tough as a
certain level of musical diversity is needed. Can't have a musician who is
afraid to "funk it up" when necessary, or bring it down to a "classical"
level.
I have to apologize to everyone about the screenshots, but I haven't been
working on that area in the past couple of weeks. I have really been
focusing on the gameplay aspects. What good are graphics without great
gameplay? In particular, it's been all about the movement system. I had an
idea of how I was going to pull it off in the beginning, but after running
some tests using an actual Jaguar pad, I realized that it was not going to
work. In the end what I opted for was using the Pro-Pad to its fullest. In
this new scheme you move by holding the R-Trigger. When turning you can
only turn within a 180 degree area in front of the ship. Which means
tapping the button won't instantaneously turn you around. The hardest part
to all of this is instituting the 24-point movement instead of the
traditional 8-point. In other words, in 8-point you have the following
directions: north, northeast, east, southeast, south, southwest, west and
northwest. In 24-point you get a greater degree of precision. It has taken
quite a bit of work to get it functioning the way I wanted it to, and even
now I'm still having some problems, but it does do 4 point correctly.
As the person plays through the game, they will have the option of purchasing
different ships. This is why I have tried so hard to provide enough factors to
make ships that you purchase differ from one another. But it does make
purchasing ships an integral part of the game. Because sometimes power isn't
necessary, maybe you will need a bit of speed to avoid asteroids. I had
originally planned to have a sliding scale like Panzer Dragoon Saga on the
Saturn, but this would really make it kind of worthless to buy ships, and it
would be hard to store all of those values with the limited space I had to save
games. I am still working on how many ships you will actually be able to
purchase, but at the moment it's 32.
Whether or not we actually have that many is still up in the air. One bad thing
I had to deal with was when setting up the save file locations, I made an error
in the byte count so I thought I was using less space than I was. I had
originally planned on having 3 save slots and the high score, but in the end, I
was only able to have 2 save slots. Luckily, that's more than one, not a real
reason to be upset. Especially since I only have 128 bytes to work with...
Though, if there is a solution for a larger save space, I might jump on it if
the price is reasonable enough.
MORE NOTES: July 21, 2001 by James Garvin
Not much going on this week. I have spent more time than I will admit to just
trying to get the movement algorithim working correctly. I am fortunate that I
was able to be successful. There is still a lot of work to be done on it, which
includes adding a strafing button. I've only added four points to the movement,
but after I get the screen syncing finished, I'm going to add the other points.
With adding the other points, I'm going to have to add ship rotation. I'm not
looking forward to that. The good thing is after that's completed I can finally
add shooting. Doesn't that sound fun?
I have to admit that working on a shooter is a totally different beast compared
to working on an RPG. In a lot of ways it's easier. I can't remember getting as
far when I was working on The Assassin on a regular basis. There were a lot of
issues I had to deal with, the most difficult would be perspective. I don't
have to worry about it as much in Dark Guardian...or Eternal Darkness for that
matter. This means that moving around and graphical placement is pretty
straight forward. Not to mention that Story isn't the forefront of the game.
Not saying that there isn't a story going on, but you have to worry less about
plot points and things of that nature. Honestly, it really makes life easy. I
can spend more time working on the game than anything else.
I spent quite a bit of time this week working on some of the visual aspects of
the game. After looking at the same screens over and over, I felt like it
needed a change. I have even decided to change the character set because the
one I'm using now didn't turn out like I wanted it to. But in all of my
experimenting I wasn't able to do the game justice. It's hard to say, but I
lack any type of computer graphics talent. It's depressing... So because I
screwed everything up, there will be no screens this week. Maybe Andrew will be
able to correct most of it. But because of it there have been a couple of
decisions about things that we were able to make. The big one is the fact that
the player will be able to toggle the radar window on or off. Because of the
size of it, there have been some issues about whether or not it gets in the way
of gameplay. To solve this problem I felt like it would be a good move to allow
the player to turn it off as they saw fit. This means the game will look a bit
different the next time I post screens, which will be either this weekend or
early next week.
MORE NOTES: July 29, 2001 by James Garvin
Another week has gone by and though I made some accomplishments, I still have a
long way to go. I've spent a lot of time searching for the right MODs to use,
or tweeking the movement. I still haven't gotten shots working correctly, and
there are still a lot of movement issues that need to be fixed. I had prepped
myself for adding character rotation, but I'm a bit hesitant for some reason. I
think the biggest issue is that the rotation routine I have does some weird
things to the sprite when in it's normal position. I'm not sure if I can handle
it since the ship is already ugly, and adding more warping to it (due to size
more than anything else) would just make matters worse. I have to come to some
conclusion this week for sure, but right now I'm not sure about it. This just
adds to the list of things that I need to do and up until this point I've been
rather unorganized about it. I'm going to start keeping a task chart for myself
to keep me a little more focused.
I spent a good portion of Satuday trying to fix this stuttering in the cinema
sequence. I'm not really sure why it's there to be honest. I think I'm gonna
re-write the whole thing. I don't want to do it, but it's better than sifting
through it trying to find out why it happens to begin with. The funny part is
that this is the only section where it happens. No other scrolling section of
the game suffers from the same issue. Luckily, I can turn it off while I work
on other parts of the game. I think I'll look into it fully after I settle the
rotation problem, and get the player actually shooting. I guess the best part
was that I added a little filler music piece to the sequence. It's not bad,
actually, but I would like something a little less dramatic.
One thing I think I'm going to do with the game is add a language option to it.
So far the other languages I'm considering are Japanese and German. German is
relatively easy as it can use basically the same character set as English.
Can't say the same for Japanese. But it should be easy enough to get working. I
might work on it as I get tired of looking at the same code. Heh, heh. I had
originally decided only to go with Japanese, but after some thought I figured
German would be good to try also. Heh, the only problem is that I don't know
any German. It's times like this that I wish my fiancee was still around
considering her Major in College was German Literature. Still, it's something
that should please those who don't speak English very well.
I was having dinner with a friend of mine tonight and we were talking about how
some new SNK game is going to be numbered because there were only going to be
50 copies made. I thought that was such a cool idea that I have decided that
Dark Guardian will be done the same way. The first few copies will be numbered.
And this number will be present in the game somewhere. I'm not sure where at
the moment, but I'm thinking on the title screen, and possibly a sticker on the
box or manual. So when I open pre-orders for the game, it's going to be on a
first come-first serve basis. I'll let everyone know how this "Special Edition"
will be handled in the next few weeks.
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