firelight

Recent Models - Gat Gun

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 2:01 AM 0 comments

Recent Models - Enemy 1

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 2:00 AM 0 comments

Recent Models - Cart

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 1:41 AM 0 comments

Recent Models - Building

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 1:38 AM 0 comments

H.R. GIGER

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:10 AM 0 comments

Giger Work

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:01 AM 0 comments

Giger

Hans Ruedi Giger (born at Chur, Grisons canton, February 5, 1940) is an Academy Award-winning Swiss painter, sculptor, and set designer best known for his design work on the film Alien.

Work

Giger's Alien design, inspired by his earlier painting Necronom IV, for the film Alien.Giger's Alien design, inspired by his painting Necronom IV, earned him an Oscar in 1980. His fourth published book of paintings, titled Necronomicon (followed by Necronomicon II in 1985), continued his rise to international prominence, as did the frequent appearance of his art in the magazine Omni. Giger is also well known for artwork on a number of popular records, including Emerson Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery, Celtic Frost's To Mega Therion, Dead Kennedys' Frankenchrist, Debbie Harry's Koo Koo and Carcass's Heartwork.

Other works

Giger has created furniture designs, particularly the Harkonnen Capo Chair for an unproduced movie version of the novel Dune that was originally slated to be directed by Alejandro Jodorowski. Many years later, David Lynch directed the film, using only extremely limited rough ideas from Giger and Jodorowski. Giger had wished to work with Lynch, as he had said that Lynch's film Eraserhead was the closest thing to portraying Giger's art in film (even including the films that Giger himself had worked on), as cited in one of Giger's Necronomicon books.

Giger has applied his biomechanical style to interior design, and several "Giger Bars" sprang up in Tokyo, New York, and his native Switzerland, although most of the bars have since closed. His art has greatly influenced tattooists and fetishists worldwide. Ibanez guitars has released an H.R. Giger signature series; the Ibanez ICHRG2, an [[Ibanez Iceman]], features the work "NY City VI", and the Ibanez RGTHRG1 has the work "NY City XIX" printed on it.

Giger also designed an elaborate microphone stand for Jonathan Davis, lead singer of the band Korn.

Computer games

Dark Seed and its sequel, Dark Seed II, both adventure games for the PC, Amiga, and the Amiga CD32, were published by Cyberdreams. The games were also released for the PlayStation and Saturn in Japan.
Giger is often referenced in pop culture and especially in works of the science fiction and cyberpunk genres. Novelist William Gibson (who wrote an early script for Alien³) seems particularly fascinated, presenting in Virtual Light a minor character, Lowell, with New York XXIV tattooed across his back. As well, Yamazaki, a secondary character in Idoru specifically describes the buildings of nanotech Japan as Giger-esque.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:01 AM 0 comments

Stunt Planes

Here i am looking into types of movement of planes. i want quite a traditional style of plane, nothing too out there!! however i want the moves to be pretty cool to compensate that, i hope by researching into almost impossible stunts that planes can do, i will try and incorporate this into my game play, something different for shmups.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 6:35 AM 0 comments

Road Rash On Genesis

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 6:09 PM 0 comments

Hit The Road Running!

'Hit the road running' is an on rails shooter like any other but its based in the real world. The idea behind the game is that aliens are trying to take over the world and the humans have to fight for there world back.

I've never seen this type of back drop on a shmup before and I wanted a quite unique style. There could become issues if I was to make it into a game of how it would scroll, but I could use a kind of Road Rash type game play to combat that.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 2:00 AM 0 comments

Bubbles - POP!

Bubbles is based as an underwater world with bubbles being the main theme. The main concept is based on any normal top down, on rails shooter but with a bubble theme.

The main character plays a bar of dove soap and has two multi-whitening toothpaste guns mounted on the side. The toothpaste guns fire toothpaste at the enemy which are Big Bubbles. The enemy actually use there bubble nature to shoot bubbles too, this also ties in with bubble theme.

Bubbles are also used in this game as obstacles, the idea being the player would have to navigate around the obstacles whilst trying to shoot the enemy.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 1:35 AM 0 comments

Lylat Wars

Star Fox 64 known as Lylat Wars in Australia and Europe (due to trademark issues), is a video game for the Nintendo 64 console. It was released in Japan on April 27, 1997, in North America on July 1, 1997, and in Europe on October 20, 1997. It was later ported to the China-only iQue on November 21, 2003. It is the second game in Nintendo's Star Fox series, and the first to be released on the Nintendo 64. It is also a confirmed title for download on the Wii's Virtual Console.

The planned second game in the series for the SNES, Star Fox 2, was scrapped due to the upcoming release of the Nintendo 64, but some of its features were used in Star Fox 64, such as all range mode. It was the first game to introduce support for the Rumble Pak.[2] The game received positive ratings from reviewers who praised its smooth animation, detailed visuals, and use of multiple game play paths.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 8:30 AM 0 comments

More on Shoot 'em up's

A shoot-em-up is a computer and video game genre where the player has limited control of their character or machine (usually a jet fighter or spaceship) and the focus is almost entirely on annihilation of their enemies. Almost all shoot 'em ups display the player's score on a score counter, a feature not commonly found in recent videogame genres. While the genre can have 3D graphics, the gameplay is almost exclusively in a linear, 2D style. The genre arguably started in the arcades with Space Invaders, and has experienced numerous different games in many formats. Popularity expanded with the addition of two-player simultaneous cooperative modes starting the mid-1980s. There are now several sub-genres that have their own particular gameplay characteristics. Shooters have a large following today, most notably in Japan, and many titles use the Internet through online ranking systems.

The genre is occasionally abbrevated to shmup; other common nicknames for the genre include arcade shooter, twitch shooter, space shooter, and sometimes simply just shooter. Sometimes non-shoot 'em ups are described as "shooters", particularly because of the extensive amount of gunplay involved in the game. Light gun shooters are commonly referred to as shooters, because it is the primary action involved. Similarly, first-person shooters are also referred to similarly for the same reasons. While some shoot'em ups can be referred to as rail shooters, this term is an over-arching concept that can apply to interactive movies, light gun games, and action games.

The Word

The word "shmup" first originated in the British C64 magazine, Zzap 64, in 1985. They created a glossary of words they invented, which included the word shmup (they also used the word "Aardvark" for "Arcade Adventures", though this wasn't absorbed into common games parlance like shmup). The magazine was around during the C64's lifetime, during the 1980s and early 1990s. Various magazine scans are available online, proving this point.

Fixed shooter

Fixed shooters represent the bulk of the earliest shoot 'em up games. They have the most simplistic premises and the most simplistic controls, especially in terms of aiming. They are characterized by a static environment and a static number of enemies per level, although this stipulation does not preclude each level having a different number or enemies or a different setting, as is the case with Midway's Gorf.

Single screen shooters

A single screen shooter, also known as its generic fixed shooter or gallery shooter typically only allows players their one or two-dimensional position on the screen. Single screen shooters are basically the oldest popular type of shooters, and represent the bulk of shoot 'em ups from 1977 through 1983. One of the most popular games of all time, Space Invaders, falls into this sub-genre. Early single screen shooters allowed only one-dimensional movement, while later titles allowed two-dimensional movement, but without rotation. Enemies usually form in a gallery, and the game setup is most often in a vertical orientation. Unlike other types of shooters, the gameplay involves eliminating every enemy on the screen in order to complete the current round or level. Typically, the number of enemies remains constant through each level, only the speed and number of projectiles fired increase in each level.

Tube Shooters

Tube shooters comprises games where players move forward through a "tube", essentially a 2D scrolling shooter plane rolled into a cylinder or extended to a three dimensional volume. Movement is usually restricted to the ring formed by the edge of the curved plane. This is considered more of a niche variety of shooter, appearing mostly in the early 1980s. The reason for this is because, this type of shooter came at a time when arcade hardware had not progressed enough to allow full three-dimensional movement. This type of game is a pseudo-simulation of that. Recent games to use this type of gameplay are Tempest 2000, its sequel Tempest 3000 and freeware Torus Trooper from ABA Games.
Example tube shooters include Tempest, Gyruss and Tube Panic.

Run and Gun Games

Run and gun games, a hybrid of the shoot 'em up and platform genres, are a genre commonly confused with shoot 'em ups. Run and gun games are popular and distinguishable in their own right and are considered a sub-genre of shoot'em up games. These titles are multi-directional as they mandate that the players fire in many different directions. Titles in this genre are characterized by the same amount of intense action as other shoot 'em ups, but with added abilities for evasion, such as jumping and ducking. As the name would suggest, the action revolves around evading enemies (running) and destroying enemies (gunning). Unlike most shoot 'em ups, these games' focus on individual people are presented on a much smaller scale, although the games could allow the use of vehicles. Run and guns, like other games, can be shown from a side or top-down perspective, or both like Super Contra. Typically the side-view games use many more platform game elements than their overhead brethren; they require the player to jump over pits and obstacales. The top-down variants are often referred to as overhead shooters.

3D Shooters

3D shooters (also known as Forward scrolling shooters or Rail shooters) pertain to the same gameplay elements that occur in a standard shooter (hordes of enemies, obstacles, bosses, moveable protagonist ship) but occur in a three-dimensional environment. Because the player does not have ultimate choice in where the protagonist moves, these games are often known as rail shooters, although that term eclipses a number of genres. They generally offer the most variety of any type of shoot'em up, composed of levels that contain massive differences in environment, resulting in varied gameplay. For example, external areas (such as space fields) tend to focus on shooting action, while interior areas tend to focus on navigation and collision avoidance. Ship speed is more of a factor in this type than others, as many obstacles have to be correctly timed to be avoided. However, the main gameplay difference from other types of shooters is that targeting must occur within a two-dimensional area, where in other types it is strictly one-dimensional. Gameplay is usually presented in a third-person perspective, but with first-person sometimes used (toggleable).

3D shooters are a result of advancements made in arcade hardware that allowed scalable graphics to be presented. The first 3D shooters used vector graphics, the earliest way of representing true three-dimensional environments. The most notable example of this technique is in the Star Wars arcade game, which became extremely popular due to the corresponding release of the film Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Sprite-based shooters have also been developed, such as Williams' Blaster and Sega's After Burner. To add to the immersion, these games often used elaborate cockpits, frequently featuring motion using hydraulics, with an assortment of authentic-feeling controls such as yokes and throttles, as in G-LOC: Air Battle. 3D shooters saw a notable increase and development of popularity during the late 1980's and throughout the 1990s, as advancements in technology allowed for texture-mapped and polygon-rich environments. The mid-90s saw the beginning of this genre on home consoles with the establishment of franchises like Star Fox and Panzer Dragoon. 3D shooters are still prevalent in the arcades today, as they draw crowds despite being expensive to play.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot_

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 1:31 AM 0 comments

Harmotion - Awesome addictive indie multiplayer shooter game

Video of actual game play.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 6:40 PM 0 comments

Star Fox - Super Nintendo

Classic flight sim game here. You must destroy enemies by shooting them to bits. After completing each level, you get a choice of 3 levels, each with a different difficulty level. Middle is easy, Upper is medium, and Down is hard. You must face a boss at the end of each level, so be ready!

so far this is the best on rails shooter I have seen asin how close I want it to be to my version. I defiantly don't want it to be looking down on my character, I want it from behind. This was originally for the snes so I obviously will be upgrading the graphics.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 2:30 AM 0 comments

Research

Exsisting SHUMP's.

harmotion.org

The very first shmup i have come across is 'Harmotion'. Harmotion is described as 'an "effects" intensive player vs. player, top down 2D classic shooter (aka shmup). You face the opponent from the bottom of the screen and the objective is to outlast him/her in a short ~3 minutes space fight. Each fight will be a one of a kind collaboration between the two opponents; a collaboration of sound and colors.'

It is imediatly aparent that colour is a major factor within Harmotion, however as of yet, im not sure if that is reflected within everyother SHMUP on the market.

Screen shots from Harmotion:

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 2:07 AM 0 comments

Research

The research into SHMUP's has now bagun.

Definition:

Scrolling shooters are a type of video game, a subgenre of the shooter or shooting game. The name of this subgenre is sometimes abbreviated to "shmup" (shoot 'em up), particularly in English-speaking portions of Europe. The term is less common (and even held in disregard) elsewhere. Source from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmup

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 1:55 AM 0 comments

Brief

The brief has just been set, 'FIRE LIGHT'. Basically the brief was a game proposal for an actual company, to produce an 'on rails' Shoot em up (shmup) game.

I don't really know much about games so this could be challenging yet rewarding, broadening my knowledge of games.

The brief asks us to produce some elements of the game and animate them as if the game was being played. We have got 12 weeks to produce 11 models and we will be taking one of them forward to produce in more detail.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 1:39 AM 0 comments