First is detail of Roger's jacket, second is some process, a preview of one of the new characters. More to come... gtg :)

So I've been hard at work lately on various assets for WoA.

I decided to cut off the bridge area from the original game and instead have the level continue on a bit to reveal a giant crater, created by who knows what...

Here are some shots of the new area so far:
You can see here that a fault line has split a building in half vertically.


I love all of the rubble and debris in this section. The section of subway that is sticking out came out nicely in my opinion as well.


The last section before reaching the edge of the crater. The broken off chunk of road and the piece still hanging on are my favorite bits here.


This is my progress so far on the mid-level boss for level 1. It's a big ass flying fortress with a huge cannon and a bunch of guns and missiles mounted on it. I have the UV map all arranged already, but I've yet to texture it. I placed one of the fighters next to this thing to show the scale. Poly count on this enemy is 3070 tris.


This will be the boss at the end of level 1, a giant robotic spider that attacks the player while navigating along the rocky terrain of the giant crater. Blue cannons will only shoot out blue projectiles, the green and red cannons will only shoot out green and red projectiles, respectively. The cannons mounted to the back part can pivot, while the ones mounted on the front area cannot. However, the front "head" area will be able to pivot left and right to a limited degree. This enemy is 2930 tris.


I've also started work on sprites that will be used as shots from the player as well as enemies. The long, yellow projectiles will be from the standard weapon on the player's fighter, while the circular blue ones will be used as projectiles fired from a blue enemy. Green and red variations will be created by simply hue-shifting the blue version.
There are two frames for each projectile, so that they will blink on screen to help draw the player's attention to them.

Of course, details will be sacrificed quite a bit as I plan to devote only a 64x128 map to each set of projectile sprites, considering the size that they'll appear at in-game.

Wings of Apocalypse - "What If ?" from R.J. H. on Vimeo.

Operating Systems:Windows XP or Vista

RAM: 256M

Processor:1.3 Ghz Intel Celeron M or any comparable AMD/Intel Processor

GPU: ATI 9000, Nvdia Geforce 4MX 32 MB or a equivalent OpenGL compatible GPU

150 MB of hard drive space is required !

Note: If you meet the minimum requirements and have performance issues please lower your resolution in 'Options' at the 'Display' menu.

Controls

Default controls are mapped to the keyboard. Movement controls are mapped to the arrow keys and fire is mapped to the 'Z' key. To activate your shield press the 'X' key on the keyboard. The controls may be changed in the Options menu under “Controls” by pressing the 'Esc' key anytime during gameplay. You may also use a gamepad to play this game.

Note: Please use the mouse to select the gamepad map and keyboard mapping menus.

Gameplay

Wings of Apocalypse sports much of the same gameplay mechanics as many other shoot em ups but with a twist! Each character in the game has Deflector Shield in which he or she may deflect enemy attacks of the same color. For example; Naomi's Deflector Shield is Red, therefore she may only deflect Red enemy fire!

Depending on which character you choose, the difficulty of the game will change. Although the environment is exactly the same for each character, the opportunity to deflect enemy attacks are not. If the player chooses Roger he/she will be able to deflect almost all attacks because there are usually more blue enemies in the game. In other words Roger is easy difficulty, Bryan medium and Naomi Hard.

Known Issues

-On some system configurations Wings of Apocalypse has been known to perform poorly after the initial installation. If you are experiencing this, restart your computer to fix the problem.

-Performance is significantly decreased when the SLI feature is enabled for Nvidia video cards

-Wings of Apocalypse does not scroll properly when the SLI feature is enabled for Nvidia video cards

-If you use your keyboard or gamepad to select the keyboard or gamepad mapping menus you may have issues with your controls. A quick fix is to always select the keyboard or gamepad mapping menus with the mouse

-Windowed mode doesn't always work properly

Credits

Programming:

Roger Hicks

3D Modeling and Texturing:

Brian Terwilliger

Character Art:

Naomi Baker

Music and Sound Composition:

Roger Hicks

Anthony Kirkland

Voice Acting:

Anthony Kirkland as 'Bryan'

Roger Hicks as 'Roger'

Kara Lin as 'Naomi'

Terry Moore as 'Mission Control'

In this initial blog post I'll be introducing the developers of this project. The team consists of 3 people; Brian Terwilliger ( aka StunWar) , Naomi Baker (aka Naomiful) , and myself , Roger Hicks (aka RekcahDam) .

Brian Terwilliger will be doing the 3D art and animation on this project. You can check out his blogspot at http://preciouspolygons.blogspot.com/ .

Naomi Baker will be doing the character art for the project. Here blog is her blog: http://naomiful.blogspot.com .

I will be the programmer and music composer for the project and you can check my blog out at http://rekcahdam.blogspot.com !

If there's anything you want to know about us or the project don't be afraid to ask in the comments area. We will be blogging as much of the development on Wings Of Apocalypse:X (tentative title) as much possible. So, stay tuned!