We haven’t talked so much about the new people on the PoH and what they will do. So I think feel it’s time to present them now : )

Programming
We haven’t really been on track with the programming for about 2 month and we have been about 2-3 weeks behind scheduel constantly. So we had to do something about it. That “something” was Andreas. Andreas will join the programmer team (Jakob and Baba) but he will focus solely on AI programming, this so Jakob and Baba can focus on all the other stuff such as engine optimizing, shaders, gameplay code and so on. Our producer Håkan has also step in as a programmer and he will program about 50% of his time (about 1h/day :p).

Music & Sound
We have the “know how” in the team but not the time to focus on music and sound, since it takes quiet some time to make. So we invited two new persons to do this.

Pontus Rufelt will make all the music for PoH and you have already heard a bit of it in the “teaser trailer” (yes it’s his music, it’s not music taken from Hans Zimmerman). Pontus is the first “external resource” that we use, but when we heard his creations we all said that he was the guy to make the music.
Josef will make all the sound effects for the game. We know and have worked with Josef on other games such as “In Other Words”.

So welcome Andreas, Pontus and Josef!

Now we’re in production phase (major sprint 4), most of the concepting is done, the major tools are done, the game is up and running on the white box and so on. No it’s mostly putting everything together and making a game.

This week sprint looks like this:

Code:
Collision and basic physics
Player control and basic game play
Also continue work on Shaders, GUI, interface, particle effects

2d:
New versions of some of the enemies
Level 1 done

3d:
Continue making enemies

Narrative:
Should be done by the end of the week
Story and patterns for every enemy

Other things:
Test normal maps
New ingame pictures
Game presentation for the “game panel”

Here’s a list of all the main programs that we use to make Penalty of Heroes.

The game engine, level editor and other stuff (scripting & collision system, shaders and so on) is done in-house and our programmers write everything in C# (The engine and the level editor both use XNA 3.0 and are developed in Visual Studio 2008).

Our concept artists use Wacom drawing boards to draw the characters in the computer in Photoshop.

Our 3d artists use 3d Studio Max for modeling and Mudbox 2009 for texturing

Here’s from an on-line meeting using Marratech

Additional programs:
For the web we code in HTML and Flash and for the blog we use Word Press (HTML).
For communication we use MSN, Skype, Marratech and related programs.
For documentation/project management we use Word, Excel and Google document.
For video & trailers we use Premier Pro & After Effects
Also our narrative guy mr Stoffer uses MS Paint to draw his ideas.

Hmm I think that’s about it : )

On Tuesday it’s the end of (major) sprint 3. So this week will be testing all of the thing we’ve implemented and done the last weeks.

On Wednesday (major) sprint 4 begins. This major sprint (divided into 4 weekly sprints) will focus on coding, implementing of shaders & particles, level design, 3d enemies and play testing the games all new features that were added last major sprint.

Here’s a video of some shader testing. The game being showed/tested is Exhaust. What’s Exhaust you might ask!?!

-”Exhaust is the first gravity based 2.5D monster truck racing game to ever hit the market. Even though it is called a racing game, the use of dynamic objects and physics in a world controlled by gravity has given us the option of adding loads of interesting artifacts to the racing tracks which turns this monster truck racer into an incredible platform game.”

/wp-content/uploads/shader_test.flv

The game is made for Xbox Live Arcade by three persons from Databox Games (Jakob, Baba & Jona). The game will be out in the beginning of 2009. We’ll keep you updated on how things are going.