Here’s a little video from all of us to all of you, hope you have a happy Christmas : )

The video is a trailer we made for GGA before the summer, so the things shown in it is about 7 month old : )

It’s still nice to watch

Yes, that’s right, we have put up a new web page on the official “Penalty of Heroes” web page at www.penaltyofheroes.com : ) It’s not the final one and it’s better than the last one. Also there are some content such as concept art, teaser trailer and SCREENSHOTS! This is our first officially released screenshots of Penalty of Heroes, so we hope you like them : )

The screenshots are work in progress and will be adding more features before the release this fall. So the final game will look better than the screenshots that we just released, though we hope you digg them : ) We’re grateful for feedback on them, if we don’t’ get any feedback (good or bad) we don’t know what we should focus on : )

SGA (Sweden Game Awards) and GGA (Gotland Game Awards) starting to close up, so we have to focus on getting all system running and working together. So this next month we will be focusing on tuning things and not to implement new features.

Code
Make more AI patterns
Adjust player control
Get particle and light effects onto the characters
Get gem system to work
Enemy generator

Concept (2d)
Menu & GUI

Levels 2d
Continue working on levels

3D
Make more animations and get the to work smoothly

Narrative
List of sound effects
Start to work on presentation
Sketch for trailer for GGA
Test the story on regular people

Other things
Take screenshots
Move to new office
Start on the last sprint

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 : )

As you might already know, a friend of ours is making the first teaser for Penalty of Heroes. It originates from a sketch we made a couple of months ago. So far we have seen two teasers/trailers that use the same concept, both video game trailers and trailers from movies. I had not seen them before we started working on our teaser, so I can gladly state that the concepts were not stolen, but right for 2009. We’ll release this teaser very soon : )

Anyways, we are currently sketching on another trailer. The trailer has more of the story to tell obviously, but we tend to keep it short and none spoiler wise. There’s nothing more disturbing than watching a trailer that slaps you in the face and says “this is how the movie ends” or shows the last boss in action. No one wants to see that and we’re planning to keep it that way. However, we need to find something that’s interesting. And believe me; not giving away too much, is going to be tough.

* Jens comment *
We’ll see if this “story trailer” will be made (I hope so). It’s more about having time or finding someone to do it and also convincing the other on the team that it’s a good idea (hope our teaser making friend can help us out). This trailer will tell the “pre story” and set the mood for the game and the time frame for it to be done is about the beginning of the summer (June). We also had thoughts of doing a one minute movie about each character, but we haven’t got the time to do it as good as we want it to be, so we decided not  do it. Though we’ll present them on this blog in a similar way in this following month. More of that in a few days : )

Well not Penalty of Heroes, but Exhaust! What’s Exhaust!?! It’s  the first gravity based 2.5D monster truck racing game for Xbox Live Arcade and it’s made by three persons from Databox Games (Jakob, Baba & Jona). We have send in Exhaust to Microsoft for evaluation/certification/bug testing and it will be out when it’s got the big OK from Microsoft. We’ll keep you updated when the game’s available for download on XBLA.

Be sure to check out the trailer for the game here!