Setting Sail For Adventure

Well...since this is MY blog...I guess I'll put stuff up here that I myself do from time to time.

For today's entry this will be about a video game I've been wanting to do since High School. Xenohunter.

The premise was sort of a reverse Metroid. You would play as the Space Pirate, Xenohunter, who had come to a planet to find all sorts of treasure and it would play sort of like a mix of Earthworm Jim, Yoshi's Story, and Kirby the Great Cave Offensive. Along the way a bounty hunter by the name of Bounty Brain would be after you to collect money from your capture. The ultimate treasure however would be a legendary sword that had either beaten or sealed away the mythical Space Dragon, Klendauk, who would serve as the final boss of the game.

That premise has remained basically the same over the years with me adding in more and more details quite frequently. What was once a rather barren planet is now a lively cave system with villagers, a run-down galactic prison, an abandoned construction site, a clan of origami people at war with the villages of the planet, ancient ruins, a female cop now keeping an eye on Bounty Brain as he does his job, and plenty of other tidbits here and there.

As I said, Earthworm Jim was one of the inspirations. That's clear in the whipping motions that Xenohunter attacks with and such, but it goes deeper than that. You see to me Earthworm Jim is arguably the best game ever made. Not just because it was fun, but because it was alive. It was sooo much more animated than any other video game back then and it still holds pretty true today even with the advancements in technology. I knew from the start that I wanted Xenohunter, like all of my stuff, to be as animated as possible. I would stand for nothing less than cartoons. I wouldn't be wasting my time with crappy 8-bit pixel art or anything. No, I wanted to make a playable cartoon.

Of course back then I had not the skill nor dedication to take on such a task. Hell, I hadn't even made an animation back then. But over the years I grew and so did my abilities. I started drawing up 2D animations on paper after I'd finished High School in my free time with the first attempts being really uh...primitive. But even then it was a joy to see my characters actually alive. Eventually I tried Xenohunter...and completely messed him up. The animation was crap. I needed to get better and moving thick limbs and objects first. So I sorta...forgot about him for a while.

Then the best game in years showed up. Rayman Origins. I could not believe my eyes. It was THE game I had been waiting for. It's the kind of game that the industry should've been working towards throughout the past generations instead of abandoning 2D sidescrollers. With that game I'd decided it. It was possible to make cartoon video games! Even better graphically than Earthworm Jim! I got back to animating Xenohunter and in time I came up with a loose slumping walk cycle. But by now I'm pretty sure I've gotten his figure down. Every so often I'll accidentally draw him bigger for a few frames and have to go back and shrink him by redrawing the frames, but I'm now more dedicated than ever to make the thing look good.

 

But the details in visuals aren't the only things to have improved. A few months back I finally played a game that'd been out since 2004. Even though I'd always heard and seen it, I never played it. So I bought the best looking version for WiiWare and...my god...Cave Story has to be like my favorite game since when I was a kid. It showed me that I can have an actual plot going on alongside the exploration that the game is based around. That is what's been getting me thinking of a slew of new ideas for the game.

And it's not just a single game neither that I wanna make. Even though I'll be fine with just doing one Xenohunter game if that's all I ever get to do/complete, I do have a bit of a series thought out. Different planets and locales that his adventures would take him across. From mythical Space Dragons to ancient Weapons of Mass Destruction, Xenohunter would take on all sorts of galactic trials that threaten interstellar civilization and in the process collect all sorts of treasure in his quests.

As of right now I've got a slew of concepts and stuff in my Xenohunter folder on Deviant Art (which you can view here: http://warahi.deviantart.com/gallery/23905581 ), with this being the latest piece I finished. A painting that I'll be using as the background of the first area of the game:

And now that I've come across Pulseboy, an 8-Bit music-making program, I'm able to get the music tracks for the game put down in some form to listen to (though I'll definitely want actual instruments or at least a better sounding medium to make the actual tracks with), I'm closer than ever. This is the folder on my youtube account for Xenohunter's (8-Bit) Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvPThgQknXcJ0r1m4CsQXNMSX5qgQTcTJ&feature=mh_lolz

I guess I'll paste updates here as I continue with the project =)