Wasted Seconds Wasting your precious time since 2009.

6Jan/111

Voxatron - Spiffy looking arena style shooter.

I haven’t seen a game quite like this in a while. The destruction in the video looks awesome and I can’t wait to play me some of this. Here’s from the site :

voxatron

Voxatron is an arena shooter that takes place in a world made of voxels (little cubes, kind of). Everything in the game is displayed in a virtual 128x128x64 voxel display, including the menus and player inventory. If you look closely, you can sometimes see the inventory (score/life/ammo) casting a shadow on some of the objects on the ground.

I've been working on voxel rendering and modeling tools for a long time now, with the ultimate goal of making a large explorey adventure game. About half a year ago it fused with work I was doing on arena shooters for Conflux, and this is the result.

It's quite a simple game at heart -- mostly just Robotron set in a 3d destructible world with goofy creatures. I'm unsure how major the implications of destructibility will be for gameplay, but it sure is fun to blast away pieces of wall. I've also added an experimental wall-building pickup you can use to construct barriers to hide from scary monsters.

The game takes place in a small set of arenas. Some of them feature rooms with set action pieces, somewhere between Knightlore and Smash TV. This is some of the original adventure based design sneaking back in, and an excuse to create thematic environments.

Features:
- Custom software rendering with soft shadows.
- Built-in sound and music synthesizer (also used to make the trailer music).
- Playback & post game recording.

Voxatron will be ready later this year, but I'll create a single-arena preview version too.

Hit the jump for a spiffy video. Thanks to Flare over on the GameGavel forums. One of these days I shall have the patience to do the type of games I want to do. Text based versions of shit I don’t play in the first place. That’s the master plan.

17Feb/102

Not a good day for retro gamers on Xbox Live

The following games have been removed from the Xbox Live Arcade service ...

  • Cyberball 2072
  • Defender
  • Gauntlet
  • Joust
  • Paperboy
  • Robotron 2084
  • Root Beer Tapper
  • Smash TV
  • Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3

Now I can't say that I'm all that heartbroken about UMK3 just because that game is utter crap ... MK2 all the way ... but the others. It's just heartbreaking.

Now, if you've already downloaded the games, and you're worried that if you get a new hard drive you can't get them again, no big deal. Just hit your guide button, go to the settings tab, account management and go to your download history you CAN get them again. And (though I haven't tried it personally) if you downloaded the trial you MAY be able to buy them again. Which means I STILL may be able to get Joust. :)

But still. Sad day for retro gamers.