The Rebirth of the Gearbeast Project
first off, right off the bat, let me apologize to the watchers for not keeping tabs with you guys on this project.
Gearbeasts is not dead. in fact, it's stronger than it's ever been.
the development of Gearbeasts has been a long one, spawning multiple incarnations of the game: ALPHA, GAIN, NFN, and now the current version: SNG.
New Universal Order, the second incarnation of Gearbeasts, did not particularly die. what happened was that the project became too big within itself. the "NFN Engine" that was built for this game could only be utilized so much before having to recode the engine again, and after a few months of creating newer and newer prototypes, through multiple creative conflicts, and struggling with time constraints, Sergio and I abandoned the engine to work on a new project that utilizes some of the leftovers of NFN. The project that spawned off of Gearbeasts was codenamed Burst Riders, and we moved on.
but despite the postponing of development, i never gave the project up. while working on Burst Riders, i began researching programming in Game Maker 8.0 again, and began building a new engine, which I dubbed the "SNG (Start of a New Generation) Engine." in developing this engine, i wanted to create a solid framework that i could use for a multitude of different games, and this spawned a second reboot of Gearbeasts: Liberation of Juvenus. at this point, Gearbeasts officially became 100% my design again.
i
obsessively played the many NFN builds that i had archived, trying to get a "feel" for some of the things that went wrong, and how i could mold this old formula into something new; more refined, more streamlined, more comfortable, more exciting. while doing this, i wrote a completely new storyline, which would allow me to progress in the game's development as i go more naturally, with a fresh set of ideas. Dixon Accel and Gearbeast Jago were replaced with completely new characters. by deriving some older concepts from Gearbeast Sin from Gearbeasts ZERO (ALPHA Engine). i created the Gearbeast of Punishment, Nakazat, and its driver, a prison escapee by the name of Tracy Fortuna.
while developing this new version of Gearbeasts, i started remembering the format for Dogfights-- acting as a taste of gameplay while the full version of the game is developed; this spawned the titleGearbeasts: Endless Blitz.
Endless Blitz will be released as a pay-what-you-want arcade release. Blitz will essentially serve as the "trial" of the game that will be updated multiple times during the development of Liberation of Juvenus.
so, yeah!
the Gearbeasts project is still very much alive. the project has gone through so much retooling and restructuring, but i'm feeling so much more confident in this new version of the game. it feels great and it's only in a slightly playable state so far.
i'll be developing it a lot more throughout july, so look forward to lots of news about the game there.
check out the Images page to see some high quality screenshots of the current pre-alpha of Gearbeasts: Endless Blitz.
you can also watch a (old) video showing the current gameplay of Endless Blitz here:
or follow me on twitter for more updates on the game (and also my daily life (mostly that (don't follow me))): @DHE_alphasix
at the moment, i'm currently struggling money-wise, and am trying to upgrade from Game Maker 8 to GM: Studio Master, so i can port this game to other platforms (especially Mac and Ubuntu).
if you wish to support the development of Gearbeasts: Endless Blitz, there are many ways you can do this:
pick up some of my games
pick up some of my music
thanks a bunch, and thanks to everyone who's stuck around.
-tj
