Reality Factory

Everyone remembers those weird tadpole-looking crustaceans called Triops, or whatever they were, right? The ones where you get a kit with a little tank and some freeze-dried eggs and all you have to do is add water and they hatch after a while? Well, it was that idea that inspired my current game project. It's a 2.5D sidescrolling platformer in which the player takes control of an Omnicrab, a little creature that hatches from re-constituted eggs like those Triops. The thing is, this particular Omnicrab came from a box of eggs that spilled into a pool of water tainted by toxic waste. These things aren't supposed to be able to generate small explosions and electric pulses, are they?
Anyhow, I've been working on this off and on since January and it's finally at a stage where I feel comfortable in showing it. Last time I started a thread just a few weeks after beginning work on a game, and lost interest about a month after that. This project seems like a much more promising candidate for a working demo release.

Few screens.
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/9076/r ... 910270.jpg
This is the beginning of the first (and currently only) level. Yes, I know I spelled crustacean wrong on the tin. The current texture is fixed already.
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/9076/r ... 910270.jpg
This scene is only a couple hundred polys. Most of it is layered sheet brushes with .tga textures. It looks better when you're moving.
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/9076 ... 910270.jpg

So there you have it. I should have screens of the next area and the first few enemies soon.

WOW, after I read the intro, I didn't expect much from the screens, but man, they are AWESOME! Your game has an awesome atmosphere, I loved the biohazardus barrel in the second screen, and how you use TGA textures for the tree branches... Keep up the good work man, I also like your idea, it's really original and makes sence, dunno why I didn't expect much after I read it, don't get it wrong

Looks super awesome! Great story, good graphics. very interesting

very good! I was very interested. Good luck

Hey, thanks much for the positive feedback, guys!
The first enemy is modeled and textured, and I'll probably have it animated and in the game by tomorrow night. Should be pretty easy to animate since it hasn't got limbs- it's a sort of rolling seedpod with spikes. In game they'll attack in swarms and hopefully I can get them to climb over and pile up on each other. Not a big threat or anything, since all the attacks are basically explosions with different effects around the Omnicrab, so everything within the blast radius will be taken out.

LOL this looks awesome! Keep it up man!

WOW, those screens are fantastic! Amazingly fresh idea, I can't wait to see more.

Thanks!

Got the first enemy mostly finished with just a few things to work out. The movement with the generic monster script is rather jittery, (maybe because I'm working at a small scale?) but other than that they behave well in a swarm, even climbing over each other to get up ledges and stuff. All I did was set the force up for obstacle avoidance to be a little higher than the bounding box.
Here's the Omnicrab wasting a few of them.
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/8536 ... 910290.jpg
...and here's a closer look at the models.
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/6963 ... ject23.jpg

Sometimes I really don't know how you guys do it.... Amazing

Looks good. Keep up the great work!

Thanks a lot! I'm really glad everyone seems to like it- very encouraging.

Awesome modeling work! O__O

Looks great man, nice interesting story to go with it as well.

Thanks.

Quick update with a couple screens from the second level.
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/9428/rea ... 911092.jpg
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/9428 ... 911092.jpg
Not sure yet, but I'm probably just going for a total of three levels, with the first being a fairly short tutorial stage.