After two days finalising Christmas preparations, a great day working on Flatspace, Future Snooker and Future Pool today. I'm at the height of a positive mania.
First redesigned the primary 'box art' for Future Snooker and Future Pool, this involved making a 3D mockup of the scene and rendering with full lighting, shadows and reflections. This is much more dramatic and clear as to that the game is about, rather than mere text.
Then I started work on similar graphics for Flatspace, using the old DVD box art as a template for inspiration. Amazing to think that I used to sell copies of this on DVD, certainly less than 40 were ever sold this way as that was how many A4 laser-printed sheets I had printed.
The art, back in 2004 and 2005, was all very low resolution, with a few higher quality snippets, but I've managed to make a new box image with some of the original 'photos' of the 3D ships which were made during development. Then I set up the Flatspace store and started to upload the new Future Snooker, Future Pool and Flatspace artwork, and enter all of the other Flatspace details.
Then, the essential trailer video. I recorded a few clips of gameplay in 1920x1080 last night; this will make the Flatspace trailer better looking than Flatspace IIk (although both games look the same in reality, Flatspace IIk looks a little better).
The video needed a new music edit. I designed my music software to export frame numbers to make video synchronisation easy, so the trailer is a simple matter of a few clips and a selection of game 'professions'.
I'm amazed to complete this in a day, it used to take me several days for these jobs. The game itself needs a few tweaks and changes, although the gameplay won't be affected or updated in any way; only Flatspace IIk will be updated like this. Flatspace is a former and older game and will only be updated sufficiently to make it work on modern computers.
I found time to practice guitar and piano for a combined hour or so. I might rewire my LED performance light this evening, as it needs a mains extension.
Oh for a success. If Flatspace IIk sells 20,000 copies then I would certainly start development of Flatspace 3, which has extensive plans, and will be a large leap in capability over the current two games; more different from Flatspace II than II was from I.
Onward to glory!
