It’s been a loooonnnng time since the last update, I know. We’re still around and kicking but the members of the team have been focusing on their day jobs (life is hard out there). We haven’t stopped researching and playing around in the world of digital art, there are a few projects underway that we are having fun with as they evolve.

Recently, we’ve been having a lot of fun with some great beat ’em-up games and rediscovered how satisfying it is to just mash buttons on an arcade stick. Streets of Rage 4 (Dotemu) and River City Girls (WayForward) were some of our favourites as well as the Battletoads reboot (Dlala) which was a blast to play. This has inspired us to start experimenting with the mechanics involved in beat ’em-up combo systems and experimenting with a 3D graphics system that would look and feel more like an old school raster art 2D side scrolling brawler while keeping the animation, rigs and geometry fully vector 3D.

The purpose of this engine test was to be able to use the benefits of using vector/geometry art so that we could maintain lighting changes but still have the gritty feeling of sprites. It was quite successful in many ways and opened up a lot of possibilities to get a nice look and feel, but with the power of a lighting engine and animation splines.

We’ve been having a blast testing this one out, stay tuned for more updates as we play around some more.