With Air Legends work-in-progress phase now over, and the might-as-well-go-commercial-phase beginning, I plan to get blogging again.
The first thing that comes to mind is this…
I don’t know why I’m so lucky, but I’m reminded once again at just how freak’n clever some of my closest friends are!
Great friends, who are far more talented than myself to be brutally honest.
Take, Martin Kay who composed and performed the original music in Air Legends. I just love it to bits. Despite hearing it thousands of times while developing & testing the game, it still isn’t old for me. I catch both myself, and my kids (expert play testers I might add) humming/whistling the main theme after any time playing the game. That has to be a good sign, right?
By the way, Martin’s profession is far from musical. Music is a hobby/passion, much like creating the game has been for me. The main theme is called “March of the Victorious”. He also did the gameplay theme which is deliberately more subtle & sombre. I think it brilliantly captures tone you’d expect when in battle.
I’m elated at how the music turned out. It is exactly what I wanted. Reminisent of the good ol’ war movie themes my dad would play in the car when I was a kid.
Then there’s Jeff Harris. Jeff was one of a few friends that helped me test the balance of the “Air Legends” gameplay. But check out what he’s been up to in his spare time! Lately he’s been tinkering in a little XNA. He’s started building and blogging about his XNA game that uses the 1994 DOS game “Need For Speed” data files (tracks, models, textures etc…).
I’ve seen some early gameplay and was totally in awe of how much he’s achieved so quickly, not to mention how good such an old game could look with newer tech behind it!
He hasn’t put any screenshots up of his version yet – but rest assured I will keep hassling him till he does. Definately a project/blog to keep an eye on.
Check out Jeff’s NFS XNA remake at Phobos Labs
And It’d be plain wrong to not mention the talent in the XNA community as well. Some truly stunning games emerged from the shadows for the Dream Build Play contest.
Videos of them can be found here (click, then search for “dream build play”)
October 7th, 2008 at 4:37 am
Air Legends FTW!
Hat’s off to you Sharky – you’re the main talent behind this game. I’m blown away by what you have achieved with XNA. Think back to the old days when people would try to make games with 2d sprites and text characters in the days of the Commodore 64!
The music was very fun to make, and if you like it, buy Air Legends to support Sharky!