Refitting & Repairing

A full reworking of a lot of Bullion's core code was never going to be a small task, made only greater by our philosophy that "life comes first" - which we have had to take to heart recently...

Sadly, due to day-job requirements, we have had to say goodbye to Winter - at least for the time being. And Ben Hill is returning to the USA having completed his studies - the good news is that he is determined to stay with the team, albeit remotely. We'll raise a tankard to both of ye and see where the winds take us...

As for the good ship Bullion herself - barring a few fittings and fixtures, the big refit is done! The hacks are gone, and we have embraced a lot more of Unity's mechanics (as opposed to rolling our own versions) - it's been a great learning experience as well as an opportunity to tidy up. We've also upgraded a number of the placeholder components from the original pre-alpha demo version to something closer to the production-ready vision, and adding features based on the feedback we got at GEEK. So far, new additions include:

• Upgraded player status displays in-game
• Power-ups have production models and are now activated on demand by the player
• New title and character select screens
• Block and special attack moves for characters
• Improved enemy AI

... and yes, we've fixed the infamous "teleporting dead cow" bug!

The "heart beat" is beginning to take shape - one of the first applications we're looking at plugging in will be controlling the enemies response to the players, factoring number of its bretheren killed versus proximity into determining which player a newly spawned enemy will target.

We've also had more outings to Gamecamp, WeGeek and Aylesbury Comic Con, and had lots more great feedback and ideas for new features - we've even had suggestions for new game modes and challenge stages, which could put a whole new spin on the vision of the game. And, just as at GEEK, we have had lots of favourable responses to the visual and audio style of the game, so we suppose we must be doing something right!

Next big date on the Bullion calendar - Reading Comic Con in November, where we hope to be taking the newly refitted Bullion on her maiden voyage... and no doubt covering more surfaces with post-it notes as more bugs emerge!