Insanity's Blade Green Lit! Final Release Dec 1st on Steam

Congratulations on funding!

There is nothing more enjoyable then battling enemies with friends using heroic barbarians in loin cloths. <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

NotionGames Thank!! We're been listening to the feedback and trying to get this sucker perfected! We're still a ways off though!

retrodude Thanks! It's not over til midnight technically but I'm hoping we're ok!

And yeah - it's just like real life :O LOL!!

Insanity's Blade was successfully funded as of tonight: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/353834117/insanitys-blade-the-ultimate-8-bit-experience

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Whoa. Nice job guys, seriously! Good luck with the rest of...well...whatever needs to be done! I hope this game will make it out there (a good chance, from the looks of it!)

If I can convince my parents to pay for this I'm definitely going to play the heck out of it. :D

Nixel Thanks! Well if I was happy with just a platformer, we'd probably be closer to done. But I've gone and added in a side scrolling shooter section :O

In single player or co-op you take to the back of an undead dragon and fly through an onslaught of flying undead and other nasty bastards :D Complete with giant gross bosses at the end of each shooter stage (3 in all). I couldn't handle just having the straight out platforming no matter how much we added to it. So I accidentally started on the shooter section last week around Xmas :)

Also redrawn boss 2-2. The second stage boss fights now take place on the back of a wagon that has hostages on it. Driven by a possessed woodsman who immediately attacks you, you battle as the scenery flies by. Upon defeating him the true boss appears. His name is Fester. The closest way to describe him would be to say a really ugly hairy fart sack that resembles Slimer from Ghostbusters in mostly color alone. He pukes souls at you.

So yeah, tons of new art and stage stuff :) I'll post pics and vids soon :) Still a bit busy around here being New Years etc :)

And thanks for all the support through the Kickstarter!!!

Insanity's Blade the "Arcade" Experience?

A full 16-bit/arcade styled graphic update from the games original 8-bit graphics. And then some!

You read that right! I put about 18+ hours into updating the graphics in the demo (separate set of working files) over the weekend and updated all of the graphics to full color in the game. So technically it's no longer the 8-bit experience if we go down this route.

So before I pull the trigger, I wanted to show you all a video of the game in full color. Also I have made other changes along the way that were part of the 8-bit update as well. The main character has a new upper body animation for walking. No one liked my super Robocop pose ;) So I caved and changed it. Title screen is now animated - this is my favorite new update! End of first stage house is partially rebuilt as well as a bit of the underground to make it a bit easier for co-op. Tweaked camera here too. Intro bits have subtle animations in them. And I can't remember what else I have done. It basically looks like a new game!

The gameplay itself will remain the same as well as the music and sound. Only the graphics would be changing.

The reason behind this update mostly because we wanted to bring you a better experience - and with the limited 8-bit NES palette there was a lot of color blending going on between the action and the background. This not only fixes that issue but also brings a new level of excitement and playability to the game!

I will be posting a demo later today of the "arcade version" for those who want to see it running on their machines.

This update is not the beta update that we've been working on with the shooter stage/cart boss fight etc. If the new graphic update gets a yes votes then I will have to recolor everything I've done since the Kickstarter ended - will take a few days :)

Anyhow enjoy the video and I look forward to your feedback and votes. I will check the votes as of Friday Dec 10th at 12am my time and let everyone know which direction the graphics will go in!

Here is the Video:

[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHDAf9Pnoxw[/tube]

Chris

From Chris' update on Kickstarter: Stage 2 bosses are complete! They've actually been done for about a week I just haven't had time to make a video as I've been plugging away at stage 3 as well - which is also almost complete. Stage 3 had to be completely redesigned and redrawn as it was far too long and not co-op friendly.

Here is a video of the 2nd boss fight titled "Two Bosses, One Cart." as well as a few screen grabs of stage 3!

Enjoy!

[TUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpIDeQn5Zjw[/TUBE]

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Chris and Daven

I would say go for the full color. It was already kind of far away from the capability of NES. Also is't that in the boss something mod7 stuff <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

But since I'm not a Kickstarter backer I don't know if I have any word for this. Only voted on Greenlight.

This game has always looked crazy cool and I'm glad you got funded!

I'm a little torn here now seeing this moving away from it's inital 8-bit style. Honestly I feel it looked more authentic before. Some parts of the backgrounds seem like regular drawings of some sort now and don't mix well with the pixel sprites. But I might be overly sensitive to these kind of things.

What also concerns me is that the game was described as "The Ultimate 8-bit Experience" on Kickstarter, which it certainly cannot be anymore. Yet it got funded on account of this. Some backers might feel mislead.

Still I wish you great success with this title of course! The new boss video looks great and I will surely be playing the full game.

Katala It was already voted on to go full color. The vote was done on Kickstarter through backers. They were given a few days to vote. So it's full blown 16-bit arcade now. That boss video is 2 weeks after the fact I think!

Originally aside of the multilayer scrolling which was mostly doable later on with different chip sets included in the carts, the game was doable on NES other than the size of the cart itself. The game would have been too big - too many gfx. The mode 7 stuff was actually doable to an extent on NES which I didn't know until recently. Battletoads vs Double Dragon - the bike fight scene floors could do it.

PixelRebirth all of the big stuff has always been hand drawn and downgraded to the right res. I've allowed for too much color in the recent stuff I've done though so I may downgrade the color a tad at a later date. The game sprites all have 9 colors on them or more. As well as regular background tiles. Depending on the background I've allowed for 16-32 in most cases now. But player sprites aren't as sharp if I do overkill on the color so 9+ is enough.

But yeah as far as the Kickstarter goes - it was a private back vote. Majority won. In fact no one said no. The only request was to have an alternate unlockable mode to have the original 8-bit graphics. Which we will have :)

The complaints about sprites blending into backgrounds led to this for the most part. The reason why NES games had mostly black backgrounds. Although as an avid player and collector of NES games, it was no worse than a real NES title.

I'm aiming for a fuller but faded palette for the background now. So there will be no blending of foreground sprites and background at all. But everything is all still pixel art. Even my actual drawings once I've done the full sized/full colored version in photoshop I still go into the sprite editor and go to work in C2 :) Down sizing alone never goes over well at all, lots of editing to do after the fact.

I should actually dig out the old Genesis png converted I had for doing Genesis GFX it brings things to the nearest color and brings the palette down to 64 color max. Though I don't have those restrictions on the game it would probably would look more authentic if I did :)

Anyhow as of a 2-3 weeks ago the project was officially called "Insanity's Blade: The Arcade"! But will of course still have the 8 bit mode since 75% of the gfx were already finished and it would probably only take a week to downgrade everything new. It's the FX that have to be dropped. The music is still 100% NES vrc6.

And thanks for voting too guys! It means a lot! We're going to have a full 4 stage demo including the new flying/shooter stage for the first week of Feb it looks like.

Chris

***EDIT***

In all honesty once we added the much requested co-op during Kickstarter, it pretty much killed it being an NES game - at least thats how I felt. It's one thing to have a larger sized main sprite but two on the same Y pos all the time would have made the game flicker - added to the 2 or 3 enemies on the same Y pos all the time too. So yeah - once co-op was added it was unrealistic.

Batman Return of the Joker, Battletoads, BattleToads/Double Dragon and Mr.Gimmick were the hardware pushers as far as I can remember. I have Return of the joker and it looks like a genesis game minus the color.

***

Good evening everyone!

So we've been very busy over here trying to get one more big public update before we go into closed beta until the end of development. With the graphics update it's caused a lot more work but we feel the game has become much more exciting with the new graphics!

As usual nothing in this demo is final, we may change our minds about a lot of things here before the final game is released. Still a ways to go yet!

Download the Demo from our Greenlight page!

So here is a list of the main updates you will find in this demo:

4 full stages of game play, stage 4 is in early beta but very playable! The entire first chapter of the game!

The shop is open for business! At the beginning of stage 2 and the middle of stage 3 you will find a shop rising form the ground where you can spend your hard earned coin on power ups. Not all power ups are available but at least you can check out whats to come!

The all new map screen! A more colorful god view of the Chapters as you progress!

There be dragons! Fly on the back of an undead dragon and beat the giant undead boss at the end of the stage! In full color 2d parallax goodness!

Options menu is closer to completion. Also randomly plays music until we get our Juke Box completed!

The three difficulty settings now do more than just set your lives and hit points. They also dictate how you continue after losing all of your lives. Easy - Continue at stage and check point, Medium - Restart at beginning of stage and Hard - No continues for you!

Massive graphic updates since the last demo release. The villagers have had a make over and, oh yeah, they are also prisoners you free through out the stage by pressing up them! Bonus XP!

Co-op is available in this beta but it's still buggy so use it at your own risk!-Controllers supported for both Players, check the options menu for setting the controller mode

Tons of bug fixes, and lots more!

The intro will see an overhaul before the game is released as well as cutscenes added between chapters. There should be an explanation as to where the dwarf character comes from but we didn't want to rush it for quality sake! The stage outros are all intact but the text is not final. Especially stage 4!

Download the Demo from our Greenlight page!

Here are a bunch of shots of things you may (or may not :P) see in the new beta/demo!

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So for most of you this will be the last demo you see until a week roughly before the games final release! We hope you enjoy it and please feel free to shoot us any concerns or bugs you may find!

And yes the 8-bit mode will be in the game. We may have to bump the release date to get it done, but I miss it already!

Thanks for playing!!

Ah forgot to mention! We're giving out 5 free copies of the game (and other goodies) to the randomly chosen winners on: Facebook

Visit the link for more details on how to win! Contest ends Sunday night at midnight (UTC - 4)! <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle">

Whoa. I was a little uneasy about the new graphics because I really like 8-bit graphics in general. But I'm not even mad now, the updated graphics are amazing.

Wall jumping is vastly, hugely improved - I cannot stress how glad I am to see the overhaul in wall jump mechanics - thank you for the efforts.

Spanking good job!!!

But currently I'm just stuck in Deep Forest. I find it quite hard to jump while zombie surfing...or is it just me?

EDIT: Deep Forest boss is a complete beast. 2-hit KO...

Nixel HAHA! Sorry you were upset about the 8bit GFX not being there - But they will be in the final version of the game. There will be an 8-bit mode since 60-70% of the gfx were already finished for 8-bit.

The wall jump was fixed back when we were doing the Kickstarter too!

Which 2nd boss are you stuck on? There are two on the Buggy. The axe man you just need to jump and attack a lot, he's not smart - just hit's hard. And for the Ghost boss you can (if you upgraded your weapon at the shop) Stand to one side of the screen and cram the attack button and hope you leveled up enough to kill his bullets :D

There is a glitch on the corpse surfing still (the zombies should explode when you hit them), many kinks to work out of the engine overall, but it is still very much in beta - This is the last demo using the beta that will be released to the public. We may update it a little and do another release tonight and then its nothing but videos and screens until the game is finished so no more of the game is spoiled. The demo is first chapter of the game minus a few power ups sounds and gfx - and the cutscenes.

And thanks for the support Nixel!! We hope you like the final product when it's released!

I'm not a fan of low bit pixel but this did not stop me from enjoying this game. Really well done and I had fun playing it.

My only gripe would be the instant deaths from falling make the enemies seem tame in comparison. I had no fear of enemies it was cliffs that scared me.

Managed to slide down a cliff backwards one time on the green skele, not sure if that's supposed to be in it