So as you lovely JForce fans have noticed: Our KickStarter has failed, but don’t despair! While this might slow Unstoppable’s progress down a “bit,” let me remind you of the game’s title and assure you that it’s still coming out in 2012 or we will personally castrate ourselves with a searing hot iron while Justin Bieber’s “Baby” plays in the backgound.

In light of this failure (and Unstoppable fatigue), we’re now working on a new top-secret game to assist with funding. I can’t go into the details, but have you ever wanted to play a great FPS while having sexual intercourse with three beautiful women, all of whom are named “Ernesto?” Yeah, it’ll be like that. Get. Hyped. Now.

ERNESSSSTOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

PS: this new game WILL be out in January. Ok no it won't, but here's a little preview.

Woooo!!! New trailer! I haven't slept in over 30 hours! (and I don't plan to anytime soon!)

We also have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the game. You can save some money, get beta access and other cool stuff by pledging.

So we’re pretty dead-set on bringing Unstoppable to iOS, Android and Windows Phones. After playing some of the best dual-stick shooters on iphone I’m really confident our game will blow these platforms up. So we’re gonna do whatever it takes to get at least the Unstoppable survival mode mobilized, if not the whole story mode. To do this, we’re planning to take the radiangames route and port the game to Unity (for the Windows/Mac/iOS/Android versions), while the Windows Phone version would stay in XNA along with the Xbox version.

What’s also great about this is that Flash support is coming to Unity.



Obviously Flash has a much bigger install base than the Unity Web Player, so we could really benefit from this by putting out the survival mode or demo out on all the Flash portals. And even if the Unity team somehow can’t make this happen, Kongregate and Facebook already allow Unity Web games, and Newgrounds will be adding support for them too, so either way we’ll get some additional exposure with the browser version.

It almost seems too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Yo dawg we heard you like time-lapse videos! Here's Jordan drawing the hookshot gun for Unstoppable. But this isn’t just any old hookshot, this one has blades that decapitate the fools who stand in your way, so it’s actually an offensive weapon instead of just being a travel/puzzle weapon to cross chasms, spike pits, etc. For the default state of the gun we’ll probably have those blades retracted, then have them pop out when you pull the trigger (because that’s cool). Continue »

Don’t worry, we’re still alive. Just been working hard. Still goin at this full-time, even though I’ve gone back to pizza delivery by night and Jonny and Ty are taking a few hours of school. We’re focusing all our efforts to get our new Unstoppable trailer out, because once that happens...everything will change. The earth might just collapse in on itself as a result of the insane amount of hype that’s released into the atmosphere. Yeah, it’s gonna be a big deal.

So what’s taking us so long? Well, after we saw our new graphics and realized the potential this game has, we decided to go all out and make this the biggest and best game it can possibly be. That means online play. Now, networking isn’t something you can just add in on top of a game, it has to be put in on “ground-zero”...so Jonny had to do some back-tracking to make it happen (and a whole lot of research and studying), and there’s still lots of networking code left to go, he’s only just finished the preliminary stage.

We also decided to completely change the level design. Instead of just one open square level after another, we’ll now have huge scrolling levels, with rooms and corridors and keys and exploration and puzzles (if you don’t like puzzles, don’t worry, there won’t be too many and some will be optional or hidden, and most of them will be very action-oriented). In light of this, we had to make a fully-featured level editor (which we’ll release, so for those of you who want to, say, remake the first dungeon from Zelda 1, you could totally do that).

Jordan is working hard on level art, but his time is limited due to another job. He’s really producing some quality stuff though. We’ve recently gotten really organized with him, with all his task due dates planned out on our Google Doc calendar.

Lastly, the bad news: Egoraptor is no longer working on the cutscenes and spritework (queue all the JForce haters rejoicing at the thought of our failure). He had spent several months on this game and said it was turning into a career instead of a commission job and that he wanted to focus on his own stuff. We did offer him more money, but he said he just couldn’t do another 5 months on this. Looks like the reason he was able to do this, is because he had just became a Youtube Partner, so he’s now able to make a pretty nice income working on his own stuff, which is every artists' dream. On the bright side, he said he’ll still do all the voice-work and pimp us out on his Youtube and Newgrounds channels (which is pretty critical). And the work he was able to get done is top-notch. The first cutscene is finished (clocks in at 91 seconds) and it is absolutely hilarious. Most of the spritework is done too, and it’s equally impressive. He has most of the other cutscenes rough-drafted out as you saw in the video, and I can say right now, not only will this be the best indie game of all time, but the funniest game of all time as well.

So, we’re currently on the hunt for a new animator who can match his style.

And if you haven’t checked out that preview in Avatar Massage Online, DO IT. Also, for those of you who don’t know, we went through this huge ordeal in trying to get that game released. We were treated pretty unfairly by several members of the XNA community, and all the criticisms we received throughout that entire debacle were all unjustified and easily refutable. Wait for our upcoming comprehensive blog post which covers our whole side of the debate before you start to mouth-off about us “only caring about the money”. I mean really, we’re gonna end up spending over 4 years on a freakin’ top-down shooter and people say we have no passion. Yeah, okay.
Continue »

So it's official, Egoraptor is now not only doing the cutscenes for Unstoppable, but all the sprite-work too! He was actually the one to make this offer, and initially we said no. Partly because I had already put all this work into my sprites and didn't want to see them go. That turned into my main role and I was contributing so much more to the game. But also because we just didn't think his sprites would be that much better to justify the cost and extra time to get them done. We thought my sprites were fine.

But boy were we wrong.

He showed us a couple samples, and like Ty said, it was an easy decision. They're just so much better than my stuff; way more lively, way better drawn. This man has some serious talent. I think our graphics are right up there with Castle Crashers now. It's actually starting to look like the best indie game ever!

So, you want to see a preview eh? FINE. Have a taste: Continue »

Just a quick note, I made us a page over at ModDB/IndieDB for Unstoppable, check it out. Also I uploaded Egoraptor's concept art for the main character, Jermaine Uberheimer, have a look at him. He's the next big video game superstar!

So summer is here, which means no school for Jonny and Ty, and since I quit my job and moved back in with my parents, and since Ty got FIRED from his job as head waiter, and since we have money from Avatar Showdown, that means we're all working full-time on games...dream come true, right? Well, not quite, because, you see, we hate making games and we hate playing games and we hate gamers and OK YES IT'S A DREAM COME TRUE THIS IS AWESOME! ...I've actually never been happier in my entire life (of course I'll be a lot more happy once I get away from the parents, but hey, beats delivering pizza).

Anyway, the image above shows our new workplace, TokBox. It's the best site I could find that allows free webcamming for more than 2 users (we each live about 45 minutes away from each other now and we're definitely not ready to get actual office space yet). So we're treating this like a real job, every weekday we log-in to the site at 9 and work til 4 or so. That gives us each at least 30-35 hours a week, which really isn't enough, but we here at JForce Games are lazy folk, you know. Naw I kid, we'll work more than that, those are just the required "together hours." Now we're also using 14dayz to track our time, TightVNC for screen-sharing, XP-Dev for source control, box.net and dropbox for file sharing, and then Google Docs for real-time doc editing and to-do lists. I strongly recommend a system like this for any geographically-challenged indie teams out there, especially if you lack self-discipline. Obviously it's great for communication, but it also really helps with accountability.

So what are we up to, you ask? Heh, we're actually working on like 5 different games. Crazy right? Actually forget I said that. Just know this:

-Ty's been learning programming. Seeing how he's really good at everything, I have no doubt he'll become a very competent programmer, and in short time too. He's also spending time on all my required reading material over marketing and business and stuff.

-I'm working on design stuff for Unstoppable (plus doing some 3d animation for a secret game or two).

-Jonny is working on the Unstoppable level editor & PC version (and a secret game).

-Jordan is back, working on level graphics for our new Unstoppable art direction (more on that later).

-Jesse is keepin it gangster...and actually he'll be helping out with reference footage later this week.

-Egoraptor's hard at work on cutscenes, says this is his best work yet. He showed us a rough draft for the first scene awhile ago, and yes...awesome. He even said that if he was making a demo reel then this would be the only thing he'd include on it. Awesome overload. Can't wait to see it finished!

Also can't wait to play the new Zelda! And the new Donkey Kong Country! And the new Metroid!

OMG!!!

Yeah! Egoraptor is doing the cutscenes for Unstoppable! Everything considered, (art skills/voice acting/humor/writing/popularity) he's really the best animator in the entire world, in our opinion at least. He's mostly known for the Awesome Series, Metal Gear Awesome being his biggest hit. I think Awesome Gaiden is my favorite...or this one, even though I've never played that game. Really it's hard to choose a favorite, they're all just too funny! He also has the Girlchan in Paradise series which is a hilarious spoof of anime cartoons. And here's a short (but incomplete) bio of him, case you're interested.

So yeah, go subscribe to his youtube channel!

The online crashes should be gone, though you may still be disconnected from your opponent every once in awhile due to latency and synchronization issues. The problem was really hard to fix and Jonny just couldn't get it perfect, but it's still a LOT better than it was before. We also added two new avatars to the game, one of which is shown above. :D

Oh and we got Matt Myers of the Leet Street Boys to make us the new face-off sound effect. So yeah, go download the game if you haven't already!

PS: big awesome announcement will be made in the next day or so...