Re: Ouya

Earlier last year, a KickStarter project named Ouya was taking ground, it has now been mobilized into a console set to release this year. The console only contains digital, free to play games. Shattered Games will be taking part in this new console by rewriting all the code on our previous games to work on the Ouya. In addition, we will be releasing a Ouya Suite, a set of titles devoted to making use of every bit of the Ouya’s hardware to run amazing games. We will take our games to new areas; Multiplayer, Free-Roam, Sandbox, more in depth and longer play-ability, and all new mechanics.

To cope with this change, we have added a new Jobs page for you to visit and apply!

 

See you soon gamers!

The Final Cut – Pre-Alpha Public

Our next title, The Final Cut, is now available for public viewing at our ModDB Company profile. You can download the game from here. The game is in Pre-Alpha and will go through three stages: Pre-Alpha, Alpha, Beta, PreRelease, Release. There will be patches periodically to download from that page so we suggest to bookmark the page!

Whenever the game leaves one stage and onto the next, we will make sure to post it here and inform you to download it. Alternatively  we will have weekly fixes and update the download quite often so be sure to check back.

 

For any bug reports, post them in the comment section on the download page.

Graphics for the game have not yet been finished up and will be added soon.

Donations and Open Market Fund

At this point in time, the progress of our game production has been slow. This has been due to several factors, the most prominent being a lack of time from classes. In order to help speed up production, we are asking for donations from the community, you, to help keep us alive. Donations will go towards purchasing usable scripts to cut down on programming time and in-game assets. This will also contribute to our Open Market Fund.

The Open Market Fund is our drive to receive enough donations to open our publishing up to either the Apple App Store, Steam Greenlight, or the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace (Playable on PC and XBOX). Upon donation, leaving a comment with which one you would like the most, or all so we know!

Quick Notes:

You DO NOT have to donate. This is only to help support us. Donations are NON refundable and go towards the two funds as listed above. If you have any questions or concerns, please fill out the form on the Contact Us page.

Thank you for your support.

 

Donations over $50 will receive a free Shattered Games Support T-Shirt. Please be sure to send your email as a comment so we may contact you. Thanks!

Quick update

Games have been delayed due to some hardware limitations which have been seen to be fixed this week, so we can continue work on future games and better test and expand our games. A post regarding the whole story will be up later this week, be on the look out for DLC, larger worlds, and more expansive games! Thanks everybody.

Indie City or ModDB?

As you know, we use IndieCity.com and ModDB.com as two forms of publishers for our video games. Many people ask why the double platform, so here is an answer:

Our games are available on almost any indie game site you can find. We want our material out there, these being the two main ones, however. We do prefer ModDB over IndieCity for numerous reason, mainly being the client is bulky and confusing and requires a Indie City account.

However, We will use IndieCity for paid games exclusivly. No paid games will be released on to ModDB (unless authed by Desura). So if you are looking for our free versions, check out our MODDB, for all others, see our INDIECITY. We will keep all three titles to this date on the Indie City store.

 

Thanks

Work on Radiation continues

Work on our new game Radiation is still in the works. Please fill out the form in our previous post to test the game for free. Tester feedback is helping the direction of our game. It is a FPS and more than likely will be released for free. There’s also the possibility to test our game to twitter tweeting possibilities. This will be a socially engaging game involving twitter and Facebook. Be on the look out for screenshots and videos!

Map Building, an interesting job

This evening I was working on maps for a new game. This is very hard, for single player and multiplayer. Many AAA title developers (Infinity Ward, Treyarch, COD guys) complain about how hard designing a MP map is a very hard part, well I find single player maps the hardest. The game will not be a “shoot the bad guys and push forward”, you are the squad leader, trying to find a way out. So, the map needs multiple dead ends, interesting routes, and many lines of sight. Also, it must be balanced so that AI cannot easily get you, nor can the player just get them all in a small spot to ‘nade.

I think the single player is important, without a good map a level may be really easy, or ridiculously hard. Neither is fun. Thus balancing comes to play. Now, once you have balancing down you also need to take into consideration the player’s gaming platform. A SP map is bigger than MP with more objects to load because it has enemy spawns, the large map for the mission, interactive elements, and constant sound. So, you need a good medium of balance, load time, and overall fun level.

Teaser

Regarding ShatteredGames.com

The domain URL shatteredgames.com is not owned by us, nor are we affiliated in any way with the owner of the site or content they post. Games on the site are not games we make.

We currently do not own a web domain as a wordpress domain is working perfectly with all the tools we would ever need. So please take note any content on Shatteredgames.com is not our content.

 

Thanks,

Andrew – Lead Developer

Why we will not port to Xbox 360 [YET]

To answer a question we get on a regular basis, we will not port to the Xbox 360 or any other console, yet.

To break it down, we currently make zero income from games we produce. Why? We like getting our name out there, no one will buy a game from a developer they’ve never heard of with only one game out, right? So now that we are officially “out there” we will start charging a price for our games. Back on topic: To get into the Xbox 360 developer program, it is $100 (Dreamspark will not pay for publishing, only resources) to sign up for the program. On top of that, we need a hard drive for our Xbox (apparently the hard drive inside my Xbox isn’t good enough), which is another $100, and then, add $100 on top of that for the Xbox Live Membership. That is $300 from a company making $0 starting off. A -$300 deficit isn’t the best thing to start off with. Granted Indie Games are required to be paid from Xbox (no free indie games), but then again, how many of you knew Xbox had an Indie section? (not talking about the XBLA).

 

So there you have it, I hope this helps give insight as to why we stick to PC at the moment.