There’s nothing I hate more than unused resources. And that’s exactly what’s happening with Napalm of Valor: Helicopter Cacophony 3.

Back when I released the demo of HC3, I still knew little of blending and particles (see the previous post on Liquisity). And so, the “debris engine” was made up of a ton of objects with little blending, which ended up slowing the game down considerably and making it a visual nightmare once the buildings blew. Some comments from people who played the demo:

“Honestly, i was expecting a bit more graphical effects. It felt like i was playing something that was knocked up in a couple of minutes. The graphics were a bit out of place (as someone mentioned above) and generally i felt the quality was lacking.”

“That was pretty dissapointing. The sprites overall sucked and it was so easy just to hold “D” and kill all the people coming towards you.”

“Okay, I’m really dissapointed. I mean, when I saw was working on this game, not to mention Mr. Chubigans, creator of sandbox of god and other great games, I thought this must be great game. Well screens already kinda suprised me, but actual game is worse. Graphics don’t fit at all, explosions and effects are just terrible gif animations, with no taste at all… What happened? Only explanation I can come up with is, that you are just kinda joking… Like a parody or something. But then say it, or else you are just selling your good name out”

“I was kinda disappointed. The graphics clashed with the background and you saw a lot of out-dated looking graphics.”

And so, with that in hand, I decided to just hold off on the game. And here we are, just about a year later.

Try the old demo here: http://www.vertigogaming.net/NVHC3demo.zip

So what I do have is a complete sprite package done by Him, ready to be implemented into something. It’s quite an amazing sprite library…you can build some nifty little towns:



I really hate not using any of these sprites. Making HC3 at this point just doesn’t sound like it’s going to happen, as my Game Making skills don’t extend far enough to make a great action shooter (dunno how to do AI properly, etc.) But I don’t want to leave the game behind either. And so, a process of making a game around the sprites started to happen…and fail multiple times.

STRIKE ONE: Liquisty Meets Destruction. Seemed like a good idea at the time: use a silver ball with the physics of Liquisity to destroy cities! And yet, it failed so hard. You can actually take a look at the proof of concept here: http://www.vertigogaming.net/ballistic.zip

STRIKE TWO: Building a puzzle around destruction, part one. I had an idea for a puzzle game to influence the city below it…a SimCity meets Bejewled type thing. Mighta worked, but it was just way too confusing to be a good puzzle game. The idea eventually sprung on its own to become Spirits of Metropolis, dropping the whole city building aspect.

STRIKE THREE: Puzzle meets destruction, part deux. Then I decided to overlay a color-matching game on top of buildings, to where when you match colors, the building parts under it are destroyed, and finally once you beat the puzzle the building goes down. Worked OK, but I realized that it was just another puzzle game in a new skin. So forget that.

So that leaves me with one more idea, one that I really think will work this time. It’s not a puzzle, but a simulation where you own a blasting company that takes down buildings for a profession. Think Blast Corps, but more cerebral.

I don’t plan on making that game until I finish SOG2, Liquisity 2 and SofM, and who knows if it’ll turn out any better than the previous games I listed. But I hate to let good resources go to waste (not to mention having the graphics part already done, which is more than half the work right there!)