Hidden Asset (isometric assassination/stealth game)

[Christian Knudsen]

Somehow this remind me of an old DOS game "Covert Action" by Microprose.

That's looks really neat. I might give this game a try, if I can get my hands on it.

FPS games must be pretty easy to program, considering the embarrassment of riches we have in that genre.

I'm guessing you mean this in a negative manner despite calling it an "embarrassment of riches"? I doubt they're particularly easy to program. It's just that first person shooters is the most popular genre right now, so there are more of them than any other genre -- meaning there are also a lot more bad ones than any other genre.

[Christian Knudsen]

Interface now actually completely done
December 5th

Aaaaaand here's the final look of the interface:

I redid the stats bars in the upper right display to better fit with the overall style. And I've redone the combat mode border to fit the new interface elements. Finally, I made the blood splatters that will appear on the equipped item boxes when your arms are damaged (1-5 blood splatters on each to indicate amount of damage), as well as the splatters on the walk and run buttons when those selections are unavailable due to leg damage. The blood splatters shown here don't actually match the damage to the player in the screenshot -- it's just to show what they look like.

So I'm now locking the look of the interface, except for any future features that may creep in. The minimap is quite buggy at the moment when the map is rotated and you can't drag the minimap to examine the game world yet. So that's next for me to do.

[hansdown]

It really is looking great.

[ELD]

I did a post for you on www.gamingonlinux.com when the video was posted, will be watching this one very closely, love the style

[Christian Knudsen]

Thanks for the write-up!

[Christian Knudsen]

What's on the menu?
January 1st

It's a new year, so here's a new blog post!

Even though it's a bit too early in the development cycle to worry about them, I've been working on the game's menus. When I get fed up with a particular part of the game that's hard to figure out, instead of taking a break completely from the game, I just shift to something easier and more rewarding, which will eventually energize me to continue work on the original part. So that's what caused me to make the menus, as they're quite easy to program.

Here's the main menu screen:

The smoke is animated, which you'll see in the next development video I plan on releasing in a few days, and when I've scripted out the game's story and universe in more detail, there will be fiction related stuff (newspaper clippings and photos) fading in and out where the logo currently is.

And this is what the load/save game menu looks like:

I always loved the little thumbnail images that each savegame had in Fallout, so I've borrowed that for Hostile Takeover. I'm currently working on the options menu (mostly screen resolution settings, fullscreen/window mode, toggling some visual effects off on older computers) and then I'll return to the main game itself.

Anyway, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The past year saw excellent forward momentum on the development of Hostile Takeover and that will continue in the new year with the first playable pre-alpha demo being released sometime in 2012, preferably in the first half of the year.

[Neo Phoenix]

damn that looks great! Hope to get my hands on this!

[ELD]

Seriously looking cool, needs to be a sticky post i think!

[Christian Knudsen]

Thanks for the kind words!

[Camrcool51]

The game looks pretty good.