The demo is right around the corner, and we've dedicated this week to prepare for it's release. We've started taking footage, setting up musical pieces, performing final testing, and brushing up every aspect of the game. If we reach our goal this week, the demo can be expected so soon, you won't even have time to flinch! Anticipate!!!
I've once again arrived back in my beloved country of ice and rock, and the team is now a little bit scattered about. Still, we've managed to cover alot of ground during the team's stay in Texas, and we're getting ready for demo launch. We've got scheduled a few more playthroughs, and a new excellent video trailer is also in the works, showing off all the newest locations and features of Owlboy. Which, we've added quite alot of.
What better way to celebrate my homecoming, than to translate the whole of Owlboy to my native language! The Owlboy demo will be available in both English and Norwegian. Simon has also prided the game with his
own costum font of pixelated goodness!
Tomorrow I'll add alot of info on the development page of Owlboy, we'll also soon update the Owlboy website with this info, so new visitors can get all the info they need on the game through one page for when the demo is released. This will include a help section, explaining different aspects of the game, and how to play it.
Hey everyone, I finally got myself settled in and ready to report the on-goings of this year's convention in LA. It was a good trip and I met lots of people while handing out Owlboy posters. I went with 2 of my friends and we held a table in the artist alley. Posters were done a week or so before and the proofs looked awesome. Once we did get our boxes full of dead trees we packed up for the airport. We had a lot of trouble getting to LA since customs at the Vancouver Airport didn't like the idea of promotional material at all. After some delays they finally gave up a fruitless pursuit and we continued on. We got in around 11am and realized that day 0 badge pickup didn't start until 3 and the line ups were going to be 5 hours long as usual, so we went to Japantown for some ramen instead.
Stupidity has a very reasonable price tag and portion size, ohhhhhggghhhhh so good with the salmon don. Now you need to remember, the lot of us had woken up around 6am on June 29 to get last minute preparations done. We had a flight at 5am June 30th. Noodle time dropped around 2 or 3pm. I'll get back to this point when day 0 finally ends.
We jumped into line around 6 or 7pm, the air had cooled off, the sun was hiding behind the convention hall, and then he appeared. The guardian angel of AX...
Special Red (as we dubbed him) is a silent man who jitters, rocks, and creeps through the halls asking for phone numbers from girls and break dance fighting when the opportunity arises. We first saw him last year and he pretty well saved us from what was going to be a pretty underwhelming trip. I was lucky enough to capture him at the perfect moment but my camera wasn't set to the highest resolution. Isn’t that how it always is though? Some crackpot captures Bigfoot or aliens or trolls and they just happen to take it in the worst quality?
-Day one-
The next day I got to know my neighbours a little more. They are David, Matt and Ben of http://www.boxseats.tv/ and are working on a Death Sketch parody with an etch-a-sketch of death!
These guys were awesome. We goofed off and drew strange pictures to hand out to anyone who dared take them. Besides, handing out art was the only way to legitimize having an artist table. I can't wait to work with these guys on something.
Part way into day 1 my friend comes back and shows me some videos he took. Turns out Egoraptor was there and was super cool about signing stuff and just having fun with fans.
This reminded me of the week I spent in Texas visiting the rest of the team. Simon and I just nonstop quoted Awesome Chaotix the whole time (until stick to snakes became our new thing). Those were good times, I hope we can have a central studio some day, just got to keep pushing. Anyway, I was too busy with the table and getting autographs for my other friend to go give Arin a visit on day 1.
I got the chance to get Toshio Furukawa of Fist of the North Star and DBZ fame to sign a few things for me and my friends. The first thing I brought him was a small magazine I found in a collectors store. It was printed just before the original FOTNS movie came out and features voice actor profiles, behind the scenes stuff, just promotional material from Shonen Jump. So I set this down in front of him and his eyes just bug out, where did this guy get it, holy crap I thought these were all gone (it was in nearly mint condition). I flipped it open to a picture taken almost 30 years ago and he (and his helpers) started cracking up at how different he looked. As I was about to leave one guy wanted to see it, he was still pretty shawwked~ by all this. Phase 1 of the plan was complete. My friend then got up to the front and handed over a DVD cover of Ultimate Muscle, then my other friend handed him a DVD of the FOTNS movie, then I got back in line and handed him a DVD of Patlabor 2. We nostalgia bombed him so bad I felt sorry, but it was such an awesome chance.
-Day 2-
Day 2 came and it was busy; more people, more goofing around with
neighbours and crazy times. I realized I should go before it got super
busy, grabbed a few posters and moseyed on over to Egoraptor. I wanted
quietly for an opening while other fans bustled around handing him
anything, even phones to say hi to strangers who couldn't make it. He
called me over and I unrolled the Owlboy posters. Immediately his
reaction was "Woah! Where did these come from!?" and after explaining
who I was, "Is the artist here?!" Some of the fans at his table
immediate geeked out and ran back to my table after being given
directions while I stayed to gab with Arin. I bought an Awesome Reach
t-shirt and talked a little more about the game. Turns out he has been
interested in it since our very first prototype video hobbled its way
onto Youtube. I was totally gushing. I told him I was sending stuff to
the guys in Texas after the convention and he immediately handed me a
small stack of his Girl-chan in Paradise posters and then told me to
hold on a minute as he signed one for us!
Arin, you're an awesome guy! The team just got the posters I sent and they loved it. On an ambivalent note however, we ran out of posters on day 4 and people loved the artwork, but I forgot to put aside a few for the tube I sent to Texas!
-Day 3-
Sunday was another busy day, but nothing incredible happened.
Autographs were all done, more fun with the Death-a-sketch guys as
usual, making friends with other artists. I did a few art exchanges
with other tables and got a few business cards.
-Day 4-
Ahhhh the convention was winding down; I was out of stuff, the day
closed early as usual. I went over to Egoraptor to thank him again and
give my goodbyes, got a group photo of the Death-a-sketch guys and got
some last minute contact information. It was sad to leave, but AX was
a huge success! I was hoping to go to Otakon but maybe next year, same
goes for Comicon. It will be a long wait but I will be doing this
again at Sakuracon, and I hope to have even more swag for the fans and
soon to be fans of D-Pad Studio.
Hope you guys enjoyed my update!
One of the most enjoyable aspects of creating music for a game or film is creating themes for different characters and then shaping and re-shaping those themes throughout the course of the game as different events and scenarios dictate different moods and feelings. Today I'd like to go into a little more depth musically about one instance of this in the game.
I just recently created a "death" theme for Otus. It's a short little piece of music that plays when Otus dies and the screen goes dark. Here's the music:
Otus "Death" Theme (Orchestrated) by JGeerThe main melody in this theme is actually an inversion of the Owlboy Theme. In case you forgot what the Owlboy theme sounds like here's a quick reminder:
Owlboy Theme (Orchestrated) by JGeer
Inverting the Theme!
Here's what these two melodies look like on paper. I've lined it up so you can see how the inversion works.
The top line is the Owlboy theme and the bottom line is the Death theme. First of all, you can see that the rhythms are exactly the same. Then you can see how the inversion works since when the Owlboy theme moves up the Death theme moves down. Musically they actually mirror each perfectly until the very last note of the first bar. Many times you have to make slight adjustments when doing inversions. The adjustment to the last note of the first bar wasn't essential, but I thought it did make the melody a little darker. Then in the last bar the rhythm is still the same and the inversion is in place, but the skips between notes are much larger in the Death theme.
Now that you've seen it on paper, let's take a listen to each of these melodies played only by cellos.
First, the Owlboy theme:
And now the Death theme:
Otus "Death" Theme (Solo) by JGeerSo now you are probably starting to actually here the inversion and can recognize how the Death theme came out of the Owlboy theme. Now go back and listen to the orchestrated versions with this newfound musical knowledge. Pretty cool, huh?
Greetings from Austin, Texas! I'm the newest member of the team, Henrik, and I've been chugging along with Jo-Remi and Simon through crunch time on the Owlboy demo for about a month now. We've made some excellent progress, and we're almost ready to make a demo of the game available for public download.
A ton of work has gone into making the demo look nice and handsome, and we have frequently find that days have consisted of nothing but work, the only breaks being for eating, drinking, and bashing our heads against the tables in the hopes that the impact will soothe our red, burning eyes.
Dialogue improvements!
Asio was not happy about Owlboy's dialogue
As someone who spends much time pretending to be an English major, I took it upon myself to go through every piece of dialogue with Simon and Jo and made sure that every spoken word in the game is well considered and adds to the narrative. Emphasis has been on characterization, pacing, and conciseness, which I feel often get overlooked in modern titles.
Most of the work has been in coding, with work going into all-important shop and menu systems, rewriting parts of our sound system, and working on various annoying bugs that have plagued our engine since the dawn of time.
Map editors exist!The past few days I've spent on making improvements to our map editor. One of its main disadvantages was that as maps became larger the tools in it became kind of useless. We want to cram more content and more fun into the middle of our existing maps so we can look back at our level design and honestly say that we have done a great job with it, rather than be limited by our tools. This means that as we move past our demo and speed along with the rest of the game, we can work at a much faster pace than before.
The Map editor finally gets a moment of fame
You can keep following the game's progress on the Owlboy development page which is linked above. Jonathan and Simon have put together some pretty amazing stuff in the past few days, some of which you'll see in the upcoming demo. We don't want to spoil anything, but I hope you look forward to the demo and the game's release!
We're outta here! Our Mekka!
This is our second day summarized.
Don't stop, just go!
We got to play the new Sonic game, Sonic Generations, which exceeds all my expectations. And here I went thinking the blue guy was dead. There are 2 modes, one in which you play classic old Sonic in on a 2D type plane, and it rocks! The other is the new Sonic playstyle, 3D landscapes, and it sucks!
We also upgraded Simon before we left.
UPGRADE! Workrate + 500%
Then we finally met the star of the show! The new WiiU controller. The controller felt pretty much like a double analogued Nintendo 3Ds, and was pretty light despise it's size. The controller has a screen which can be used to look around in 3D as you turn yourself or the controller.
Any gaming ideas for the new controller? Plenty!
Check out more pics at the D-Pad Facebook.
Back to work on Owlboy
We've been jamming away on the code and content of Owlboy, and we've got a bunch of stuff coming in.
Otus can now equip hats, which makes for a really interesting customization system. Not only does the hats make Otus look spiffy, hats also has special abilities tied to them. Usually, the player gains hats by unlocking a new gunner. Hats and gunners can be mixed to create unique abilities.
We're still experimenting with different abilities and how they can combine, but in the end, I think we're going to end up with a good amount of variety.
Check out the Development Page for more changes.
We're there! Our Mekka!
Through Simon courses happiness, expectations and lust! We're at the entrance of E3
Getting around the showfloor
Now this is the real Hollywood of gaming! In one corner i saw Tim Schafer(Monkey Island, Psychonauts), roaming the Zelda lines were Warren Spector(Deus Ex, Epic Mickey), and up on the Nintendo booth was Mario!
Neeeentendo!
And speaking of which, before we made the trip to E3, we were glued to our monitor to watch the live screening of Nintendo's Press Conference. They announced a new console, called the "Wii U". Allthough it did not meet with Simon's expectations, we're already smashing ideas together that could be fun to create for the new platform.
The new Wii, as Simon pictured it
Moving in deeper
As we fought our way through hordes of people, dragons and women, we finally got our hands on the new Zelda! Joy!
Day 2 is just starting, we've had our coffee, and it's time to head out again. For more pics & comments, check us out on Facebook
Ever since first learning of E3(Electronic Entertainment Expo), it became an item on my "things-todo-before-death-and-decay" list. I recently learned that being an industry member, we are eligable for free passes to the Expo! A no brainer! We're going to E3!
Getting our stubby old hands on gaming newness!
There are some games that draw us more than others. In Simon's case, the new Zelda game, anything new from the Megaman franchise and Nintendo. In my case, the new Elderscrolls game and the booth babes. In any case, we'll be doing updates during our E3 adventure, hopefully with some visually pleasing pictures.
And what's the news on our raging Owlboy crunch?
Using our sharp wits, we sat down and went through all the dialogue sequences in Owlboy, and gave them a literary boost. The storytelling in Owlboy is so important to us, that we've spent all our energy these last days to re-write the existing cutscenes. Simon is also in the process of adding additional expressive animations for all plot characters.
Follow the development of Owlboy here: Owlboy Development Page
We're nicely settled in Texas, and raided IKEA for all our furniture needs! We've turned our livingroom into an office, and filled our fridge with on-the-go proviants. In other words, funtimes are over, worktime has begun! We've also added our Manager Of Management, Julie to our team! She keeps us fed!
Progress on Owlboy!
Me and Henrik is bashing the code in unison, and the demo is finishing up nicely. For a list of recent changes, visit the Owlboy development page.
Today our team fused together with Henrik, Simon's brother! He's going to help us out in Texas during the final development phase of Owlboy, and he's already basking deep within our code, doing excellent progress. We're hitting it extra hard these next couple of months, and having an extra set of minions truly helps!
Gamereactor Interview!
I'll also post an interview here, with me and Simon at the Nordic Indie Game Night, talking about how Vikings On Trampolines came to be, and current status of Owlboy.
It's finally started! Crunchtime on Owlboy! We've moved office to Austin, Texas for the occation, to be able to drag in the whole team for the crunch.
What will happen now?
For one, we'll be pretty much chained to our computers all day long, adding content and fixing bugs that we've sorely needed to be fixing.
Second, updates on our progress will be much more rapid, and I want to be creating a updatelog during this period. In this log, we'll explain little things about the game,
design choices that we've made, and let you in on some of the new things that we're adding to the game as we go into extreme mode.
Following Owlboy's progress up until finish
I'll get up the updatelog/info page as soon as possible, so be sure to check back.
We're also going to E3 in a week, and there'll be lots to tell! For these upcoming updates, I'll close the comment section, and put the old news in an "old news"-section, as this speeds things up. If anyone who has any input, or just want to cheer us on, contact information for our whole team can be found on our team page.
Spreading the word
The time has come to spread both words and wings! New art and trailers will start to appear, and for anyone interested, we'll soon start printing Owlboy buttons and posters(image pending...), and we'll make it so you
can order them online. Personally, I will decorate all my walls with Simon's art after we start the printers!
More news sooner that you know it! If you havn't already, now is a good time to start following D-Pad on Facebook and Twitter!
*Update*: The Owlboy development page has been created, and you can now follow the rapid progression during the final period of development. This page will be updated shortly with info on characters, story, etc.
Vikings! What do we do?! Pillage! In this case, we've pillaged the Indie Sensation award at the Nordic Game Awards.
Me, Vinter & Simon, being bloodlusty!
Off to Nordic Game Conference 2011
With new laptops, we did some final changes to our game, before hitting some airtime! Funny how weird bugs are always discovered riiiight before takeoff!
Last moments of fixing, makes game perfect
Indie Game Night at the arcade!
It's rumble time! The game is on in the Indie Arcade, and doors open for folks to play some trampoline madness! With 4 controllers plugged in, it's time to rally the players.
D-Pad's, GO!
Whoever could wring the helmet off of our insane northener Art Director, could keep it. But for those weak of heart, you could also win it by beating him at Viking On Trampolines!
With four controllers plugged in, Simon was ready to take on 3 other players at the same time!
You wanna have a go?! Better think twice!
4 hours in, nobody could claim our mighty champion's trinket! But then came Lau Korsgaard, the Jarl of Copenhagen Game Collective, a man with the strength, moves and fightingspirit of a thousand geeks, and finally took our champion down! Was it luck or fate? Or maybe he had gotten the training he needed? Who knows!
Loot! *Winner Photo pending*
Speaking about games!
Massive research done by the Paul & Percy team, playing Vikings On Trampolines is quite damaging to you, and those around you. Their research showed that workplace violence had risen from 3 to 27 after playing Vikings at their office. I can confirm.
Please take precautions!
Getting down to business
Doing business is NOT our main thing, making games is! But showing our games around like this, peeks interest in business people. We attended a few meetings between all the crazyness, and business is booming. But that's boring, let's play some games!
Important business this, taking down the Mojang team's business developer,
Daniel Kaplan in Street Fighter!
Awards up for the grabbing!
Our trip ended on a very high note, and we're as psyched as ever! We're officially multiple award winners, and as trueblood vikings, we've got no intention of stopping our invasion. Look forward to Owlboy this summer!
Happy days!
We're still chugging away at the game. The last week has mostly been adding content to a new dungeon we're working on, but since that's something we can't show at this point, this seemed like a good time to show off something that's been a long time coming: The NPC's houses:
This is Bomboman's house. He's been in the game for a while now, but after being busy working on other parts of the game for a while, it was high time we gave him somewhere to live. Bomboman is themed after lot of different cultures as a reflection of his drumming. I suppose subconsciously my idea was to merge Indian and Native American themes, but of course, this is only in the vaguest sense as it still needs to look Owlboy-esque. As a break from the usual pattern, I'm going to show the whole step by step process of how the house was built from start to finish:
Construction of Bomboman's House
I start off with a vague idea of what I want the interior to look like. I know what the house looks like from the outside, and it needs to follow along that same pattern. I draw the outlines and the colors of the walls with some shading. The interiors in Owlboy are always bright so you can clearly tell where the edges are, but are also somewhat desaturated so the characters will still pop out. Next, I've defined the edges a bit better, but this actually somewhat unusual, as I tend not to start any kind of polishing until the halfway stage towards the end. Woodwork is added (I do woodcarving, so I subconsciously put wood in everything I suppose.) Next up, I jot in the drums, which is the central element in this area. I didn't have a log of it, but I tried several different placements of these drums before I got the idea to put them on a platform in the middle of the house. They had to be centered due to how you use them in the game, and placing them up there also made use of the roof space.
The windows that are visible on the outside are added so I can account for light. Next are some decorative elements to give a sense that there's someone living here. Sometimes, It's important not to get too carried away with this step, simply because it might get overwhelming and the player won't know what to interact with. A fireplace and a teapot is added for some light animations. I'll admit, the teapot is in an odd place, but I figured Bomboman might need something to drink while on the second floor. A drum/cabinet and a dream catcher get sketched in, along with some artwork.
Then comes the polishing phase.
This can sometimes end up taking longer than the everything else combined, mostly since I'm ridiculously perfectionistic about how my pixels look. I try never to add any colors unless I absolutely need to. On one hand because it keeps the file size down, but on the other, as the project continues, I'll end up with gradients that I'll probably never use for any other sprites. I tend to feel that using a certain palette unifies the game better, and considering I've used the same palette in ever part of the game, that seems to be working. Needless restrictions maybe, but it's how I enjoy working.
So that's Bomboman's house. Speaking of Bomboman, his name is still tentative. We're still trying to name this guy, but his pet name at the office has kind of stuck for a while, so we might change that very soon.
It's Vikings on Trampolines!!!
Competing at the Indie Game Night
We're going to Malmø(Sweden) to show our little game at the Indie Game Night! Whoever can beat either me or Simon will be rewarded an exclusive T-Shirt!
Here is the official announcement: Indie Game Night Finalists
Last year we showed off Owlboy at the same event, and enjoyed every second of it! We're hoping for excellent success this year aswell!
Development
Development on this title will be taken up right after the release of Owlboy. To eager awaiterers of Owlboy, I'll say this: Owlboy is, and always will be, our main priority, until it's release! This project was a weekend experiment that turned out so fun, that we decided to make it our next development title.
Flying comes easy when you're born with wings and beaks. But controlling Otus has always been an issue we've wanted to adress. The flying mechanic in Owlboy is the most important aspect of the game, and finding the right controls is absolutely vital! We've spent this week refurbishing Otus' movements and moves.
Otus performing a powerful new attack
New set of songs
We've also been updating the sound font of Owlboy's world, and several musical pieces has been concocted at Jonathan's laboratory.
Several new places has been added, and has also been given some pretty dramatic themes. Simon is currently hard at work with the final set-pieces of the game, and we're speeding towards the final months of development with music and pixels flying everywhere!
D-PAD Studio @ GDC 2011 from Jonathan Geer on Vimeo.
We've also done an update to our development topic at TigSource, about how we're doing the introduction to the Owlboy, be sure to check it out.
TigSource Owlboy Development Blog
Simon felt the need to pay homage to the program he uses the most, MS Paint, by creating a few costum buttons.
We got to party with Indies at the Biz, we got to show off Owlboy while chugging beers at the Nordic Game Party, and we got to try out the Independent Gaming Festival nominees. For some reason, The IGF pavillion is always the most crowded space in GDC. Who knew that the Indie's, who are supposed to be the small ones, attract the most people. To me thou, it makes perfect sense, seeing all the brilliant games at display. The ones that interested me the most was Desktop Dungeons(QCF Design), Minecraft(Mojang) and Retro City Rampage(VBlank).
Now we're back behind our desks in colder-than-thou Norway, and hurtling away to get the demo finished. Expect it soon!
Oh, and we also just got Twitter! Follow our endeavours!
We'll be updating our Facebook page regularly with news from our trip to America. Follow us here: D-Pad Studio on Facebook
The Bliss part: So much new has been added to Owlboy, both in terms of content and polish, I can barely look straight.
The Hellish part: My eyes are so sore from overexposure to my computerscreen, that I can barely look straight.
So this week ends with an appointment at the optician's, but, the demo is hurtling along at a frantic pace. This time, we'll show off the source of Otus' powerups, trinkets and treasures: Buccanary's Shop.
Adventure Emporium
While adventuring in Owlboy, you'll come across rings that, by the looks of it, has been placed around deliberatly. These rings act as Buccanary's adventure ad-campaign coupons, and bringing them along to her shop will yield rewards.
As one brings back rings to Buccanary's Shop, extra items will appear on the walls of her shop, available for Otus to bring along on his adventure. Which items will be on display you ask? Secret ones. Now go, the weekend is upon us!
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For the past week we've been working non stop trying to get things ready for GDC. Right now we're working on the item system, Because... well... there will be items. At the moment, it seems to work in prototype form, but at the time of writing, we were still a little ways off to show any screenshots. So for today's update, I thought I'd share a little something that popped in my mail slot recently.
So I got my face printed again
I received an email from Photoshop magazine a while ago, asking if I wanted to appear in their latest issue. They received a "yes" and about a month later, this thing popped into my mail slot:
My first thought was "That's a very happy dog", but quickly flipped through the pages for my small moment of narcissism. Apparently, I have been declared one of the 3 best pixel art designers.
I'm unsure what the scale of this, but I'm hoping it's "the world". Though "people this magazine likes" isn't too bad either. When me and Jo were doing our presentation in Oslo at the Norwegian Championship in Game Design, I decided to announce my mention in the magazine, and somehow decided to say "top 3 in the world", which on further reflection probably wasn't accurate, but what's done is done I suppose. Let's see what they wrote...
They wanted to feature another secret Santa gift I did a while back (seems to be a trend). The recipient asked for a ton of different things for Christmas, so I decided to shove all of them in at the same time. Usually seems to work. I don't find it to be my greatest work, but I'm happy to see that there's people still browsing my galleries. More so that they can appreciate something I've done, but I'll stop here before I go into Oscar-award-speech mode.
That's about it. However! I was recently contacted by German magazine M! Games, and apparently, my Colossal Katamari art is going to be present in their next issue. This will be the second time it's appeared in print, so naturally, I'm excited. I'm building up quite a collection it seems...
Alright. Back to the scheduled programme. Until next time!
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After a long and grueling selection process (not really, we just picked something we liked), we've decided on the name for our monkey-like creature of grandness. It will, henceforth, be known as the Kaboon! Congratulations to Hypodermius!! You will recieve a custom Owlboy T-shirt, created from our wonderful staff (that's us).
Picture of the T-Shirt will be up soon!
Third time's a GDC
The details are still being worked out, but we're doing everything we can to get the game into your hands to get a taste of what's to come. Other tidbits are being worked out as well, but we'll get to that soon enough.
So if anyone wants to meet up, say hi, or just ask why I'm still wearing the same jacket, come down to the Moscone Center between february 28th and March 4th.
Until then: Hoot!
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We've celebrated the new year by using the first week to create a whole new game for the Norwegian Gameplay Championship 2011.
The theme of the competition was "Light", and in this game, staying out of the light is key. This is a two-player competetive game, where you control one of two ghosts, bent on stealing money from the other player. By possessing the host, you can run around and steal from the other player's vault. The goal of the game is to possess the host, and grab as much gold as possible.
Soundtrack from trailer created by Aleksander Vinter
So much inspiration, too little time!
Music is my most prominent source of inspiration. The team's composer, Jonathan has entered the new year by updating his website, adding tracks to his online musical repetoire, which I've personally started to draw much inspiration from.
Currently listening to: Jolly Old Saint Nicholas
He also created the soundtrack for Possession, which you can download here:
Jonathan Geer - Possession Theme.mp3
Visit Jonathan's site at: http://www.jonathangeer.com/
Going to GDC 2011!
We've started to organize the team's quest for global take-over, and this year, we'll start at our excursion at GDC San Francisco. We're hoping to meet as many fans and developers as we possibly can!
Happy Newyear from D-Pad! We're hoping for a big year in gaming!
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Today we offer you, dear reader, the Owlboy Theme (as a belated Christmas present?). This is the theme you hear in the trailer for the game and in the beginning of the game as you are introduced to Otus' world for the first time. It will pop up many times throughout the game in different forms. It sounds a bit nostalgic now, but it will transform as you get deeper into the game.
Download the Owlboy Theme(.mp3)
Layers
The theme is actually a combination of two layers of music that play simultaneously. When Otus is grounded only the "Ground Layer" plays.
Music - Ground Layer(.mp3)
Woosh!! Otus jumps into the air and those 8bit beeps and bloops get an orchestra behind them!
Music - Combined Layers(.mp3)
Hope you enjoyed the music and stay tuned for an in-depth musical discussion of of one of the themes for the second Dungeon coming soon…
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Snow is falling, and holiday is setting in. Everyone is busy, especially us gamers! We've got important stuff to do...
...Like building an Otus Snowman!
More pics on Facebook
Real world business
We're taking a holiday break off our computers to attend to our families, gift wrapping and sugary sweet baking! But we're going to sneak off from time to time to do a little geeking, and soon we'll be able to open the D-Pad Forums, where we'll post general stuff about all our projects, inspiring media, games and open for fans to discuss all things gaming!
How about Magma-Monkey? Slag? Womp?
We've got a handful of snazzy name suggestions for the "Lava Monkey":
- Stretch
- Womp
- Brace
- Mr. Lava Lava
- The Swatt
- Slag
- Lomok
- Magmono
- Magma-Monkey
- Boon
- Lavaboon
- Magmaboon
- Bamagma
- Balava
- Golava
- Lavrilla
- Magrilla
We havn't decided a final name yet, so we're still taking suggestions.
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We've got a comment section up, and our Forums are coming up very shortly. It's time for the public to get up and give us their two-cents, cause we love fans, and people who wants to share their thoughts with us. Also, we're announcing a new monster today, and we're looking for a name for the fella. Any suggestions?
Lava Monkey?
The new enemy is the Lava Monkey(name pending), which resides in the warmer sections of the game, usually pretty close to deadly Lava-pits. They might look like Monkeys, but they've got the arm strength of bears, and will try and catch Otus as he tries to fend them off.
This monster will drop itself from the ceiling, dragging Otus into any hazards that might linger below.
Growing enemy roster
We've got a growing enemy roster, and we've had no difficult with their naming conventions. But this time, we're looking for a short, descriptive name to grant the Lava Monkey, and any suggestions will be taken into consideration. Here are a few of the enemies we've got:
The flying 'Gawk', the grumpy 'Torque' and the firebreathing 'Molt'
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You read that right. About three months ago, during the whole buzz about Megaman universe, it was hinted that a new megaman game would be revealed on the net at an undisclosed time. While this turned out to be Legends 3, we thought it would be fun to create our own trailer for the X series, specifically, Megaman X9:
I've always loved the Megaman series. The game play and the character designs have influenced my art for years. However, I've always found that the series took a dive in quality when parts of the original team broke off from Capcom and formed Inti Creates after the release of Megaman X3. Though X4 was fairly good, X5 to 7 have felt somewhat flawed to me, riddled with strange design choices that didn't work out that well. X8 tried to regain some of the momentum, but when compared to the original 3 games, it doesn't quite get there. Read More...
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Alright guys, it's time for another Owlboy update. Today, we take a look at the newest addition to the enemy roster, the Fuse.
The Fuse is a bird-like creature filled with highly combustible fluids. They're very territorial and has a short temper, hence the name. When it spots an intruder, it will immediately charge them.
The Fuse in it's natural habitat. If a Fuse spots Otus, it will charge straight at him
Should you manage to dodge the Fuse, it might ram into a nearby wall, stunning it temporarily. This gives you the option to pick it up and throw, causing it to combust and light anything flammable on fire. Should you be too slow though, the Fuse will regain consciousness and take it's revenge.
Use the Fuse to light things on fire. Just make sure to get it done quickly...
So that's the Fuse. Sure to please birdwatchers and pyromaniacs everywhere!
That's it for this week's report. Check out the site next Thursday for more Owlboy details!
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Owlboy wins Norwegian Game Awards!
Hey! How'd that guy on the left get in there! Someone call security! Oh.. wait...
Most of you have already heard the news by now, but D-Pad Studio attended the Norwegian game awards this year back in August and actually came back with the main prize! That’s right. Owlboy won the grand prize for Game of the year!
It's taken a while to get to the stage where we can announce it ourselves, what with the new site going live and other updates on the way. I suppose it's needless to say how proud we are for achieving this award, but it's something we feel we need to make absolutely clear. There were a lot of fine entries to this years competition and in honesty, we didn't expect to win anything. We were nominated for "Best execution", and this can mean a lot of things. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and whenever I look at our game, I see only more things we need to improve. We also didn't realise a game that hadn't won a minor prize could still be considered for the grand prize.
During the award ceremony, the prize for best execution went to Evil Jr. and at that point we more or less figured the race was over. It was amazing to hear the Evil Jr. dev team claim we should have won the award, though it also seemed to confirm our suspicions that we were out of the game, so when we were mentioned as nominees for the grand prize, it came as a complete shock. More so when we heard them sum up the winning entry, hearing the words "Retro graphics" removed all doubt
It's really a shame that the rest of the team overseas couldn't be there to share that moment, as I know we had hopes for the IGF nomination last year, so here's to you guys! The game wouldn't be where it is without you!
Standing there with a giant cheque is an interesting feeling. I guess my girlfriend thought it was an interesting feeling to get called randomly to the back noise of cheering crowds too. It was an interesting feeling calling our families telling them what just happened, and it was DEFINITELY an interesting feeling walking back from the after party in the middle of the night, carrying said gigantic cheque and trying to find our hotel. All in all, it was a wonderful experience, and because of this event, we've finally managed to push D-Pad Studio to become a company. Now it's time to apply a little elbow grease and get Owlboy out there for you guys to play. I'm really looking forward to that.
On a side note, It's also an interesting feeling posing with stormtroopers, being told to act worried, and being the only one doing it. I mean geez, I look like I was just picked up off the street and asked to hold something!
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The new D-Pad Studio website is up, and with the new design, also comes new content! Every week, the D-Pad crew will update the development blog with news on our main and side projects. We've also added an own Official Owlboy webpage, and there will even be secrets embedded in this website.
The Website is still in development so links are disabled, but soon, comment sections, RSS feeds, aswell as a Facebook page will be available, in order to help fans keep updated with our projects.
To kick off the new website, we've got some hooting news on the development of Owlboy to share:
New Owlboy Dungeon - The Floating Continent
We've started building the second Dungeon that the player will be able to explore in Owlboy. The Dungeon will consist of Jungle infested caves and lava-smouldered corridors, while the wild-life and creatures in the Dungeon are still menacing it's halls.
Caves of Jungleness!
We're adding more content to the upcoming Dungeon at a rapid pace, and next week we'll give some more insight on what beasties await Otus in the Dungeon.
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