News
Metal Drift now available for Pre-Order on Steam!
October 13th, 2009
It’s finally available for purchase. Head on over here and get your copy now, 20% off for the next week or so!
Here’s the (late) press release:
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Portland, OR - Independent developer Black Jacket Studios announced their first title, “Metal Drift” is available starting today for pre-order on PC through the Steam online distribution service. The vehicular combat shooter is available for a 20% discount at $9.99. Players who pre-order will have access to the final 2 weeks of beta before the full release.
Metal Drift is a vehicular sport combat game set in a distant future. You command an agile, high powered hover tank in a futuristic sports arena. Core game play centers on intense tank-on-tank multiplayer team combat seen through an immersive, first person cockpit. Layered on this is a goal-oriented game type that allows for high level strategy and team dynamics. Players can level up to unlock new ranks, weapons, and upgrades.
Each weapon and upgrade is specifically designed and balanced to allow different styles of play. Pair up the Stealth upgrade and the Shock Cannon to uncloak behind an enemy player and unload a devastating blow before disappearing again. Or choose the Sensor upgrade to see where all the nearby players are, and the Temporal Cannon to shoot them through walls! There are 56 possible combinations – choose whichever suits your strategy.
- - Multiplayer team-based vehicular combat
- - 5 Different arenas featuring multiple levels and boost tunnels
- - Persistent leveling system – level-up to unlock new weapons and upgrades
- - Stats and Leaderboards
- - 56 Different tank configurations
- - 18 Steam Achievements, with more coming soon!
- - Unique energy management system – accumulate energy and then distribute it to weapons or use it to gain a speed boost!
Promo video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkHAvhKgKEI
Steam page - http://store.steampowered.com/app/32200/
Official Metal Drift - http://www.metaldrift.com
Black Jacket Studios - http://www.blackjacketstudios.com
Indie Collaboration Through In-Game Ads
September 14th, 2009
At GDC this year in San Francisco, I met up with a bunch of Indie game developers at the Kongregate building down town. The event was put together by Ron Carmel and Kyle Gabler of 2DBoy. It turned out to be a great opportunity to get to know a bunch of top indies and discuss the adventurous non-stop glamor that is indie game development.
Around this same time, Brian and I were trying to figure out how to flesh out the Metal Drift world with a little more life. We wanted to push the sports angle by adding arena ads, but didn’t want to invest a ton of time making up and designing logos for fictitious companies. So it seemed like a natural fit to advertise for our fellow indies instead.
So at the Kongregate meet up I made the offer; free advertising to anyone who wanted it. All we needed in return was the use of a logo. The idea got plenty of interest from the room…so we were off and rolling and ended up with some great companies. The final line up includes:
HotHead - Makers of the ever popular Penny Arcade Adventures.
Klei Entertainment - Makers of the hot titles Shank, Sugar Rush and Eets.
Games Faction - Makers of the beautiful Project Aftermath.
Garage Games - Our illustrious benefactors.
Nimblebit - iPhone domination machine and creators of the super polished Zero Gear.
Fully Illustrated - Our web designers, and just incredible people all around. There are none better.
Torpex Games - Creators of the award winning Schizoid.
Firehose Games - Working on top secret games involving Super Heroes and Love (?)
Ronimo - Maker of the fantastic Swords and Soldiers for the Wii.
It was our job to animate the logos once we got them. So I did some research to hunt down the best looking animated ads I could find. Not surprisingly Japan had the best stuff. I broke down the dominant styles and came up with some basic animations.
After a bunch of trial and error, I managed to throw together animated ads for each contributor. It was a little more work than I had anticipated, but I think it was worth it. Each ad ended up being between 30 to 60 frames, some with overlapping animations. Take a look at the final product:
I think they turned out pretty well. Thanks in large part to the great initial logos and all the folks who participated. We look forward to collaborating with the indie community again soon.
Find more regular updates from me on Twitter.
Weston
Categories: Development, GDC, General Comments: 7
Inspiration!
June 3rd, 2009
One piece of inspiration that we got from Metal Drift, I first saw back in college on Liquid Television - a show that showcased all kinds of animation, from anime to crappy stop motion. If you aren’t familiar with it, shows like Aeon Flux and Beavis and Butthead were first seen there. I always liked Liquid TV because along with the crap, there were some really cool bits that were inspiring in there.
One of those cool “bits” was a short film from the larger anime movie Neo Tokyo called “The Running Man”. No relation to the cheesy 80’s Schwarzenegger action flick. I saw there are a couple of versions of it up on YouTube. The one below is edited down quite a bit, so if you like it, check out the link below it, which you can see is the one aired on Liquid Television. The voice actor is different too, not sure what the story is there. Anyway, check it out, you’ll see the connection to Metal Drift:
Here’s the link to the other version.