Arcade Otaku - アーケード オタク

I have recently been in contact with the team of 3 guys working on a new game to be released on a jamma board called SkyCurser. I am the first person to interview 2 of the 3 of the team (yesterday) which will be included on the newest Ten Pence Arcade podcast (released Tuesday 17th Feb)

It looks like an awesome title, made by TRUE arcade game enthusiasts.

Go http://www.skycurser.com and check out the site - ensure you click on the developer blog too http://tumblr.skycurser.com/ I really like the purple cab they have made to showcase their game.

I am well behind these guys in their edeavours, please support them too if you are. They aren't even asking for financial backing at the moment - just someone to possibly help them with some ARM programming tricks to help them out in the game. If you are knowledgeable in GAMEMAKER STUDIO, please get in touch with the guys if you think you could help them out at all. Thumbs Up

They got my admiration. Hope it works out well.

It's "meant for the arcade" but how will they distribute the game; Steam and current gen consoles?

It sounds like they're going to produce a JAMMA board to play in a cab.

Would be interested in the kind of hardware they're using for this, should be quite cool!

Listen to the next podcast and you'll find out. It'll be out on Tuesday.

Smooth...

Dache wrote:It sounds like they're going to produce a JAMMA board to play in a cab.

Wow, that's crazy.

From gamemaker studio to custom ARM stuff is kindof a big step

You could say the same about starting from pen and paper.

The whole thing is a tall order but it just needs enough motivation. VVVVVV was ported from Actionscript to C after it had found success. The important part is making something decent then go from there. Gamemaker is perfectly capable of that. Most 2D games on Arm platforms use it.

"Most 2D games on Arm platforms use it." Do you mean the export to android/ios stuff or did i miss some other option? (Just googled, havent used it) Going from that to your own custom platform is still a huge gap requiring you to either port android to your custom platform or make everything from scratch. If you are capable of doing that then i'm not sure why you made the entire game in gamemaker in the first place. I just think it sounds like a bit of an overenthusiastic plan.

Having said that ofcourse i wish them the best in their efforts. The parallax stuff looks nice, the player sprites do have that homebrew look and feel though.

Great to see teams like this keeping the arcade dream alive. Love the phrase "meat hell" phrase

P.S. It looks like there is a PI exporter in the works for Gamemaker but we will have to wait and see what happens with them since the PlayTech acquisition.

Cool project. Some tips:

Main ship is too big.
They should get rid of all eye balls.
They should get rid of the graphics on the bottom left. I don't want to see some pixel art of the pilot. At least make it transparent.
I don't like the ablitity to switch weapons at all. Seems like it is switchable. nobody needs to see that anyway.
Use less purple.
Please let the hit boxes of all prites be correct and for the mains ship be as big as 1 or maximum several pixels.
Looking forward to how this develops.
As for a jamma board, I could be as simple as a 'unix on a stick'-device connected to a jamma loom. It does not have to be like a traditional jamma board

Cool except for everything then?

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You can install Android on Pi. There are options and I'd guess they've spent more than five minutes considering them.

Good on them. The sprites are way too big though

pubjoe wrote: You can install Android on Pi. There are options and I'd guess they've spent more than five minutes considering them.

Just trying to be helpful chap

lol i did think the same about the main ship. i.e too big but overall it looks really nice

I think its a good thing that these things are been done by teams "small business" as the "main" developers are gone from old style arcade games so there is a market for these ,it may not be aimed at me or catch my fancy or be something that i can afford , but i would like to see more of these things happen ,
I'm not too knowledgeable on the pinball world hasnt there been a coupole of small companys set up by enthusiasts to build new tables !
why not have similar for the arcade world !

although how you can go from a candy and then design that purple thing is beyind me !

I quite like the purple arcade

I'd love to be making arcade shmups in a small indie team. Dream job

me too

The ship is too big, yup. The cab is awful, yup. The game looks like it tries too hard. So I'm wondering why they didn't make an arcade Doom clone?

Well i'd certainly be interested if they managed to create a low-cost, generic 15khz jamma out solution. Apart from downscaled and/or composite solutions i havent seen anything for the pi or similar.