Level 3, 4 and 5 of “world 5” (desert) are done. It was a lot of work and only three more to go… if everything goes traight “World 5” can be considered pre-final by end of this week. Screenshots to follow…

Please DO NOT post this news outside of gianas-return.de!

New day, new news, new good news! – Crooaa’s Mountains (previously known as World 1) is ready for semi-public beta testing!

These rules apply:

• You must be a long-time follower of this project.
• Any leak will result into cancelling the game for the public – if you are just out for the sake of fun, forget it. We are serious about this and we mean it. The team can spread the final also via worthy friends.
• You must be willing to leave your real name and real adress
• You should have time on your hands
• You must be able to write constructive feedback or bug reports in understandable english. We don’t expect you to write books, but short effective reports.
• Communication will mainly happen via a webboard
• The game in it’s basic is done, we wont accept people who try to kill our concept, your task will be just to find logical and design errors along with possible bug reporting.
• Main contacts will be the organizer and our main beta-tester “Mulle” – you wont have contact to the rest of the team.
• Everything is strictly confidential – You are not allowed to mention in the public who is part of this project (the coder is still unmentioned for a good reason) nor release screenshots or videos, unless otherwise told.
• Contact possibilities via MSN or ICQ would be appreciated (probably any other IM too) – direct communication also helps to speed up things.
• You probably wont get credited as beta-tester, but maybe mentioned as “supporter” on the homepage once everything is released.

Volunteers, reply to this blog entry and leave your correct e-mail adress. If you are interesting for us, we will get in touch with you, otherwise please forgive us already now for not answering. We prefer finishing the game :)

PS: Development Version is for Windows 32-bit!

…is a pain. The decision has been made to design newer levels from scratch. This is actually a LOT faster than adjusting old levels. It simply saves time and to be honest, it’s time for a release the next few weeks :)

More stuff:

• The bugtracker has been heavily filled tonight, mostly it’s just minor adjustment or detail workout, not any real bugs.
• The name for boss number one has been decided, unfortunatly it was not any of the given ideas in previous posts. Still thanks for all the suggestions, it was much appreciated.
• Set five (desert) was having a minor changes, our graphic artist is adjusting them the next days.
• There will be a sort of “semi-public” beta test for World 1 in a few weeks, for more details keep an eye on the blog. Only people who are trustworthy and followed the development for a while, will be qualified for this. Strangers who pop out of nothing now, wont have a chance to lay hand on it.
• world 5 / stage 1 and stage 2 are fully redesigned and ready for our official beta-tester ;)

To help the raising german Dreamcast site http://www.dreamcast-germany.de we decided to give’em a bunch of screenshots from the cave world.

This time you can check them only there :) So head over to:

http://www.dreamcast-germany.de/2008/05/gianas-return-exklusive-bilder/

First results with it should show up end of this week, due to a minor health issue of the organizer, who is also doing the levels.

Old:

New:

The silver pipe has disappeard and everything is a bit more matching now. There is another significant change, the boss has an energy bar now, so you can see how long you need to fight.

Our coder has tweaked the first endboss this night. Overall it’s slightly more difficult than before, but considering there are dozens of chances to gain extra lifes before, it should not hurt too much.

Concerning some critism from Fusion_Power about the “layout” of the boss area, we have adjusted it. A before after check will be posted the next days. It’s really just a MINOR change, but it was probably really required.

* Our coder is ironing out bugs and also codes a bunch of enhancements for the game.
* Our pixel graphician is (still/again) busy with his paid job – he promised to have the tileset for the desert world done by friday.
* Our musician alex is currently finetuning his tracks and composing a few new ones, as the soundtrack is yet not fully complete.
* The organizer is frustrated, due to slow graphic artists ;)
* The beta-tester is bored, as he doesn’t have anything to do…

… to be continued!