**My pug pal going digital or: Rescue Bacon! and help from my four legged friend**
RP
Member Posts: 1,990
Hey there peeps of GameSalad
I wanted to share a little of the behind the scenes and back story to the making of my recent release Rescue Bacon!
It all starts with a Pug....
Yes, my bud Schnitzel had a big part in this project. Not only is he broken down into digital form and inserted into the game, he lends his own voice overs, but most of all he helped inspire this wacky adventure.
Not so long ago this title was in concept form, being built in Xcode. At the time the title was known as Pug Out and it had a completely different storyline. In Pug Out, a young man in tasked with watching his uncle's prize winning pug a week away from a big dog show. The nephew, a lazy sort decides to pass his duties onto technology and automation. He orders the ultimate in human and pet care systems, the Autofeeder 2000. Of course things don't go as planned and while the nephew was away the Autofeeder 2000 goes haywire and begins dispersing a hailstorm of foods typically meant for human consumption. This is where you controlled the pug and attempted to catch foods that were less fattening, as fatty foods would eventually cause the pug to pack on weight until he exploded into a creamy cake-like mess. If you made it through the levels (the days of the week) you would weigh in at the end for the dog show. Less than high marks would result in the wrath of the uncle.
There were to be rewards such as trophies, money etc.
Alas, this conceptual story grew tired with me. It was too focused on food and dog shows and while I like food, I'm not a dog fanatic (just a fan of my pal) nor have I watched a dog show, unless Triumph the insult comic dog was attending. I decided to change up my approach to things that my daughter, dog and I all loved. Bacon! and aliens too...those are pretty cool. Back in December 2011, I was scanning through my emails and saw that GameSalad had gone through a series of updates since I had last use it and thought to myself, why not build it in GameSalad? and so, a the new vision of Pug Out was underway.
Rescue Bacon! retained some of the original ideas from Pug Out, such as the pug catching food, in this case bacon. Peppers were assets from the old game, but now are the the weapon of choice that the invading aliens use to disable the player. The pug explosion animation is in fact from the original game. I am a fan of old style arcade shooters. Particularly some of the earlier whacky shooters that Namco and Konami put together. Years ago, one of the most impressive and atmospheric games I played was both an animatronic light gun game and a video arcade game called Cosmo Gang, where you had to shoot aliens and keep them from stealing energy. It was great light hearted fun and aliens had lots of personality even thought the gameplay was short lived. Definitely an inspiration.
Creating my own thang.
I wanted the aliens to be fun yet sinister so I decided to give them a very basic cartoon-like design with a touch of nasty attitude. To make them slightly more menacing the aliens have a bomb-like outline. Originally the aliens would make dive bomb-like entrances, but this was found to be too taxing on what was going on on-screen all at one time. I also had to remember that I was going family friendly with this title, so I needed to keep the difficulty somewhat moderate and have less going on before it turned into a bullet-hell game. The end result was Schnitzel battling aliens across 5 colorful levels with music and bosses matching the themes and settings.
Oh yeah I did.
"All your bacon are belong to us!". I could not but help myself but put a spin on the localization errors of Zero Wing. That part was just too easy and needed to be done. It became part of the opening storyline in the game and I recreated my own version of the Zero Wing ship's bridge communication intro in the Rescue Bacon! trailer. An homage of course (the intro was unforgettably butchered and the game had great music for its time).
Why bacon? Because, who does not love bacon? I try to rescue it from my plate any chance I get. Schnitzel would gladly the do same (he is a huge fan of Beggin Strips).
I want to give thanks to all those knowledge people on the forums as well as GameSalad. The resources you guys provide in video, text and somewhat live forum-format are invaluable.
I wanted to share a little of the behind the scenes and back story to the making of my recent release Rescue Bacon!
It all starts with a Pug....
Yes, my bud Schnitzel had a big part in this project. Not only is he broken down into digital form and inserted into the game, he lends his own voice overs, but most of all he helped inspire this wacky adventure.
Not so long ago this title was in concept form, being built in Xcode. At the time the title was known as Pug Out and it had a completely different storyline. In Pug Out, a young man in tasked with watching his uncle's prize winning pug a week away from a big dog show. The nephew, a lazy sort decides to pass his duties onto technology and automation. He orders the ultimate in human and pet care systems, the Autofeeder 2000. Of course things don't go as planned and while the nephew was away the Autofeeder 2000 goes haywire and begins dispersing a hailstorm of foods typically meant for human consumption. This is where you controlled the pug and attempted to catch foods that were less fattening, as fatty foods would eventually cause the pug to pack on weight until he exploded into a creamy cake-like mess. If you made it through the levels (the days of the week) you would weigh in at the end for the dog show. Less than high marks would result in the wrath of the uncle.
There were to be rewards such as trophies, money etc.
Alas, this conceptual story grew tired with me. It was too focused on food and dog shows and while I like food, I'm not a dog fanatic (just a fan of my pal) nor have I watched a dog show, unless Triumph the insult comic dog was attending. I decided to change up my approach to things that my daughter, dog and I all loved. Bacon! and aliens too...those are pretty cool. Back in December 2011, I was scanning through my emails and saw that GameSalad had gone through a series of updates since I had last use it and thought to myself, why not build it in GameSalad? and so, a the new vision of Pug Out was underway.
Rescue Bacon! retained some of the original ideas from Pug Out, such as the pug catching food, in this case bacon. Peppers were assets from the old game, but now are the the weapon of choice that the invading aliens use to disable the player. The pug explosion animation is in fact from the original game. I am a fan of old style arcade shooters. Particularly some of the earlier whacky shooters that Namco and Konami put together. Years ago, one of the most impressive and atmospheric games I played was both an animatronic light gun game and a video arcade game called Cosmo Gang, where you had to shoot aliens and keep them from stealing energy. It was great light hearted fun and aliens had lots of personality even thought the gameplay was short lived. Definitely an inspiration.
Creating my own thang.
I wanted the aliens to be fun yet sinister so I decided to give them a very basic cartoon-like design with a touch of nasty attitude. To make them slightly more menacing the aliens have a bomb-like outline. Originally the aliens would make dive bomb-like entrances, but this was found to be too taxing on what was going on on-screen all at one time. I also had to remember that I was going family friendly with this title, so I needed to keep the difficulty somewhat moderate and have less going on before it turned into a bullet-hell game. The end result was Schnitzel battling aliens across 5 colorful levels with music and bosses matching the themes and settings.
Oh yeah I did.
"All your bacon are belong to us!". I could not but help myself but put a spin on the localization errors of Zero Wing. That part was just too easy and needed to be done. It became part of the opening storyline in the game and I recreated my own version of the Zero Wing ship's bridge communication intro in the Rescue Bacon! trailer. An homage of course (the intro was unforgettably butchered and the game had great music for its time).
Why bacon? Because, who does not love bacon? I try to rescue it from my plate any chance I get. Schnitzel would gladly the do same (he is a huge fan of Beggin Strips).
I want to give thanks to all those knowledge people on the forums as well as GameSalad. The resources you guys provide in video, text and somewhat live forum-format are invaluable.
Comments
Nice story behind it as well.