I wish I had time to write a longer update guys, but this is a busy week as we push for our “Yellow Light 2″ release… Oh wait, this update is actually pretty long and awesome. You’ve already seen our terrain tiles, but this week we’ve got even more awesome. Keep reading! Keep reading!
Q and A?
If you guys have any questions you’d like answered, please check out this awesome topic on the forums. We will be dedicating a weekly update to the questions you ask there. After today, you should have more things spinning in your noggin’. We want to hear them. Keep reading.
Pump That Tire!
There have been a host of new changes to DETOUR in the last month, partly due to unique sugary beverages, and partly due to a ridiculous deadline that just got imposed. There is some greatness on the way. (Keep reading. We’re about to show you some.) We had a glaring issue with the streetsweeper; it was boring. There was little point in using it. When you have an arsenal full of explosives and turrets, a few piddly nails that stop a truck for 10 seconds don’t catch your attention and really don’t stop much of the action.
So the team got to brainstorming, and it was decided that we should do something to make nails more attention-grabbing, while keeping them a low-budget item. The result was the fantastic tire pumping minigame! Quick-time events are when you repeatadly tap buttons in some fashion. You know how gamers apparently hate quick-time events? Yeah, that’s not really true. Now, whenever your truck runs over nails, you’re going to have to go to it and manually get it back into service via coordinated button-mashing. Once the tire is fully pumped up again, your truck can be sent on it’s merry way.
This means that, although nails don’t make flashy explosions, they still are interesting and distracting enough to be worth using against your opponent. The way it’s set up right now, you’ll have to drop everything for 5 seconds to fix the flat tire, unless you’ve got Houdini-hands. Of course, your opponents can use nails against you too, so you’ll have to take countermeasures.
Now, you might think this is a stupid gimmick. That’s what I said when I heard about it. However, the point is to make DETOUR fun. And fun it is. Nails and street sweepers weren’t fun, and now they are. Very much so. In fact, one of our playtesters would rather play DETOUR right now than play the last few days of Halo: Reach beta. Promising, isn’t it? Or just weird… Keep reading.
Music Man, Music Man
We’ve got some amazing composers. These guys, Mr. Brad Stark (probably also secretly Iron Man) and Mr. Jon Churchill (probably also a crime-fighting British WW2-era politician) have pulled together, and continue to pull together, some epic, intense, and often awe-inspiring tracks. Have we told you guys about Survival mode? Probably just a little bit? Well good. Here’s the musical track from Jon that certainly gets the sweaty beads of sweat flowing.
Right Click, Save As. (It is in .aif format, most music players should play this format just fine.)
The likeliness of a soundtrack being released alongside DETOUR’s release is very likely in the likeliness spectrum. And here’s a little shout-out to a good friend of Sandswept, Alex Gumpel (otherwise known as Anelf), for his great assistance in getting the DETOUR theme started off. If we were a gymnasium, he was our audio-related springboard. Keep reading.
Gametypes!
If you didn’t love us before… Well, we can’t really help you there. But we do have some cool new information regarding gametypes! Click the image below to delve into a fantastical world of magic and wonder. Or something like that.
Closing Up Shop
Have a good week everybody! Don’t forget to post questions on the forums!
Now Stop reading. Enjoy the content, and the forums.
Pardon Our Dust!
