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New homebrew called "Rocketeer"


GroovyBee

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He awoke in a haze, disoriented and afraid. A sizable crowd was gathering around him and seemed quite concerned. There was a thick white smog and an odd odor in the air....some sort of fuel combustion? The crowd of onlookers was now numbered in the tens, with 3-4 actively trying to speak to him. He could see their faces through the thinning smoke, but could hear no voices. No chirping birds, no taxi horns, no leaves rustling.....just silence. What had happened!? He frantically tried to recall the last 5-10 minutes. There was a small hissing sound, followed by vibrations on the sides of his head. The vibrations gave way to violent shaking. He felt tension on his ears, like they were being tugged on from above. Then it happened....so clear now. Crippled by helplessness and fear, all he could do was watch in amazement as his ears launched higher and higher, eventually fading from view while exiting the stratosphere. It's not like on some level he hadn't seen this coming. What else were they going to do? It was all a matter of time.

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He awoke in a haze, disoriented and afraid. A sizable crowd was gathering around him and seemed quite concerned. There was a thick white smog and an odd odor in the air....some sort of fuel combustion? The crowd of onlookers was now numbered in the tens, with 3-4 actively trying to speak to him. He could see their faces through the thinning smoke, but could hear no voices. No chirping birds, no taxi horns, no leaves rustling.....just silence. What had happened!? He frantically tried to recall the last 5-10 minutes. There was a small hissing sound, followed by vibrations on the sides of his head. The vibrations gave way to violent shaking. He felt tension on his ears, like they were being tugged on from above. Then it happened....so clear now. Crippled by helplessness and fear, all he could do was watch in amazement as his ears launched higher and higher, eventually fading from view while exiting the stratosphere. It's not like on some level he hadn't seen this coming. What else were they going to do? It was all a matter of time.

:lol: Sounds like good box copy... for a completely different game ;).

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Are there still copy's left? if so I would like one thanks.

No copies exist, so there are no copies "left".

The board that the game will run on is still under development.

The game program has not yet been completed.

Preorders were closed one year ago, but if you put your name in, maybe you can get a slot if someone cancels, or if some spares are made.

The Jaguar version was completed last summer if you are a Jaguar fan....

 

That is all we know...

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Is there a preorder list yet?

Money has been collected for preorders, but it has been over a year now. Your best bet is to either send a pm or post in this thread that you are interested. There might be backorders or cancelled orders. Hoping this comes out in 2014 sometime, but not terribly optimistic.

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As one who play-tested Rocketeer in its early stages, I can tell you that it is truly a fun and exciting game. I saw it evolve from a crude "move-and-shoot" demo, to a full-fledge game complete with multiple levels, power-ups, sound effects, music, and even a high-score table.

 

My understanding is that GroovyBee is waiting to complete his cartridge board design and manufacture in order to release his games. As far as I know, Rocketeer was complete, playable, and beta-tested. There may be a few tweaks here-and-there that GroovyBee wants to make, purely for spit-n-polish, but that's all.

 

Although I am of the mind that the pre-orders were taken prematurely, I understand that this is a hobby and that life tends to get in the way. Moreover, I've seen GroovyBee's work before, and know his good reputation in other retro communities, so I've no doubt he will delivery--it's just a matter of when.

 

-dZ.

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Seems I have a fan out there on the interwebs making bullshit claims that Rocketeer and Mars Minis are a vapourware scam and people have been ripped off :roll:. That comes as no surprise given the events of the last week. So.... lets have some facts shall we :-

 

1) The people who asked in PM for a refund have had it within 24 hours of them providing me with their e-mail address for a paypal refund. They asked, and BAM!, their money was returned. No "ifs", "buts" or excuses. Anybody who has asked in PM about the status of the project, normally also got asked if they'd like a refund along with an explanation of where the project was at. I'm not a very good scam artist if you ask for a refund and get one, am I :roll:.

 

2) The games are not vapourware. A teaser ROM for Rocketeer is in the very first post in this thread. Although the ROM doesn't reflect the current state of the bells and whistles in the current games it does have the core elements. Mars Minis also has a teaser ROM in the first post of its development thread too.

 

Rocketeer has also been:-

 

Demoed at AC2013, Paris France :-

 

post-21935-0-26911700-1365515511.jpg

 

Demoed at Play Expo 2013, Manchester, UK (along with Jeff Minter playing Hover Bovver):-

 

post-21935-0-94305200-1381739510.jpgpost-21935-0-57366200-1381739521.jpg

 

Mars Minis wasn't demoed at Play because members of the public were already having problems with the Inty controllers as I mentioned here.

 

Demoed at eJagFest 2013 in Germany (along with Mars Minis and Hover Bovver):-

 

post-21935-0-21931900-1385502293.jpg

 

There have also been two publicly announced prototype cart designs shown here and here (and 3 in total) :-

 

post-21935-0-12289600-1366307652.jpgpost-21935-0-53215400-1382625325.jpg

 

Where are the projects at now?

- Rocketeer has been beta tested (DZ-Jay was one of several) and played by over 200 people at the various retro shows I've attended. Some event attendees even reported the fact that they've played the game at the various shows in this very thread :D. So... 200+ people have played Rocketeer and its vapourware :roll:. With so many people playing the game, (mostly while I watched) I know the game is rock solid during play and has no major bugs. That being said, its still needs some work to finalise the last spit and polish. When the game was targeted at my Rev1 PCB I only had 16K words of space to play with so ideas were dropped to make sure that the game would come in on ROM budget. Now that the game has more ROM breathing space (Rev1 PCB is history!) some of those original ideas are making their way back in. Those ideas are extra graphics e.g. more bosses, extra animations, intermissions and general eye and ear candy. For example, nonner came up with this brilliant concept image of Captain Bacon :-

 

post-21935-0-87581600-1396772561.jpg

 

Which uses too many tiles in its current incarnation :(. The Inty running man learns to fly too :-

 

post-21935-0-39480600-1396772257.gif

 

Both of those concepts will most likely make it into the game but just not as they are at the moment ;).

 

So... Why add "extras" when the game is good enough? Good question! Its all down to taking pride in our work, loving small details and wanting to make a great game and not just a good game. We want to deliver games that people will play and not just stick on a shelf never to be touched again. Its all about delivering a first rate and polished game experience the moment you plug it in and play.

 

- Mars Minis still needs work, although the brilliant images nonner did were a fantastic inspiration to make the mini games shine.

 

- Sure, I know these projects are running late and I appreciate people's patience. The main reason for the delay is my lack of hobby time. My real life job goes from lulls to flat out crunch time and everywhere in between, for example in the last 6 months there have been no lulls and a couple of crunch times. That pretty much means that hobby projects crawl along :(. I did try to mitigate this by giving nonner a long list of things to do, as mentioned here and you can see some of the results in my other Inty game development threads on AA.

 

The other reason is the time taken to develop hardware e.g. design a schematic, layout PCBs, get them in, build them up, write firmware and debug them. That all takes extended runs of time too.

 

Whats the plan?

Now that I know that my next crunch time is a couple of months away I'm intending to finish up Rocketeer in the next 6-8 weeks and sign off a cart PCB. I'll be getting the cart PCBs bought in fully populated so I'll be ordering a large batch which will get me through the rest of the years releases. When I've got quotes in for cart PCB manufacture I'll have a final shipping date. While I'm waiting for the cart PCBs to be manufactured and delivered Mars Minis will hopefully be completed (or shortly there after) and then everything will be ready to go out the door.

 

I'll also be updating the game development threads more regularly because there will be things to say and then they won't just fill up with bacon and Bea Arthur chatter ;).

 

At the end of the day, if you want a copy of Rocketeer, just drop me PM. If you want a refund, just drop a PM in too.

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