Henchman - In Production

[Play_Pretend]

UPDATE, 12/31/05:

"Henchman" is about 5 - 6ish months into production now, and has so far reached:

Graphics & Art: 80% done
Scripting: 50%
Plot & Dialogue: 95%
Insane Amount of Animation: 15%
Man-Hours Put in When I Shoulda Been Sleepin': Somewhere between 800 to 1000 by now.  Seriously.   8)

Happy New Years, all!  Just wanted to let you know the game is still chuggin' along.  I lost a week at it during Xmas, but I'm plugging away every night.  I've got almost all the backgrounds done, and about 3/4 of the 40-50ish characters.  The game's become pretty animation intensive, I'm discovering I love doing cartoony stuff, it takes a while but it's fun.  So I'm pushing back the finish date by another 4-6 months.  But, after three continuously evolving script/plot revisions, I'm finally in the main groove of it.  Can't wait to let you all see, and thanks again for the encouragement!  Cheers!

It's going to be a 640X480, 32 bit game, of the comedy/adventure variety.  I expect to finish it within about six months, Paintshop Pro and my ability to stay awake 24 hours at a time willing.  Here's a summation of the plot:

Derwin is a henchboy, who's just dying to earn that coveted numbered shirt and finally become a Henchman.  On the day of his final exams, deep within Fist Mountain his nefarious boss, Doctor Procto, has built a ray that will take over satellites to pinpoint and destroy every phone booth on Earth.  The world's heroes will have no place to change into costume!  On its' first testing, however, something goes wrong and the ray burns out!   And somehow the hench class' top student failed his exams! How will he make it to Henchman now?  What is going on around here?  Could it be his arch-rival, Henchman #2?  A secret plot by the Morality Friends, earth's greatest heroes, to stop the Doctor's ray?  Is the League of Evil ever going to hold a meeting straight through without villains constantly taking bathroom breaks?  Find out, in "Henchman"!

Here are two screenshots, of Derwin's bedroom and the EmuCave (Edit:  This is the newest, almost-totally-finished EmuCave.  The Emu has issues with sidekicks side-kicking the bucket unexpectedly. . .those poor lil' kids. *snif*  And holy *carp* did it take a long time to draw all those friggin' costumes.)  These are generally good examples of the type of art you can expect from the game.  Hope you like 'em.  8)





Thanks for the warning about the Geocities thing. . .and to whoever's hosting Neole, thank you *very* much for the space.

[Darth Mandarb]

Your GeoShitties website has exceeded it's allotted data transfer.

Please find someplace else to host the screenshots pronto!

- Neole's Upload Space

Or use imageshack or some other file hosting place.

edit - seems to working now?

[zace]

Sounds interesting and the screenshots look cool, hope to see more. 

[Das Plans]

Hiyaho!

Hey, this actually looks pretty good. I love your sense of humour - especially the evil destroy-all-phonebooths-plot is hilarious. Why couldn't Blofeld ever come up with something like that?

Morality Friends... League Of Evil... I think I'll like this one. I think, I'll like it a lot.

So please, tell your girlfriend, you're having this troubled phase right now - probably for the next 6 months - and get back to the important things in life. You can build yourself up into a family guy anytime.

Emu-cave... hihihi

So long!

[Play_Pretend]

Thanks for the compliments, folks.  I really hope you all like it when it comes out. . .I've had so much fun making it so far, despite losing tons of sleep and my apartment falling into dust.

Here's a pic of what the Emu will look like (it hasn't gone through final shading yet):



"How, father?  How do I do it?  How do I make them. . afraid?"
"And suddenly, without warning, it came!"
*big ol' emu crashes through his study window, chases him off into mansion*
*a few seconds later, a bat lands on the broken glass, and looks around*
*the emu returns, contemplates the bat, and then eats it*
"It chased me for three hours, destroyed a good part of the mansion and a good portion of Bertford before Animal Control put it down."

[Play_Pretend]

Hey all, just wanted to update on my progress and throw a few new screenshots in the mix.  I put in the new, almost complete EmuCave up above where the original was.  And below this I'll be including a shot of the League of Evil's planning room, still a work in progress (considering not all of the villains are completely drawn, as you may have noticed. )  And a shot of the Monopolis Public Library exterior (Monopolis being the city this takes place in.)

The graphics are about 30% done now, the plot is %100 done, closed, all the items and rooms fit neatly together (joy!), and I think this is going to be a helluva fun game.  I'm putting in a *huge* amount of background gags and things to click on, too. . .not so much that they distract from the game, but it should keep people amused.   At the current rate, the game should have another 5 months to go. . .ish.

So!  Here's the League of Evil in their semi-composed glory. . .left to right, they are:  Silenzio the Mime, the Dangler, HVAC, Doctor Procto (dead center on the butt-shaped podium. . .it is his fortress after all), Snowglobe (no body for him yet), Baron Funhausen and Supafly.  This is a shot of a much longer scrolling room, so the edges are slightly off since I clipped it.  Hope you like!



And here's Monopolis Public Library, where an important secret hides:



Ah shoot. . .just realized I left out a window bar in that one.  Oh, well, you get the gist.

[Mordalles]

this looks REALLY cool! i cant wait! great art!

[Dambuilder]

Heh, that professor reminds of Dr. Ed! XD
Some funky looking sprites you got there!

[Play_Pretend]

Heh. . .yeah, I was worried about that a bit.   I drew up Procto, then was looking at some DOTT screenshots later, and was like, "What the?!"  He does have a distinguishing feature you can't see in that shot, namely that his hands are each about as big as his head.  "They said I'd never be a proctologist, but I showed them!  I showed them all!"  He's got an obsession with proctology and all things related, hence his stronghold being "Fist Mountain".   Whenever anyone's insolent, he has them thrown in the Hole, where they're torn apart by the mutant cyborg donkeys that live down there.  I dunno, maybe I should make him look even more distinct, give him a special telescoping robotic eye/plate on one side of his face, for. . .er. . .closer examinations.

Thanks for the compliments.

[jason]

Wow, this looks damn good man! I love the amount of interesting detail in your artwork. The art's really great and the story sounds good too. Keep it up.

[That Guy]

Heh, that professor reminds of Dr. Ed! XD
Some funky looking sprites you got there!

looks more like Dr. Scratchansniff from the Animaniacs, to me.    Or maybe a younger Hubert Farnsworth.

guess there's just only so many ways you can draw an old mad scientist.

Anyway, this looks really cool.  The style's darn original!

[Play_Pretend]

Thanks, guys. . .yeah, I love doing those little details, but the end result is that it takes me upwards of 8 to 16 or more hours to finish one background, and this game is almost 90 rooms or more.  I'm averaging about one room per night, two if they're small and uncomplicated.  (Admittedly, some of the 90 are used solely for cutscene animation sequences that I want to make more interesting).  The funny thing is, I'd never even *touched* Paint Shop Pro 7 or any kind of serious computer art tool before I started doing this game.  All these shots you see are my first attempts at doing computer art.  I've tried other art stuff, watercolor and oil painting, sketching, etc, but they always ended up frustrating me because of their non-malleability.  Vector graphics are fricking *awesome*, as far as I'm concerned, and this stuff wouldn't be possible without 'em.

Here's two more, one finished work of the Monopolis Police headquarters, and one incomplete one of the private Throne Room of the long-disappeared villain, "The Thinker".




By the way, I'm not sure, but is there a logical limit where I should stop posting screenshots because the page is taking too long to load for my fellow dial-up users out there?

[zace]

The rooms are looking great, love the finished suits in the cave.

[Play_Pretend]

Heyo!  I'm back with a few more screenshots to share. . .the game's coming along swimmingly, and I've only got 30 more backgrounds to draw/complete before I can start getting hard into the scripting, etc.  The game's coming out to approximately 80 backgrounds/rooms altogether.  The shots shown below are partially complete. . .for instance, the Throne Room will have several members of the Morality Friends in those manacles on the left wall.  Stuff like that.  Anyways, here are:

The Mountain Castle of Dr. Destructicus!

Uberman's Fort, Alien Zoo Hall

Uberman's Fort, Crystal Room

Uberman On Satellite Repair Duty (Uberman himself isn't done being polished yet. . .he was my very first drawing for the whole game, back when I just started learning to use vector graphics)


Hope you like, I'll be back with more updates when the rest are done!  Thanks again for looking!

[Minimi]

Hey it looks all awesome, but may a give you alittle hint.

Giving away 5 screenshots would be enough, because giving away each new background, even though you might be tripping to let people see them, you can better keep them to yourself, otherwise there wont be many surprises left in the game. Hope you understand that!

Anyway, great to see you still are in the "working flow" 

[Ubel]

Looks very nice! I love the style of those graphics.

But as Minimi already said don't give too much away.

I'm really looking forward to try this game out when it's ready!

[Play_Pretend]

Heh, yeah, I was thinking about that myself.  I guess I'll stop here until the game's ready to go. . .I probably haven't given too much away, you wouldn't believe the elaborate plot weirdness that leads between all these different screens, and these are maybe 1/8 of the total rooms you'll see in the game.  But thanks again, and yeah, I'll keep it down from here.

[Play_Pretend]

Gaaaaah!  Here's an update for everybody...I'm still plugging away at it, and having fun, however my game is being seriously delayed due to a trojan taking over my computer two weeks ago.  One a' those modem hijackers that tries to silently dial back out to a 900 number without you knowing it.  Grrrr!  I caught it before it could, but still.  I had to save what I could on CD and reformat my entire hard drive because none of my AdAware or Invircible or anything could remove it.  Now Windows XP is giving me all kinds of problems with installation because I stuck in a new, 4 times as large hard drive.  Stupid activation won't work because of their piracy prevention programs.  Ah, well.  I guess I can always write dialog in the meantime, right?    I managed to save all of the game, so no loss there, and as soon as I get my comp. sorted out I'll be back in action.  Cheers!

[Peder 🚀]

Any new news soon for this game?

It looks awesome!!


Looking forward to it

[Play_Pretend]

Heh...yeah, it's still crawling along.  I took a few-week break while I was finishing up Chicken VS. Road, but the response from that has got me all fired up again to get raring at Henchman.   I'm re-doing a lot of the original backgrounds as well, there were some I just wasn't happy with, so I started over from new angles and the new ones are muuuuch better.  (Thank the gods, I'm finally learning a little about perspective.)    At this point, I'm only promising it'll be done sometime this year, since it'll be a year next month since I started it, and here's me thinking it was going to be a six-month process.   Cheers all, and I'll update you again when it's nearing completion!