Yay! The Full version of Beast Boxing is finally approved and waiting for launch while we clear the Lite version too. It’s time to post some updated info for anyone following along! We’re aiming for a release date of the 31st or earlier, so we’ve got our fingers crossed that the Lite version passes!
Official Trailer:
The newest boxing game for iPhone and iPod Touch is coming in a matter of days! Featuring a story-based Career mode with nine fights, a Gym with upgrades and powerups, and a Rematch system that lets you take on old opponents for extra coins, Beast Boxing gives you a brand new boxing adventure at each of three difficulty levels. This trailer shows some of the opponents in the first two leagues.
We blended the best of all of our favorite boxing games into one amazing, nostalgic-but-new first person 3D boxing game, and the results are smashing, to say the least! If you enjoy leisurely strolls through beautiful backdrops, compelling stories, and awesome characters, then play through the game on Casual mode. If you’ve played boxing games before, give Gamer mode a try and we’ll give you a challenge. For the ultimate in Beast Boxing madness, try our super Hardcore mode that challenges even the testers who have been playing it for months! 20 achievements in Game Center give you even more rewards as you play.
In the story, you’re a human from the slums - a little person in a beastly world. You’ve always been a fan of the famous Beast Boxers of the world - Steve, the Fitness Skeleton, Kamander, the champion of the Pro Leagues and owner of Kamander’s Dojo, and the invincible armored beast Darbech at the top of them all. One day, you find a monster costume that looks like it’ll hold up to the rigors of the ring. You saved up all your cash to buy it, and you head off to the local boxing gym to take your qualifiers. The rest is Beast Boxing history…
Thanks 7loop7, there will be! We’re finishing up with a nerdy snake monster and I’ll post some screenshots of him when he’s in-game. There will probably be 4 or so “base” monster styles with different rigging and animations, and a couple different styles for each monster to add variety.
Just wanted to post an update! We took a little break when the Apple TOS brouhaha began, but recently we decided just to power through and finish this project. At least with Unity, we’ll have some options to port it to other platforms if the iPhone is a no-go when we’re done!
The finish line is in sight now. We’re mostly just cranking on production, finishing up UI and character animations, so it shouldn’t be too long now!
Here’s some new teaser media - make sure to catch the gameplay video!
Posted some updated video, screenshots, and info. The game is getting pretty close to its final builds now, and we’re in the home stretch - hopefully about a month or so. Since the art and gameplay are really solid at this point, it’s time to spend a lot more time on communication and getting the word out!
My current plan is pretty standard - spread videos, screenshots, and info to several of the major forums (TA, PocketGamer.co.uk, TouchGen, 148apps, and AppVee) about a month or so ahead of launch, then slowly expand to a greater amount as the date gets closer. I’m also planning to increase post frequency on my blog, which cross-posts to facebook and twitter, and try to give interested audience as many opportunities to follow its launch as possible.
I’m interested in hearing if the Unity community has any suggestions for how to market this type of game successfully, especially if you’ve had success with monster, zombie, boxing, or similar types of games. Do you know of any niche communities or fan sites that might really like this kind of thing?
Thanks guys. With Unity, I was able to get a super basic prototype up in a week or so, and that got the ball rolling between the artist and me. If it wasn’t for that (and our hopeless naivete), we probably wouldn’t have even gotten started.
Of course, that was a year ago, and this has basically been my crash course in game development, so that prototype has almost no relation to what we’re ending up with now.
JohnnyA: You’re spot on, actually! I get bored really fast with a lot of the simulation-oriented boxing games that are trying to be a mobile version of Fight Night. The feel we’re going for here is to eliminate a lot of the complexity, and leave a pure punch-em-up arcade game (think NBA Jam) that has less pattern recognition than Super Punch Out or its derivatives, and more rewards and visceral feel for the player when they’re actually fighting. There’s also a lot of story dialogue, coins you earn in the fights, upgrades and powerups to buy, and rematches to play to give you the ability to power up before difficult matches. Not to mention that I think some people will play the game just because they like want to see the art.
We’ve also done a lot to balance the game so that people aren’t rewarded for using strategies that are boring - such as just tap-mashing all the way through a match, or repeatedly dodging, or getting one shot in then just blocking the rest of the round. A lot of that comes from watching people play and trying to figure out why boredom or confusion happens, then routing around that with improved game design or more helpful cues.
I think you’re right in that the gameplay has to match the level of graphical sophistication, but I’m really happy with what we’re accomplishing on that front. Unfortunately my last game had great gameplay but really sparse graphics, and I think that was probably an even worse position to be in in terms of sales. This time, though, I think we’ve got a potentially big hit on our hands, so we’re making sure not to release it before it’s ready.
Thanks n0mad! Actually, I need to thank you for the post about mirroring animations via editor scripts. I was able to get that working, and even though it took a few days, it was really worthwhile! Unfortunately it’s not working for me in the U3 betas, but I’ll probably keep Unity iPhone 1.7.1 around for a while in case my bug report never gets fixed. :E
Well, I wrote my own that uses the same technique - I found that when you create AnimationCurves via script for rotations in U3, it must use a different method for determining how to interpolate between the rotation values. It ends up causing these asymptotic jumps between keyframes that you can very easily see in the Editor’s Animation panel. I ended up just filing a bug with my game’s skeleton rig, but something tells me that this is going to be considered an edge case.
Ok, because I had a similar problem with C4D, export settings were making some “filtering” on keyframes, (set at 1%, from 1-100%). It was just merging similar keyframes data to some % extent (which happens a bit for still poses).
For example if frame 10 and frame 11 have the same rotation value at a 1% average precision, the 2 values were merged. Result was stuttering at certain times.
There will probably be 4 or so “base” monster styles with different rigging and animations, and a couple different styles for each monster to add variety.