Environmental artist Lars here. I just had to publish these little beauties i found in our colosseum>content>textures folder…
it is something we’d like to call “programmers art“, and it’s usually known for its ugliness and placeholder look. Our programmers know better. They make great works of art in a split second, without even blinking. truly amazing, this programme called “paint”.
with out futher adu, behold!
Welcome!
This is Lars Håhus writing, environmental artist at Shortfuse Games and temporary producer.
The temporary status is because the REAL producer and our CEO took their administrative butts on a trip to the Game Convention in Leipzig, leaving the Shortfuse team in my hands.
In other words, we have a whole week without Sebastian and Johan, meaning more work and less meetings!
This is not at all too bad right now, being in a very crunchy situation, trying to make everything happen that we want for the finished game. This is, as some of you might know, not an easy task.
We have a very clear goal to reach for by now, but things keep getting in the way. If it isn’t the XNA platform playing hard to get, it’s files being mistakingly deleted and then profusely screamed at. The latter is mostly art director Niklas having a tough time adjusting to the digital age, being an analog kind of guy.
Since E3, where Microsoft decided to show a few seconds of our game on their press conference, things have started to look more cheerful at work. It seems like even though we knew we were doing a good job with Colosseum, the fact that other people think so too made coming to the office everyday a whole lot smoother. Simply googling “Shortfuse” or “Colosseum” accompanied with XBLA gets more and more hits every day. Word spreads fast these days for sure, all thanks to this wonderful phenomenon called the Internet!
Right now, the design apartment of Shortfuse is tightening up the awards and unlockables system, all in the name of making Colosseum into a game that can be played for other reasons that just being the best fighter in the world, namely getting cool outfits and wielding even cooler weapons.
The single player mode is pretty much outlined and done, now it’s up to the programmers and us artists to make it happen. This far we’ve seen a few pretty weird looking bosses, some dodgy arenas and a whole bunch of cowardly enemies that are only in the game for an extreme beating. Does’nt sound too shabby does it!?
Today being Friday, 7 PM, sunny weather after a week of rain, I have to say it’s time to end this text. We all need to lead normal lives too, right? having your own game studio does mean a lot of work, but we can’t let it take completely over now, can we?
Remember to submit a sword design for our marvelous design-a-sword contest, and you might be the lucky one to get to have a sword of your own design in Colosseum!
Over and out
Lars/temporary Big Boss