Hrm.. Just from the screenshot alone I think this should be resold as a DS game. :)

Actually it might have made a half-decent DS game.

Though, if I ever get around to doing it in .Net, it might be a half decent Windows Mobile 7 game ;)

Yuck... Use an emulator for a DS! :P

Too bad I caught onto this too late. It's a massive shame as I'm a huge fan of the original game and series - I don't suppose you'd ever consider picking it back up again, in different circumstances? (Especially considering remaking of LucasGames is getting some people some significant cash...)

Hi Sam,

Thanks for coming by the blog, always glad to meet a fellow TD fan ;)

I certainly would consider starting again! Definitely not from the original source though, I'd write it from scratch in Monkey so I could port it everywhere (Primarily so I can make it browser based, I think we'd be able to introduce it to the widest audience that way).

Probably would keep it strictly 2D this time but I'd definitely try to one-up the rather simplistic gameplay (whilist keeping the story verbatim, of course), at a minimum the hoverskids would need to be able to rotate 360 degrees and slide. The AI, especially for the Aces would need to be a lot tougher. I think at one stage I was considering online multiplayer - a citywide war between TD and Vulture would be awesome.

Wouldn't be brazen enough to do it for cash though ;) I'm extremely busy though so I wouldn't have time for it for at least a month or so, and even then I'd only do it if I was working on it with someone else.

Edit: Also, need a good artist and sound engineer. I'd really like it to look more modern and polished.

I could design a simple 2D remake in Game Maker most likely, but that's fairly entry level (I haven't used the damned app in about ten years though!). I'd much rather work with someone who could really accomplish an improvement over the original!

(Holy crap, you're an Aucklander. Life in Tauranga, here.)

Could be an interesting idea to dev it, and if it works, dev for android ect. Just because I'm having ideas.

I also think the wingmen needed significantly better AI. I know Val hated them, and it didn't take long for me to hate them too - I actually started hunting them down after too many of them got between me and my Vulture. :) The story was beyond unbelievable though, utterly amazing.

I'd be happy to hand over the Director/Producer roles and just be a coder on the project, if you wanted to organise everyone. With our original voice project the intention always was that we had voice actors (Did you have a look at the prototype version? The voice actor for Carl was perfect), it'd be great if we could get voice actors for a new version too.

There's plenty outside of coding that needs to be done, I wasn't able to fully reverse engineer the dialogue files so they need to be transcribed, also it might be best for missions to be built from scratch (I wasn't able to fully reverse engineer the mission format, also they'd probably be best to be made from scratch in order to take advantage of new gameplay style and features).

I happen to be heading down to Tauranga in a couple of months for a Wedding. I might not be so busy then so it could be a good chance to catch up and discuss the project.

In the mean time I could drop everything that was done for the project into a shared Dropbox folder. Send me an email (earok 3d at gmail dot com) and i'll share it with you.

Will do when I get home. It's definitely an intriguing prospect. I'm curious as to how we could improve on the initial game mechanic - Doing things like plot sequences would be interesting. Unfortunately, the laptop had a seizure when I ran the remake, so might ressurect the gaming beast and use a 32bit OS on it.

I think the hardest part would be generating the engine. IIRC The game wholly uses a total of 6 maps, 8 if you include parrallaxed dummy maps, and applies different missions to them, and utilises different objects with different properties that spawn based on the mission you're on. I mean, as said, remaking in Game Maker for example, is highly possible if messy. If space wasn't an issue, a cheat would be to make each 'mission' a 'map.' Hmn. I suppose it's not too hard if you're an organised coder, but too many 'IF's and my head begins to ache.

All over, I think trying to reverse engineer anything is a bad move. It's time consuming, I'm a far greater fan of reproducing - Although as said, the story should be kept Verbatim. It means new mechanics are easy to add, new ideas can be tested but it all stays true to inspiration.

Will be in touch via email later tonight. Also, tried out Derelict - Very neat. Love the multiview.

Actually I did manage to reverse engineer a lot of stuff from the game that made things a hell of a lot easier. I worked out the image format so I wrote a utility to extract all of the images from the game - faces, textures, backgrounds, hoverskids etc which was better than trying to screenshot everything. Also I reverse engineered the City format so the layout of the Cities in the game is exactly correct (The major cities from the game are all present exactly as they were in the original, I think the one area I couldn't work out how to reverse engineer was the long road on the opening intro).

That said, modernising all of the audio and art would be nice, but I'd like to keep the city layouts exactly the same as they were.

Thanks for trying Derelict, I appreciate it :)

I'm suprised, but that is excellent. I did quite enjoy the layout, although the lack of variation didn't help when I got lost. If nothing else, original content can help with designing original content. I'm uncertain about the long road, whether it was even a map.... Meh. Easy enough to recreate.

I type pretty quickly so a transcription shouldn't prove a challenge.

Derelict is quite nice - I'll play a heap'more of it tonight so I'm more equipped to comment further.

I think the long road was a map file, but I couldn't quite work out how the "tiles" on the road connected to the tile images. I think I was kind of hoping to make it so the map would at least be available for user created or multiplayer missions.

This will save you the hassle of getting the prototype remake going - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq12zyxOe5g