Today we received the second draft track for the Shadow Racers soundtrack from Adam who also created the soundtrack for See and Learn. Below you can listen to the first drafts of both tracks and we're very pleased with the tracks Adam has created so far. They shound perfect for Shadow Racers!

Rapture:


Drivin':

Today we received the first rough track from Ben our composer and musician working on the Critical Strike soundtrack. Below you can listen to a sample of the track, expect more music in this style in the complete game!

Here is an initial look at the helicopter Tianyu is currently working on.

This is the heavy attack chopper for the Russian faction based ont he KA-50 Black Shark.

Tianyu is doing a great job with these helicopters and soon we hope to be showing off some videos of them in-game.

Next Generation User Group (NxtGenUG) recently announced an XNA conference (XBlig-UK) that will be held in Birmingham on the 5th of December 2009.

After speaking with Dave from Dark Omen Games, our Founder and Lead Programmer, Martin Caine has decided to get involved and is now down as a confirmed speaker at the event.

Martin will be covering the topic of project management, with particular emphasis on how developers can build a team of like-minded individuals to produce high quality games. In essence using the experience and success of Retroburn Game Studios to demonstrate his methods.

If you're interested in attending then please check out the links below, it should be a great day for anyone interested in game development and anyone currently working with XNA on Indie Games.

XBlig-UK.net
NxtGenUG.net

Here's the second helicopter to come from our new modeller Tianyu in less than a week!

This one is the 'light' helicopter of the Russian faction and again has been retrofitted with some beefy weaponry.

These helicopters will be easy to take out compared to their larger brothers and will appear in greater numbers in the game.

Here's a sneak peek at the first helicopter model our new modeller Tianyu has been working on.

It's based on the NH-90, and has been slightly modified (as many of the helicopters will be in Critical Strike) to accomodate missile pylons.

The team gains another 3D artist today, Neil has joined us to work on Critical Strike.

Neil has been tasked with the creation of the character models for each faction within the game.

Today we welcome another 3D artist, Mike has joined us to work on our small and fun FPS game Smiley Shooter.

Mike has been tasked with the creation and animation of the character models for the game. More details about this game will be posted soon.

We welcome another 3D artist today, Tianyu has joined us to work on Critical Strike.

Tianyu has been tasked with the creation of helicopters, tanks and other vehicles for Critical Strike.

Today we welcome a new 3D artist to the team, Mark has joined us to work on Ultra Pool and Critical Strike.

Mark has been tasked with the creation of some new pool tables for Ultra Pool and once complete will then be working on weapon models for Critical Strike.

Now we have the gameplay working quite well in See and Learn I've been wanting to update the way the backgrounds look to make them a little more colourful.

So I've developed a small shader which generates some cloud textures then fades from one cloud to another, while animating them. The shader also slowly rotates the hue across the screen from bottom right to top left.


Click the image above for a larger view, I will be getting some videos recorded of this game soon too.

Our talented artist Neil has just sent me the final revision of our box art for See and Learn.

Since joining Neil and I have worked through many ideas for box art for our games and this particular version of the box art is one we are both quite happy with.

The box art features a mother and son sitting infront of a TV, depicting a scene similar to the way we would imagine children and parents playing See and Learn together.

The inclusion of the Retroburn logo is something we're planning on doing on all of our box art and Neil also designed the game logo which is displayed over the area containing the TV.

Click the image above for a larger view.

It's been a little while since our last update and a lot has happened since then! We now have artists working on concepts for a further two games which we plan to fully announce at a later date and work on our first two games (See and Learn, Ultra Pool) is progressing nicely.

We have decided to spend a little extra time tweaking those first two games incorporating some features from the newly released XNA Game Studio 3.1 but hope to be releasing them on Xbox Live soon!

My daughter Willow Rose Caine was also born just 8 weeks ago so it's all-go at home, and on top of that we got the dreaded RROD on our main Xbox 360, this box is part of the first UK batch so it was bound to happen some time, luckily with some help from internet videos I've now fixed it and I'm back up and debugging our games.



Stay tuned for more updates coming over the next few weeks.

Today we welcome a new musician to the team, Ben who has joined us to work on Critical Strike.

Ben has been tasked with the creation of the musical soundtrack for Critical Strike. He plays in a variety of bands and his heavy metal guitar work will be a great fit for the game.

Today we welcome a new member to the team, Simon has joined us to work on Shadow Racers.

Simon has been tasked with the creation of the music and soundtrack for Shadow Racers.

Here we have the latest version of the box art for our game Ultra Pool.

Neil contacted me not that long ago and sent me a few sketches with ideas that he had, the overall layout of the box art has stayed pretty much the same since those original sketches.

Neil also designed the logo for the game which went through many changes. We worked together to tweak the the fonts and colours and I'm now very happy with the logo and box art that Neil has created.

Click the preview image above for a larger view.

We've all been busy here the past few weeks finishing See and Learn and getting ready to release a playable demo to the XNA Creators Club for playtesting.

We now have most of the game's audio complete and a large number of levels complete for the game.

My son, our primary playtester has been hard at work playing the game and if he likes it then I'm sure many other children and parents will enjoy playing the game too:

Today we welcome a new 2D artist to the team, Neil has joined us to work on box art and logo designs for our games.

Neil has been tasked with the creation of box art and logo images for the first two of our games, See and Learn, and Ultra Pool.

Today we welcome a new artist to the team, Jenny who has joined us to work on a new project.

Jenny has been tasked with the creation of concepts and in-game art work for a project which is currently in pre-production.

We welcome a new artist to the team today, Peter who has joined us to work on Shadow Racers.

Peter has been tasked with the conception and creation of 2D art that will appear in the game to tell the story and follow the player's progression through the game.

Italo, our new 3D modeller has just created the first helicopter for Critical Strike.

This helicopter is one of the smallest in the game but definitely shouldn't be underestimated, it's armed and dangerous!

Today we welcome another composer to the team, Adam who has joined us to work on See and Learn.

Adam runs his own production company, White-Sound and has been tasked with the creation of background music for See and Learn.

We've been scouring image repositories for images to use in the fifteen levels that will be included in See and Learn and we have ten levels complete thus far, we hope to include three of our favourite levels in the trial version and the full version will contain all fifteen levels.

Our new 3D modeller, George Wulfers has been hard at work since he joined the team working on a variant of an M4A1 assault rifle.

Since the game is set slightly into the future we are wanting to make the games similar to current day weapons but with a twist, below you can see a model George created and a concept of an updated version:

Our talented young concept artist, Emil, has just sent over the first draft of his first piece of concept art for Critical Strike, a Photoshop based 'PaperDoll' of the US faction soldier:



I'm very impressed with this, it didn't take long for Emil to create and I like the way he's made it customizable within Photoshop by making each individual piece of clothing and every accessory in their own individual layers.

Alex has been working on the car models for Shadow Racers and he's just textured the first car, inspired by the classic design of the Volskwagen Beetle:

Today we welcome a new concept artist, Emil who has joined us to work on Critical Strike.

Emil has been tasked with the creation of character concepts for all four playable factions within the game. He will be deciding the styling and look of our player characters and NPCs and will work closely with our character modeller when creating the in-game models for the characters.

We've been working on the game graphics for See and Learn and putting together an interface that is easy to use for children. A sample screenshot of the 'Birds' level is shown below:



Each level contains fifteen images and the player is prompted on screen and via an audio prompt to select a particular image. The player has 5 chances to select the correct image, each incorrect answer results in the incorrect images becoming darker, therefore making it clearer which is the correct image.

Today we welcome a new composer to the team, Chris who has joined us to work on Ultra Pool.

Chris is a composer and multi-instrumentalist with a wide range of skills geared towards music production. He has been tasked with the creation of background music for Ultra Pool.

We have a new 3D modeller, Alex who has just joined us to work on Shadow Racers.

Alex will be tasked with the production of the player-controlled vehicles for the game, the first of which he has already begun modelling.

Welcome to the brand spanking new web site for Retroburn Game Studios.

Please bear with us while we are updating the visuals and the integrated forum and membership systems.