2d 3d audio box art cars concepts contributors crash and burn critical strike helicopters nxtgenug screenshots see and learn shadow racers smiley shooter track builder ultra pool weapons xblig xblig-uk xbox live indie games xna

Today we welcome Nick to the team working on Shadow Racers.

Nick has joined us to work on the main racing cars for the game Shadow Racers. He will be taking over from Alex who unfortunately has insufficient time these days to continue working on the project.

Nick has been tasked with the creation of some of the cars which are essential to the story of 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.