Mo-mo-mo-MONSTROSITY!!!

Hello for the second time blog followers!

First of all I have to say I'm quite astonished about the amount of fan posts here on the blog and also on Touch Arcade, where I registered to view the beta testing forums. And boy.. believe it or not, the amount of ideas, opinions, bug reports, expectations and all kinds of chatter from the past 1,5 years is making my head spin. I think I was dreaming of Minigore last night too. For a person like me who is quite new to this community the information is a bit overwhelming. However, I think I'm getting a grasp of this :D. That said I'll try to answer some questions I noticed on the blog.

So there's a lot of questions about the release of Episode 4. I understand people are waiting it like there's no tomorrow but unfortunately I won't guess the release date. I'm saying "guess" because there's really no way to know. If I throw a date out of nowhere it is most likely to be inaccurate. It will be released when it's done.

About the totems... changing the difficulty setting midgame with the totems will not be possible. The dynamic difficulty made the multiplayer code too complicated and had to be changed. You choose the difficulty at the beginning of each round. Once you have chosen a difficulty, it will be set to default to new rounds until you choose a different totem.

There was also a question if there's going to be new enemies and the answer is yes. Timo has been pulling all-nighters for awhile and I really wonder if he sleeps at all. Please note that this is probably not going to make it to Ep 4, since the content for that is pretty much decided and we are focusing on finishing the update before adding new features.

I have the great honor to introduce to you, the making of: Metusalem's Monstrosity!!

And the Final Version:

Pretty nice, don't you think? :)

Oh yeah, about Game Center. We here at Mountain Sheep are really excited about the GC. We wanted to see how well it starts and we are pleased so far.

P.s. Now I know where my snacks are disappearing to... It's the mysterious "Timmo" character I'm sure. I wonder if he lurks in the office closet and comes out at night to devour my peanuts!!!

Greetings from the Sheepland!

Hello everyone!

As some of you already know, Timo wrote on the blog earlier that Mountain Sheep had hired some new staff for various tasks and jobs. So here I am! :) My work here at MS includes viewing and commenting the blog every now and then among other things. Nice to be here and I hope I don't forget to mention some things about Minigore as it is a bit new game to me still. I've been spending some time studying the game and reading past posts and comments and I hope I don't miss anything important. If I do, have mercy...

So, as my first post here I'd like to introduce the Totems as a new feature. The totems are going to be present when you start the game and by shooting one of the three you will choose the difficulty setting you would like to have. After the selection the Totems will disappear and the hordes of furries will come as before. I think Timo made a great work with them and I think it's a nice improvement to the old choosing method. Here's a pic:

Also as you can see this shot also introduces some other changes. Instead of showing clovers at the upper left corner there will be health shown in the future. This mainly because some characters are not going to have only 3 lives but 5. This new health system will be used in the upcoming multiplayer. This will make it easier to see the current situation without having to remember the changes in the character models. The clovers will be shown at the center of the screen when you pick up one and then they will vanish until you pick up another one. Also the place where the score used to be will be featuring kills from now on. The kills mechanism works a bit different compared to the score before. When in beast mode you will be given a 2x multiplier for the furries you kill, so instead of the old system you get twice the "score" during beast mode. Also for killing the big furries you get more kills than from the small ones.

As a new member to the community and to the Mountain Sheep I also wanted to offer some promotional codes for you to use. By using the code you will be able to download Minigore HD on iPad for free. It would be nice if the people fast enough to get the code would also write a bit of a review on iTunes about it, thank you very much :). If you use a code, also make a comment telling others which codes are used so people can pick up theirs without the unnecessary trial and error method :)

The Codes:

1. 9PPMERHPFWKW

2. KR7K693JXEAH

3. PH9PTANRWY3H

4. R7NAMPL94TWW

5. 94JMM4RPMK6F

6. FNXP7PXL73TL

7. HJTK3TKJKE3L

8. MFTJPHF7HKFF

9. 6J73HHWHAPAR

10. 4YA33W4FEJXW

Peace!

P.s. Almost forgot. Update for retina -display and improved frame rate is in review. The improved frame rate IMHO is a big update and substantially improves the enjoyment of this game. Frame rate affected models: iPhone 3GS, iPod touch 3rd gen, iPhone 4.

More Jenny Gore Artwork

Jenny Gore demonstrating her Sheep Launcher skills:

...and this is what happens when you run out of sheep:

The latest Jenny Gore 3d model showing all three health stages:

Sheep Launcher ingame model:

Forest level with a lake:

DISCLAIMER: This is not content for Episode 4. I just wanted to share this stuff to let you know we're not dead :)

Zombie Evolution

Metalbear wanted to see some more technical art stuff so I thought I would post this. It shows the evolution of the zombie 3d models:

Click the image for a closer view.

To continue with the technical stuff: Recently we updated our 3d model exporter. That confused the level collision code so it's gonna take a day or two to fix the bugs. We updated the exporter because there's new optimization features which could help us improve the framerate quite a bit. Also when we return to the office on Monday the multiplayer optimization marathon continues...

Introducing Jenny Gore

Jenny Gore is the short-tempered daughter of John Gore. When angry she can be more frightening than a pack of giant furries!

While all the animation is done we're not completely finished with her and this is where you can help! Jenny needs a voice. User "Mat_rix_007" over at toucharcade.com suggested Rina-Chan as the voice actress and I quite like her work: http://suzumiya-haruhi.net/

So let's hear it, who would be the perfect voice actress for Jenny?

SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC

There's this cool browser based game called Minecraft and I decided to do official John Gore skin for it:

If someone else has been infected with Minecraft fever here's the texture file which let's you run around as mr Gore: http://www.mountainsheep.net/minigore/MinecraftJohnGore.png

More detailed instructions here

Multiplayer menu

We're putting finishing touches to the user interface. Here's a picture of the menu:

I personally like the zombie level emblem. Maybe I should make the other two level icons similar and remove John Gore from them, what do you think?

Evil Knight gameplay video

Evil Knight has went through several revisions and we're starting to be quite happy with this latest version. This knight is the character which we will use to introduce melee combat into the world of Hardland.








Check out the video below of him running around and evading furries: