Rabbits Full of Magic

Had a huge brainstorm last weekend and decided to make a Super Madrigal Bros. videogame. If you don't know, SMB was a chiptune band started by Momus in 2001. I had been working on electronic music based on Gameboy samples for an album dedicated to Bjork (I was ~18) and impressed him with a demo enough to qualify for a spot in the duo, which was a conceptual idea he had had that was really quite flexible and naturally put together. I think at one point he may have even been singing, but he was organizing a tour and running a label and this was perhaps a concept he could have followed through had he not had all of that to deal with in addition to being an brilliant post-rock pervert DIY David Bowie. At any rate we put out an album and went on a tour in 2002 across the USA with three other additions to his personal label American Patchwork, inspired by Harry Smith-style and eclectic electronic folk people like Bruce Haack. The additional bands were Rroland, Phiiliip, and The Gongs, who all released some of my favorite music of all time during this period. Phiiliip was described as an electroclash version of early Beck, and had a Van Dyke Parks-meets-T-Rex thing going for him. He brought along some of the dancers from Fischerspooner and they performed during our sets in the New York shows. The Gongs were like third-album Velvet Underground-meets-The Incredible String Band, and they all played custom-made instruments with silly names like The Chucky, or a home-build drum machine made from a log found in Lake Eerie. Peter Blasser still makes futuristic analog-electro-acoustic instruments at http://www.ciat-lonbarde.net/. Rroland joined us for some dates in California, where he was a cool married middle-aged man (to us teenagers) who played amazing bubbly synth landscape expressions of his past lives. All incredible stuff.

Anyways back to the videogame I am making. The original idea was to use old art, because during the reign of SMB (2002-2004?) I made a great deal of sprite art, stills for websites, video art, etc, and of course we had all these songs and sounds and remixes and stuff. Plus it would have that pixel look that people love. I mean, I love that stuff, who doesn't. But my HD wouldn't work! I plugged it in and it said "File system not recognized."!!! It asked me if I wanted to format!!!

Fear not, I figured it out, cos I am a huge nerd who knows to how hack RAW file systems. Luckily that means my entire life's worth, all the music I have recorded, all the bands I have played with, all the videos I have made, have not been lost! That's kind of cool.

Transferring everything will take hours, probably all night long, so I can't access any of that stuff until my computer finishes up. It doesn't matter, I have this inspiration, I have wanted to make a videogame for a long time but just never had the right spark, so here I go. I have access to Unity and am programming in that, which is nice because (1) it has some great youtube tutorials and (2) can output to more or less any format, from Windows and OSX to Android and iPhone and even PS3/4, and the XBones. Nintendo is still out of reach but that's ok, they are wizards from the future and I wouldn't want to dilute their magic.

By the end of this week I aim to have a demo up for download. It probably will not be much, maybe a half dozen screens worth of level design that is mostly just pretty backgrounds layered on top of each other like a diorama. At first the desire was there to make a Castlevania clone, but the more I think about it the more I think it should be about exploring these strange lands and listening to this strange music instead. There can be enemies, but maybe they can hurt you but you can't hurt them. The game controller has a really sophisticated physics system built in, so I think you could build sliding puzzles or something. I don't know, I'm still learning. Right now there is a main character, who can walk left and right, and who has 2 different jumps with a single button. The sprite flips horizontally when you move from right to left and back again, so it does not look like he is moonwalking. There is a camera and it follows your movements, which is handy. The ground is a bit from a painting stretched out and colored green, it's only a placeholder. The background is from an idyllic landscape by Salvator Rosa, and the main character is from a Jan van Eyck, both Renaissance painters. I am not sure I will stick to this style the whole time or if the whole thing is going to be a mishmash of styles. I really want to do pixel art so there may be some levels like that. I also am interested in incorporating woodcuts, because lots of important books and grimoires from that time period used those. Then again since I'm digitizing it I may as well color and shade them myself. As you can see, I have my work cut out! I think art/sound is going to be 90% of this game!

Stay Tuned

posted by Adam  # 1:27:00 AM