I am proud to say that our 2D top-down shooter Echo One is coming along nicely! After difficulties with the fastest way to render/move the sprites and a fallout with a valuable team member, the game is back on its feet! We did have a running engine about a month ago, but after our team loss, the decision was made to rewrite the engine from scratch, the same way except with much cleaner code, a much faster sprite system and a very VERY efficient way to run the world with as little CPU power as possible.

The Echo One map editor, Icarus World Builder has also undergone major revisions and changes in the last few weeks, for both speed and performance as well as usability. The main change has to do with rewriting the rendering system to use the same algorithm as the engine, and it has had a major impact on speed. The decision was also made to encompass more than just a map editor into the program, and instead, it is now a complete world builder, allowing you to place enemies, obstacles, enemy trigger zones, and story zones that display text. The editor as it stands now is shown below.

The Icarus World Builder was developed to be completely dynamic, and automatically reads any images in the TILES folder and loads them as tiles into the tiles tab, allowing you to paint your world with simplicity! The obstacles tab works the same way except for the fact that obstacles can be bigger than the current tile size and does not have to snap to the grid. The enemies tab works in a similar way, except the image must accompany an enemy file listing the properties of the enemy (for the engine).

With the new editor in place and the new engine running fantastic, we can develop both applications at the same time, allowing them to be perfectly in-sync with each other. The new engine is shown below, although a single shot really doesn't do much justice (a video is coming soon).

We have also decided to use completely user-editable and modifiable file system for both what the world builder exports, as well as what the engine reads. This allows people to not only mod the game, but it also will allow others to make their own game with the engine and map editor when it is released!

Once again I apologize to those of you that tried to download both the instant purchases and the free content in the recent weeks.

As you already know, all of the downloadable content somehow became corrupt, and thus the entire system was worthless. It took a complete reinstall of everything from the ground up to get it working again, but yes, it IS working now.

If, however, you find any problems with the site PLEASE report them via the contact link to the left.

Thank you everyone for your patience!

-BULLSHOCK, AKA Timothy Ruswick

Yes, the site is currently being fixed and updated to support future improvements.

If your here to purchase a product or download some of the free media, I apologize, as none of the content is currently available. As soon as the site is fully functional again, I'll post to let you all know.

Thank you all for your patience!