Bryan and I are taking a break from development and dancing around playing a funky tune in Spherack Reloaded while Sean drops by looking for his bourbon. He can’t find it and feels left out, so starts playing the “Dixie Air Horn” tune…

Everybody loves grenades! …At least that is, when you’re not getting blown up by them. Spherack Reloaded as stated offers two types of grenades: Frag grenades and flashbangs. Frag grenades will cause damage to you if you’re nearby when they explode, and flashbangs will temporarily distort your vision and deafen you. (Same with fragmentation grenades if you’re close enough)

A feature I’ve just recently completed is the ability to hide from grenades behind objects. I mean, it only makes sense, right? Our beta testing team had their hands full, throwing grenades and getting blown up by them even though they were behind ten tons of steel walls, and I don’t think they’d be too happy if it was still that way when the game releases later this year.

This is why, I’ve programmed a few functions in that will check to see if you’re behind an object (via x-axis only as of the moment) so this way you’ll be safe if you’re behind some boxes. As stated, it currently only checks on the x-axis, meaning if the grenade is on the roof above you, you’re still screwed, but I plan to get that worked out in the future as well.

…with all these spare arms floating around the screen.

I was working on getting the grenade system to work, and I programmed a few things a bit wrong and ended up with this:

Rather than just having one appear if the player was throwing a grenade, I forgot to throw in a line of code, and in result tons of arms kept being drawn onto the screen endlessly. Some were even moving! My feelings? I’m more disturbed than I am frustrated.

Hey guys, I’d like to proudly announce the development of a new “Spherack” game: “Spherack Reloaded”

The new game will break apart from the path of older Spherack games, by going a step higher with graphics and using stick-figures instead of circles.

Wait a second, Stick Figures?!
Yeah, well, you see, we could’ve always gone onto some highly detailed human-resembling sprites, but remember that we’re focusing more on the gameplay and entertainment value for Spherack rather than crazy, high-class 2D graphics. That’s what the Sega 32x is for.

What ever happened to “Spherack 3D?”
Spherack 3D indeed was originally the next step we had planned to take in the series, but had a little change of heart type thing I guess you could call it. Sure, a 3D version of Spherack would be pretty cool… I mean, running around, you’re a giant 3D circle with a pistol that looks like a square, but keeping things circular would keep us from getting into things like grenades, crouching behind walls, and so forth.

The new Spherack Reloaded offers a whole new turn on gameplay, by introducing new obstacles like fall damage, armor pick-ups, grenades, flashbangs and so many more. Objects on the field such as crates now actually have some sort of meaning to them, for you can crouch behind them, stand up, maybe shoot a few folks and toss a grenade, then crouch back down there again.

It’s a huge improvement on the Spehrack series we believe, and we hope that everyone will enjoy it as much as and maybe even more as the original Spherack Online 2. We’ll get maybe some previews and videos up in the near future demonstrating it.