Author Archive for Thomar

I know this will come as a shock to many of you. You all have eagerly anticipated it every week, but it can’t go on. I know it’s very sudden, but there is no other way to break it to you. I am sad to announce that we aren’t going to do weekly updates on a weekly basis anymore.

I’ll just give you a second to take that all in.

I know that this announcement must be horrifying and totally unexpected. Nobody foresaw this new and shocking development, I’m sure.

Anyways, you can still come here for all of your sweet Sandswept updatedness, and we promise it will be at least two point eight times as great as before! It just won’t be here every week. It could still be here more often, but this whole “keeping a schedule” thing…

Besides, there are only so many ways I can keep telling everybody that “DETOUR is progressing” and keep it interesting. Watch our Twitter. Now that’s some interesting stuff. Did you also notice the home page has our Twitter feed on it? Pretty cool, but make sure you show your support and actually follow us on Twitter either way! We might even Tweet back at you!

Hey look, it’s a new website!

And now, without further adew…

Adeux…

Adoo…

And now, without any more rambling, putting aside stressed analogies, and avoiding the subject like it’s a week-old bag of garbage I need to take out to the dumpster, we shall announce something you probably already noticed.

This site is freaking sweet!

I mean, check it out. Right now. Pop open a new tab in your browser and take a look around.

… Did you open the new site yet?

Good. It’s awesome, right? This is our brand new website. We call it…

Sandswept dot net version One-Point-Oh

The version of the website we want everyone to see when we make our big DETOUR release date announcement. It’s so close, I can taste it!

Are you excited? Please, contain yourself, I’m not done yet.

My favorite is the sick front-page slideshow. All of these fancy images clickable for links to updates, DETOUR project pages, and other neat places on the site. Important stuff. Stuff we want you to see.

The succulent project page for DETOUR has links to all of the screenshots and item descriptions for the game. Why is it “succulent,” you ask? I dunno, you tell me.

The Community menu links to the forums, as always. Please swing on by the forums to gush praises over the awesome site. Or mingle. Mingling is cool too. Oh! And please, feel free to ask us more questions in our DETOUR FAQ thread. We’ll collect the good ones and answer them in an update.

We also have our humble staff bios under the About tab. If you want to help wrangle the Sandswept beast, look there too. We’re always hiring!

Finally, please look for broken links and bugs on the shiny new site. We’ll even give you a brand new forum Achievable icon if you find any! When you find them, please go to this thread and post them:

General Feedback/Suggestions/Bugs thread!

Welcome to your new home, dedicated member of the Sandswept Legion.

Pardon Our Dust!

I wish I had time to write a longer update guys, but this is a busy week as we push for our “Yellow Light 2″ release…  Oh wait, this update is actually pretty long and awesome. You’ve already seen our terrain tiles, but this week we’ve got even more awesome. Keep reading! Keep reading!

Q and A?

If you guys have any questions you’d like answered, please check out this awesome topic on the forums. We will be dedicating a weekly update to the questions you ask there. After today, you should have more things spinning in your noggin’. We want to hear them. Keep reading.

Pump That Tire!

There have been a host of new changes to DETOUR in the last month, partly due to unique sugary beverages, and partly due to a ridiculous deadline that just got imposed. There is some greatness on the way. (Keep reading. We’re about to show you some.) We had a glaring issue with the streetsweeper; it was boring. There was little point in using it. When you have an arsenal full of explosives and turrets, a few piddly nails that stop a truck for 10 seconds don’t catch your attention and really don’t stop much of the action.

So the team got to brainstorming, and it was decided that we should do something to make nails more attention-grabbing, while keeping them a low-budget item.  The result was the fantastic tire pumping minigame! Quick-time events are when you repeatedly tap buttons in some fashion. You know how gamers apparently hate quick-time events? Yeah, that’s not really true. Now, whenever your truck runs over nails, you’re going to have to go to it and manually get it back into service via coordinated button-mashing. Once the tire is fully pumped up again, your truck can be sent on it’s merry way.

This means that, although nails don’t make flashy explosions, they still are interesting and distracting enough to be worth using against your opponent. The way it’s set up right now, you’ll have to drop everything for 5 seconds to fix the flat tire, unless you’ve got Houdini-hands. Of course, your opponents can use nails against you too, so you’ll have to take countermeasures.

Now, you might think this is a stupid gimmick.  That’s what I said when I heard about it.  However, the point is to make DETOUR fun. And fun it is. Nails and street sweepers weren’t fun, and now they are. Very much so. In fact, one of our playtesters would rather play DETOUR right now than play the last few days of Halo: Reach beta. Promising, isn’t it? Or just weird… Keep reading.

Music Man, Music Man

We’ve got some amazing composers. These guys, Mr. Brad Stark (probably also secretly Iron Man) and Mr. Jon Churchill (probably also a crime-fighting British WW2-era politician) have pulled together, and continue to pull together, some epic, intense, and often awe-inspiring tracks. Have we told you guys about Survival mode? Probably just a little bit? Well good. Here’s the musical track from Jon that certainly gets the sweaty beads of sweat flowing.

Right Click, Save As. (It is in .aif format, most music players should play this format just fine.)

The likeliness of a soundtrack being released alongside DETOUR’s release is very likely in the likeliness spectrum. And here’s a little shout-out to a good friend of Sandswept, Alex Gumpel (otherwise known as Anelf), for his great assistance in getting the DETOUR theme started off. If we were a gymnasium, he was our audio-related springboard. Keep reading.

Gametypes!

If you didn’t love us before… Well, we can’t really help you there. But we do have some cool new information regarding gametypes! Click the image below to delve into a fantastical world of magic and wonder. Or something like that.

[IMAGE/LINK REDACTED]

Closing Up Shop

Have a good week everybody!  Don’t forget to post questions on the forums!

Now Stop reading. Enjoy the content, and the forums.

Pardon Our Dust!

Hey Sandswept Fans and other people who read this! We were going to be all long-winded here, but we’re out of breath from all the stuff happening with DETOUR and another small (by small, we mean huge) project we have in store. So, again, to all our fans and that one guy. You know the one. Hey, you. The creepy dude in the back. Yeah, you. Check this out. This stuff is hot. We’ve got a brand new page full of content, with more to come! The weekly update this week is this page, right here. Don’t come back until you’ve read it, then go to our forums, and demand more. Will there be more, you ask? Oh yes. There will be more… So. Much. More. Have at it, you ravenous beasts. You can find the link to that page on the DETOUR project page as well. The image looks something like this one you see below. Something like this that you should click. Click it.

If by this point, you — for some odd reason — have not clickified any of these links, they all pretty much go to one place. The new DETOUR items and weaponry page, thusly dubbed “Construction and Destruction”. It’s fairly self-explanatory. Click the image below to see just what we’re going on about. More items (and more elaborate information about each item!) to be added very shortly!

[IMAGE REDACTED]

Did we mention there are rewards to be had on the forums, and member title advancement for posting a lot? Get to the forum posting. That place is a ghost town. We’re very much afraid of ghosts.

Pardon Our Dust, ladies and gentlemen. Kicking up a lot around here.

Yeah, the server issues frustrated us too.

On the bright side, everything’s working now, so there shouldn’t be any more problems.  If there are, please let us know immediately, or else the rest of the site may dribble out onto the server room floor.

Short Update

DETOUR is still moving along, we’ll have more screenshots “when they’re ready.”  The game’s looking better than ever, thanks to the hard work from the team. We wish we could stop saying this and start showing this. The tide is coming in. It might be a tsunami.

This week, it seems Heather deserves special mention.  She’s completely redoing the pretty little menu graphics (what we call the “GUI”) for DETOUR, and you’ll get to see that really soon. Essentially things have been brightened up to match our color-tastic theme and vibrant look of the game, whereas before it was quite gritty, dark, and flat. The DETOUR logo *may* get a revision as well, but we’re holding out on that one until we’re absolutely sure. Like all the GUI art, nothing has changed aside from the visual appearance and style. Everything remains the same position and size as you’ve seen before and — Oh wait. We haven’t really shown you guys the latest menus yet… Stick around.

The rest of the team is rocking out the awesome on something else. We’ll definitely getting into the who’s and what’s, but not until DETOUR is clean out the door. Know that there is another beast lurking in the shadows. A really cute beast.

We apologize in not-advance this week for the lack of April Fool’s tomfoolery, but the server issues had left us busier than we had planned. Possible April Fools’ jokes you missed out on from us because of the server dying (which, sadly, was not a joke.)

- Sandswept is shutting down forever! Oh no! This is either due to some huge company buying and dissolving us, or we just gave up on our life’s dreams!

- Sandswept announces new product that Sandswept would not really announce, like hand sanitizer. (We call it “Handitizer”)

- Sandswept changes things, like adding a forum filter to common words (Turning words like “The” to “I’m a monkey!” in every single post.), or flipping images upside down, or changing every one’s avatars to the ever-so-succulent Team Edward. He can suck MY blood any day!

- Sandswept announces funny game that they’re not really working on.

- “Pink color scheme.” “Website has been hacked.” and other classics.

So in short — you didn’t miss much. Next year, though. Next year we’re gonna get you.

…

Did you believe us? April Fools, friends. April Fools.



Welcome to the frabjously fraujuless weekly update!

We have screenshots again!

Also, today we answer your burning and sore DETOUR questions to provide, cool, soothing relief.  Warning: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration.  Sandswept Studios is not intended to treat or cure any disease or condition.  We just make fun video games.

Shinier Stuff Ahead

Geoff has been working hard to get the website working nicely and running more smoothly than it has been.  He’s wearing a HAZMAT suit and up to his knees in the shambles that was the old website right now.  But, after doing some digging, he was able to recover some DETOUR screenshots for you!  Don’t let anyone ever tell you that Thomar doesn’t keep his promises to the community when he takes credit for other peoples’ work!

You can see our screenshots by clicking on this link. (Hey, is that some sort of box art on that page?)

We’re not really sure what this is, but you know when the design director is acting like a giddy schoolgirl, something cool is going on and you should heed his words. His… Giddy schoolgirl words.

Thomar’s FAQs Machine

…where “Frequently Asked” means “asked once or twice by random forum members in this forum thread that you should ask your DETOUR questions at.”

John Brown – How long can we expect an fierce multiplayer game to last?

A fierce multiplayer battle against another player or several players is the core of DETOUR.  However, we have a lot of different gametypes to choose from.  For example, the survival modes will last forever if you and your friends are really really good at the game.  The type of gameplay we’re focusing on and that we want you to get addicted to is the head-to-head truck scoring.  You try to get three trucks across the board, and prevent your opponent from doing the same.

Our playtests have shown that with default settings, the average head-to-head game is about 10 minutes.  It’s not long enough for you to get bored.  And it’s not so short that you can’t get down to some serious trash-talking.  Some games can go a lot longer, and some can end a lot sooner, depending on who you’re playing, how you play, and how much caffeine is in your system.  For any sort of matchmaking or ranked matches (i.e. non-player/custom games), a time limit would likely be enforced.

Entropius – So… when can we expect release? :D

We’ll be announcing a release date soon.  We can only say “soon” for so long until soon actually rolls around. DETOUR will be completed this year.

Chiswyck – What is the maximum amount of players in an intense multiplayer match?

The default multiplayer mode is two (2) to four (4) players (henceforth referred to as “players”), for very good reasons (i.e., just trust us on this one.)

One good reason is space.  The board is square.  There are four sides to a square board.  We know from long, personal experience that most gamers are inherently selfish.  Therefore, you probably don’t want to have to share your side of the board with an opponent.  It doesn’t leave much elbow room.

Another problem is how chaotic it can get.  With four players, a game of DETOUR is crazy.  Things get blown up.  Trucks are launched with nary a hope of making it across the board.  Beautiful architecture is marred.  People cry (I didn’t cry of course.)  If we let 6 or 8 players in a game, DETOUR would be sure to spark a civil war or two.

Vokes – Do you think there’s going to be a sequel to DETOUR?

Short answer: No, not really, no.

Long answer: Actually, [-sweep!-]

Maybe in another weekly update…

Vokes – How long do you think the main campaign is going to be for DETOUR? Are there going to be online co-op modes? Are there going to be certain difficulties?

DETOUR’s singleplayer is broken up into 27 Challenges.  One purpose of the challenges is to teach you how to play DETOUR.  The primary purpose of the challenges, however, is to captivate you, shock you with awe, and take you through the emotional rollercoaster that is the road construction slash truck delivery slash competitive corporate combat business.  You may cry.  I can’t remember if I did or not the first time I played through them.

The challenges are structured so that they get progressively more difficult as you play them.  This gentle learning curve (WARNING: CURVES AHEAD) lets you learn DETOUR at your own pace.  You hone your skills against computer opponents on simple maps, so eventually you’re ready to face other players online and make your own awesome maps in our map editor.

Vokes – Is there going to be a multiplayer feature where we can actually invite specific friends/people and set-up our own custom games?

Yes!  DETOUR is all about customizing the way you want to play!  We will be expanding on specifics later, but we can assure there will be a good deal of ‘tweaks’ you can make to ensure the game plays the way you want it to play. This allows for those who like to goof around with crazy rules to play all crazy-like.  On the flip-side, it also will allow players who think we didn’t make the rules ‘hardcore enough for hardcore players that are hardcore’ to get in their share of… hardcore.

Along with that, the map editor lets you create your own maps that you can play and share with your friends online (or locally, or across a LAN connection).  If that’s not enough, you can always start up a game against AI opponents any time you please, or throw in AI opponents for you and some friends to beat up on or team up with.  (Or in my case, get beat up by.)

So, thanks for all your questions!  Keep asking with those inquisitive minds of yours, and don’t forget to follow our twitter account. Oh yeah, and keep on posting! We love you. Really. <3

Pardon our dust!