Here’s a new wallpaper, first in a series of four (each dedicated to different characters), depicting our hero and B.R.O. Alliance’s best soldier.

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The Dudebro team wishes you a happy Independence Day. Hit the keg, welcome aliens to Earth and set off some fireworks.

Here are a few animations done by our pixel artists for the old top-down build. The first one displays Dudebro when idle and walking while the other shows him shooting. Check them out.

Here we have a 3D model for a nice lift, from the old top-down version of the game. Usable in facility areas, the functions of these are… well that’s probably pretty self explanatory.

Here we have some concept art from the Cuban stage. An eerie graveyard where the dead aren’t as well behaved as you would expect. There is a large church with several crypts surrounding it and even loculi that slide to reveal hidden paths.

Dr. Blacksmith Barrowfast is a world renown scientist working for the Research & Development department of B.R.O. Alliance, specifically in the fields of quantum mechanics and obscure alcoholic beverages. His name is so peculiar that apparently no one can remember or spell it correctly, which, together with his boring and forgettable personality, condemned Dr. Broadercast to a whole life of loneliness and abandonment. Visibly overweight and equipped with an exceptional amount of body hair, Dr. Brokentrust uses his own beard as an improvised wig to disguise his baldness, but the dubious results perhaps contribute to his chronic lack of success with women.

Dr. Rosencrantz was last seen a few weeks before the events of the game, but for the reasons listed above, reconstructing his last movements has proven itself impossible. He was briefly suspected by a B.R.O. operative to be held prisoner by the SkullPro organization, but said operative forgot to include his name in the report. Will Dudebro’s mission involve rescuing Dr. Askflyhhjetmanpf? Wait, who are we talking about again?

The Dudebro team wishes everyone a happy Memorial Day to honor the fallen heroes as well as our friends and family in the military.

Here we have Brolling Stan, one of the scrapped members of the Dude Squad. Intended to be the very first boss, this large opponent would roll around the stage at high speeds, attempting to slam into Dudebro in the process. The speed would make him difficult to shoot accurately, but his immense size would be the key to defeating him.

Here’s a new wallpaper based on a very special gameplay screenshot from the old top-down build, captured at 1080p with 16x MSAA and maximum texture detail. Besides an evidently better IQ compared to the browser captures we already released for this version of the game, this screenshot also features something entirely new: a large bloodstain on the snowy ground. Dudebro sure seemed quite eager to paint this immaculate environment red!

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For this retrospective post, we’re gonna talk about how the old top-down build evolved from the very first version all the way to the form shown in the first screenshots released back in 2011.

Obviously, it all started with the prototype. Will Goldstone was able to put this together very quickly in an attempt to give the rest of the team an idea where we should take the project. His influence coupled with the talent of our 3D artists was essential in choosing Unity.

The build evolved relatively quickly. Pretty soon, it started to look more and more like a game rather than a blueprint, with the addition of different weapons, throwing and enemy AI. Speaking of enemies, there were no models at the time, so capsules wearing a camo pattern were used as a placeholder, and as shown in the screenshot below the enemy count rapidly got quite large. A placeholder soldier wearing blue attire was also used for Dudebro, for the same reason.

Environment models were then imported into the build, and the placeholders got a slight upgrade among the other improvements. Around this time, real life started preventing Will from contributing further, so Spoo took over as coding lead and development had to continue on the free version of Unity. This meant we could not implement realtime shadows, and things looked a bit “up in the air”.

We later upgraded to the newly released Unity 3. This allowed the addition of lightmaps and pre-baked shadows for the environment. At this point the camera angle was also perfected, and several more elements added.

Because of understaffing, animating Dudebro was taking much longer than expected. This seriously hindered the progress of the game and prevented the model from being fully implemented in the build. While it was indeed added for some tests, its lack of animations did not make it functional in any presentable form. After much deliberation and a desire to move forward at a reasonable pace, the team decided once and for all to switch to sprites.

The switch seemed to have been the right decision as made apparent by the reception of the screenshots. But this wasn’t the last change the game would have to face.