Cletus Clay Prototype Trailer
Posted by Derek Yu Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:20:00 GMT
Here’s a rather awesome new trailer for Anthony Flack’s latest claymated masterpiece, Cletus Clay, which is nominated for an IGF Excellence in Visual Art award. The game is being developed for PC and XBLA.
Aside from the Tuna Snax blog, you can follow CC through this Twitter feed. And be sure to check out this interview on GameSetWatch with Anthony and a couple of the other developers. There’s also a two-page article in EDGE this month about the game and stop-motion animation, which is pretty great! Clay fever, baby.
This is looking so great!
Oh my, this looks so incredible! I can’t wait to get my hands on it!
Ah, gross stereotyping of rural lower class whites–thank god we had that to turn to when stereotyping blacks became taboo!
Pipe down, you hick.*
*Joke.
The creator’s from New Zealand.
Oh wow, this looks amazing.
That’s pretty funny when he says, “Is that all you got!?!”
Mr. Flack, you’ve done it again. Platypus was one of my favorite games when I was a teen, and this looks just as good.
Oi! Don’t joke about hicks!
So y’all know, this video is from the original Blitz work. If you check the YouTube channel you’ll find a work-in-progress video showing how the current version looks.
Anthony wanted to push the boundaries of stop frame games - hopefully it’s working out.
gameplay is too old school
That looks pretty cool! Looked forward to seeing more, loved the pig pinata :)
Yep - as, er, Cletus says, this is the unreleased 2006 (I think?) version of the game. The new version looks much more next-gen styleez, although the character animation and general feel remains much the same.
This was the video we used to help pitch the project initially. With any luck we’ll soon be at the point where we can show off similar action in the new game engine.
I love the voice acting, it cracks me up!
The gameplay and graphics look like a bad DOS or Win95 platformer though, just based on this video and the video of the lighting test on youtube. The colors and animation are both major detractors. Even in the “claymation platformer” genre there are many excellent examples of unified, cohesive use of color and animation!
I am not trying to dump on the obvious amount of effort and love that was put into this project so far, it looks like Anthony is putting a lot of time and personality into this thing, which is awesome. Also, obviously the amount of claymation-based game development going on is shamefully low, and the more the merrier, definitely.
But just as an objective consumer of indie games, I don’t understand the nomination.
The gameplay is certainly nothing revolutionary - I happen to like that sort of thing, but if you don’t then this game will probably not change your mind. But I would respectfully disagree with your criticism of the colour palette and character animation.
However, if you can tell me of another game in the claymation platformer genre with unified, cohesive use of colour and animation (that isn’t Skullmonkeys), I would definitely like to play it.
Really?! The graphics look pretty unified and cohesive to me. Just my personal opinion, of course. I like the visuals. :)
…skullmonkeys.
That’s all I got :P So I guess naturally that is what I’m comparing this to, which I realize is pretty unfair, given that that was created by like…at least a dozen dudes, many of whom are veteran animators and cartoonists.
So…whatever, take my comments with a grain of salt, and best of luck on your project!
makes me sad to see so much work put into a game that is likely to annoy the piss outta me.
18: I hope not! Maybe the finished demo version will change your mind.
But if not, don’t be sad; once this is released we’ll likely put a whole lot more work into something quite different.
If Cletus rants that incessantly through the whole game it’s going to be the funniest thing I’ve ever played.
He does… we have hundreds of voice samples so he shouldn’t be repeating himself too often, either. You’ll be able to switch it off if you don’t like it though.
This looks amazing. It looks sort of like a SNES game, but then amped up. Can’t wait to play this.
This game looks awesome. I wish more devs would utilize claymation. I would guess that it takes alot of work. Someone stated that the gameplay is too oldschool, I couldn’t disagree more, because I do not believe that is possible. Keep up the good work, I look forward to buying and playing this game.
clay slug ftw! this looks more delicious than a tuna snac (or a whole bunch thereof)… nothing that’s not funny or not appealing about it. can’t wait.
the rant at 1:05 sounds like it would be the song’s lyrics.=)
The gameplay is definitely old skool but with a few more modern tweaks. If you you don’t like old skool style stuff then it’s probably not your thing.
We’re just making a game that we would like to play; hopefully a few other peeps will do too.
re: Gfx - bare in mind that YouTube mushes things up horribly :( We’ll do a better HD upload somewhere else at some point in the future.
You guys HAVE to check out the new engine one, it’s under “lighting test” or something. Seriously check out the new engine it looks amazing!
For anyone interested, you can find pictures of the models (updated regularly) and in-game images at http://twitpic.com/photos/CletusClay
I hate platform games with a vengeance, which is why I’m pleased to say that Cletus Clay is the only one I’ve played and enjoyed since, er… Gods on the Amiga. It’s that awesome. It’s not really old skool - old skool games, if you try and play one now, are basically shit instruments of masochistic torture - but this game’s just a complete delight in every respect.
When’s the IGF going to be announcing winners?
This looks amazing! Can’t wait to play it. =)
That looks stunning but did anyone else notice the broken panning? an explosion on the right plays on the left.
looks amazing. awesome palette, especially for night-time / dusk type scenes, very nice indeed.
Whoops, must’ve gotten the left and right channels switched around at some point while making that video.
wow it looks better than i expected in motion, great stuff Anthony, i <3 your games
“‘Ey Cleetus!” “Wut?” “Yer made a’ clay” “Darn tootin’ I am!” “A HEE HEE HEE!”
P.S. Looks to be a fine game, A HEE HEEstop.
This looks awesome.
The lighting test does look really awesome too.
Hey looks amazing! awesome man
Kinda agree with Adam on the colors issue. I would have favored subtle, toned down palettes which tend to evoke more atmosphere. But this is primarily stylistic preference remark and game does look rather nice as it is. And saturated colors go well with the “redneck” theme :)
About “lighting test”: It looks a bit weird that light sources illuminate all layers with same intensity. Particularly odd is that the sky layer is lit by a lantern. It’d be better to separate two things which are now crammed into one effect - 1) direct illumination and 2) atmospheric light halo (or light fog). Direct illumination should diminish with distance. So the more distant the layer, the less light it receives, with sky getting no illumination at all. If you want to go even more “realistic” each succeeding layer’s light hue should be shifted a little bit more towards the atmosphere color. In case of nocturnal outdoor scene - deep blue. On top of that, the light halo could just be additively blended over all layers (having circular shape for point sources and triangular shape for spotlights). Halo area is normally considerably smaller than the direct illumination area.
I’m nitpicking though. Existing light effects are good enough to function well with the game graphics but if you’re still working on improvements - this may be one possible way to approach it.
Anyway, as a whole, this is showing a lot of promise. I enjoyed Platypus, although the gameplay was tiny bit too casual for my taste. Suspect this will have the same flavor; casual but still tons of fun and extremely good looking.
nenad - thanks for the comments; will pass them on.
The rendering system is pretty complicated already and heavy on system usage. We have a peculiar mix of 2d and 3d which also makes effects more difficult to set up reliably, and we have to be careful to mix fx with the clay artwork. To some extent we’re still finding that balance - it’s not like anyone has done this before!
One of the reasons we decided to show some stuff as we went along was to get feedback. We’re so used to seeing the project it can help to get new eyes so all comments are appreciated.
Looks really nice. I like. ;)
Wow Wow Wow Woooot please release it on mac as well, i don’t wanna use my useless pc :( oh well i guess it is not so useless …
We’d definitely like to support a Mac version at some point in the future, not least because Anthony is Mac-based.
Sweet! I’ll keep watching the game’s development guys. Best of luck!