Quick Info

• Created with GameMaker 7 – 1024×768 full screen
• Project work time: May 20, 2007

Description

After seeing a wave of (what I felt like were) mediocre top-down shooters come and go on the GameMaker Community forums, I decided to have my go at making one, and Falcon Squad was born.

It was a project that I started with no clear goal in mind, other than to create a fun multiplayer experience that utilized Reflect Games, and then build a single player game from that. More people were playing the demos online, with each iteration, and I would jump in from time to time. It really was fun.

My job at the time, working as a typesetter for a real estate magazine, afforded me a lot of extra time to hang around the GameMaker Community while at work. It was only 10 minutes away from my apartment, so it also gave me plenty of time after work for game development.

Unfortunately, in a precursor to the housing market crash in 2008, I was laid off. Not long after, I found a much better job working as a graphic designer for a sports supplement company, but that came with a lengthy commute, and this had a great impact on the development of Falcon Squad, and Reflect Games in general. At my new job, I wasn’t able to browse the internet as much, and spending 2 hours (or more) on the road every day meant a lot less time for work when I got home. My ability to work on games took a nose dive, and Reflect Games was in limbo.

In retrospect, I probably couldn’t have kept things going much longer anyway. There isn’t room for an account system like Reflect Games when services like Steam are so accessible, and the amount of time I spent on the forums at my former job was not sustainable. I do wish I could have gotten a little more done with Falcon Squad, because it was fun to play with others, but that’s just how it went!

There is a demo of Falcon Squad that still works, but since the Reflect Games account system is no longer operational, you can’t access the only feature that had been implemented, online deathmatch. So including the demo just so people can play with the menu seems a little pointless.

Maybe someday I’ll revive this project, just to see how much better my multiplayer coding skills are. For now though, this is the legacy of Falcon Squad.

Interesting Facts

• All the player characters and gear was animated and rendered in trueSpace, the first 3D design program I learned how to use.
• I was obsessed with Gears of War at the time, which had released around half a year before, and a lot of the game’s design was influenced by that:
  • The players had a slow, meandering movement to them, and their gear made a lot of clinking noises as they lumbered around.
  • The game’s weapons had a lot of force/impact to them. Ammo packs were blocky and chunky, with glowing bits.
  • I even considered adding a cover system at one point.
  • The name “Falcon Squad” was inspired by Gears of War’s stars, the Delta Squad.
• Matthew Griffin, one of the two people behind Wanderlust: Rebirth, once asked me if the sound effect for the player movement was from me shaking around a drawer of silverware. I couldn’t not hear it that way after he said that.
• Falcon Squad was being developed around the same time a similar game from a group of Reflect Games rivals called “Game Cave” was developing their top-down shooter. I don’t want to call this a spite game, but it might’ve been a spite game.