Hi everyone!

Looks like I’ve spent the year earning merit for being the worst community manager ever (namely, not posting anything).

People keep writing to me, asking the big question: when will this game be released? If you are one of them, thanks for your support and be sure that, if I haven’t answered yet, sooner or later I will.

I’ve spent 2016 improving the quality of the game to a point that I never thought it would reach. I have been assisted by 4 artists (Hector Esteban Richart, Víctor Tardío, Álvaro Monzón y Rafael Romero), That’s not counting my friend David Saavedra, who made the cover. The audio is being completely revamped, including an all-new OST and hiring a voice actor (my original idea was an unvoiced game). VR has proven to deserve a massive amount of development time: 6 different control interfaces have been implemented and tested (you will find them all in the options screen), and lots of optimizations have been implemented to make the most of PS4/PS VR/PC hardware at rock solid 60 fps.

I have only showcased the game in 2 events this year (in one of them it earned the “indie game of the show” prize). In October I made a new trailer that I never published but, despite being light-years more advanced than the one you have probably seen, now I think it’s obsolete again, eclipsed by the recent improvements in visual quality. It will be remade soon (and very likely it will announce a release date).

So that pretty much sums up this year.

I promise to write again in less time.

I leave you with a screenshot.

Happy holidays!

Hi everyone, in case you missed this video or this post, I’m happy to announce you that Megaton Rainfall is coming to PS4 and PlayStation VR next year. Applause!

I’ve been working for almost 2 months on porting the game to the PS4 and Morpheus hardware. By the way, did I mention that Megaton Rainfall runs on a custom engine, specialized in rendering an immense amount of (destructible) buildings and objects on screen? So the porting is definitely not a drag-and-drop piece of cake. In fact I have suffered the 2 or 3 hardest bugs to find in the entire project history in the PS4 porting (the #1 hardest bug took me 12 hours to find it in case you were wondering). But it’s done and I can tell you that the game is already working at 60 fps in PSVR with most of the features activated.

For me the PSVR is a surprisingly fine piece of hardware. It has a cool technical feature called reprojection that I think all developers will love. It means that if the frame rate drops one moment, you still see 120 frames per second when you move your head around. The system, 120 times per second, reprojects the last frame that you rendered according to the movement of the player’s head since you rendered it. So these hiccups don’t affect the player in terms of motion sickness. I can’t wait to know the release date and price… They haven’t told me 🙂 By the way, I’m definitely not launching the game at early 2016.

About the non-VR PS4 version, I’ve still not decided whether to go for 30fps or 60fps. When I played Everybody’s gone to the rapture I thought “games at 30fps look better”. Now I’m playing Metal Gear Solid V and I think “games at 60 fps look better”. So maybe it depends on the game I’m playing when the release date comes 🙂 Don’t hesitate to give me your opinion if you want!

Hi everyone. The last weeks I’ve shown Megaton Rainfall in 3 different tradeshows: Boston Festival of Indie Games, EGX in Birmingham and Madrid Games Week. But I don’t like tradeshows very much! Besides being expensive (flights and hotels don’t have indie-friendly prices), they are completely unuseful for promotional purposes. If I spend a week making a trailer I could maybe reach tens of thousands of people. But if I spend a week (including preparations) to attend a tradeshow, showing my game in 10-minute demos for 8 hours a day for 4 days… Well you can do the math yourself. Also, some tradeshows don’t give you a press list to arrange meetings with the press (like Boston FIG and Indie Megabooth at GDC did, but EGX Leftfield Collection and MGW didn’t), and without it the visibility you get for being there is very limited.

It would also have been cool to get an award. I had hoped to achieve the technical excellence award in Boston, given the amount of propietary technology that I’m developing to make my game, from full-Earth rendering technology to procedural destruction of buildings, but finally it went to this game Xeero, for its solid bug-free programming. Ok, everything is subjective in this life and I also like bug-free games. But in Madrid, the “jurors” at Made in Spain Games at MGW were beyond subjectivity. They gave 5 or 6 awards and didn’t even play my game. I know for sure, because they didn’t come to play and didn’t ask me for a build. It’s not subjective, it is insulting.

Finished the negative, now the positive 🙂 One of the coolest thing about tradeshows is the opportunity to test different versions of my game with dozens of people. In Birmingham, I tested 4 different control interfaces (of the VR version of Megaton Rainfall) each of the 4 days of the EGX. In fact, I developed 2 of them in the evenings at the hotel. So I know all the pros and cons of all of them (I’ll write about my VR design decisions in other post). I asked everyone what’s the best and worst of my game in 5 words. A lot of people chose the same answer. Almost 90% said the best was the sense of flying/scale/speed. There were more varied answers to the worst. In fact as a developer I’m more interested in the worst so that I can improve… I asked for the best so that people don’t feel bad to tell me the worst 🙂

Other positive thing of attending tradeshows is the possibility to play the games other indie developers are making. It’s inspiring. There is so much talent out there. In MGW I discovered Calendula, an intriguing game that doesn’t want to be played. In EGX I found Four Sided Fantasy, a platformer with a simple but extremely powerful gameplay mechanic (why do I not have those kind of ideas?). And two rythm-based action games, Aeero and my personal favorite Thumper… The feelings that this game can convey in just a few minutes, with its disturbing music and its indescribable visuals is amazing. I finished their demo twice. Can’t wait for the full version. Oh, in Boston I didn’t have much time to wander around and play games so didn’t find anything worth mentioning there.

Finally, what I love about tradeshows the most. It happens every time. There are people who absolutely love my game. Well, almost everybody give me positive feedback. But there is some people, maybe 1 out of 10 or 15, that say that my game is the very best indie game around. Like this guy in EGX or this other guy in MGW. They are enthusiastic. Some of them come to play several times. They say I’m making something ambitious and special. Thanks to them I go back home motivated and happy. I want to make the best game I can do, so that I can fulfill their expectation. So, thank you Jordan Pailthorpe and David Hayward for choosing my game for your festivals.

Hi! Certain amount of people has been recently asking me if Megaton Rainfall is still in development or not. Surely, it has something to do with the fact that I haven’t written anything in this blog in the last 5 months. And that only has 3 possible explanations:

A. The development is cancelled.
B. I’m the worst community manager in history.
C. I’ve taken a year off work.

And the right answer is… B!

Don’t worry guys, Megaton Rainfall is in heavy development, and will be ready for a Q1 2016 launch. The game is now playable from start to finish. The last months I have seen a lot of people playing it (specially at GDC, by the way thanks to Chris Floyd, Ryan Burrell, Kelly Wallick and the rest of the Indie Megabooth staff for that incredible oportunity), and I got a very good feedback. But I don’t want just a very good experience, I want to create a perfectly polished game, that surprises the player over and over and that doesn’t disappoint the high expectations that I’ve created in a lot of people. So the rest of the year will be expended in increasing the quality of the game… and making it compatible with a surprising number of devices! More on that later.

Thank you for your interest!

Hi everyone! Welcome to the Megaton Rainfall development blog.

What is Megaton Rainfall? Who am I?

My name is Alfonso del Cerro and I have been programming games for the last 10,5 years. One year ago I decided to go indie. I have spent the past 3 years working on this project (2 years free time, 1 year full time).

I promise MR will be a record breaking game in many ways. If you’ve seen the teaser, you can figure out that one way will be the scale of destruction. There are other superhero games, but in them you don’t unintentionally destroy skyscrapers every time you miss your target. More on that in another post.

MR will be demoed at the Indie Megabooth at Games Developers Conference 2015. Visit me if you drop by there!

PS: Don’t forget to follow me on facebook/twitter.
PS2: Please excuse my english if I make any mistake in this or any future post 🙂