Gerry Anderson, Derek Meddings, Century 21

Well, it's all happening, I've tried out some vehicle designs, and as part of my research, I'm googling a lot of Derek Meddings and Gerry Anderson photos. As usual, I get lost down the rabbit-hole and end up spending days looking at these amazing images, and all the studio scale model kits that fans are making. I'm reminded just what a huge impact these shows made on me and how exciting all the visions of the Century 21 Universe were.

So, the good bit about being the lead (aka only) artist on a project, is I get to decide the look of it, and this is exactly the look I want. I'd love to make this game look as though it was designed by Derek Meddings, Mike Trim and the other talented visionaries that gave that world it's unique look.

The main problem is, I'm learning to appreciate the scale of their genius, as it's very hard to come up with designs that are anywhere near as cool. I think the main trick is that you have to tell your brain to try and do the wrong thing.

Perfect example: Thunderbird 2. Derek Meddings originally designed it with conventional wings, pointing backwards, but then, like some kind of punk rocker, flipped them to make them point the wrong way, and hey presto, the iconic TB2 was born! And if you see TB2 with the wings the normal way round, it looks totally wrong!

You have to configure your brain to go against convention. I love that, and some of that anarchy made it into SWIV, so I hope to inject that same attitude into SWIX. Below is a quick render of my design for the Heli. Needs some refinement, detail and decals etc. but I quite like it so far!

SWIV Creator tinkering with new game

Hi there! I am Ned Langman. You may remember me from such games as Silkworm, SWIV, and Forsaken back in the day. SWIV, particularly the Amiga version, is still a well thought of game by some people, myself included!


Something I've wanted to do for years is make an up to date shoot 'em up in the same style as SWIV which I designed for the Amiga and Super Nintendo, way back in the early 90s.








Unfortunately (for me), the other half of the main development team, Ronald Pieket, went over to America to be all successful and suntanned.

He works at Insomniac Games and has recently worked on big titles like Ratchet & Clank, Mercenaries and Marvel Spider Man.

Ron is a coding genius and helped to make my graphics and ideas become a reality, and I can honestly say that working on SWIV and Silkworm were easily the funnest times I've had in the games industry.

While I've had many ideas bouncing around in my head since then, I could never code, so I wasn't able to develop anything, that is, until now. Thanks lovely, wonderful Unity!!

I have produced a number of games already using Unity, including a vector styled Asteroids clone called Space Junk, a Defender style shooter called Spaceman Dave, and a bunch of apps for young children based on my Flash website www.fungooms.com, the most recent being Litterbugs.



So, I feel confident enough now to be able to start on a new SWIV style game. It can't be a straight sequel or update because I can't be totally sure if I own the copyright anymore. But it will involve the cool feature of one player controlling a flying vehicle and the other controlling a ground vehicle. That's all I can say so far about the gameplay.

If anyone should stumble across this blog, I would be more than happy to hear people's wishes for content, and I'd really love to collaborate with someone, though as I live in the part of the UK which has the smallest game dev community, that is unlikely.



Anyway, follow this blog for updates and news about this as yet untitled project (I do have a title, but I'm not telling anyone yet!), and very, very soon I'll be able to post some pics of my work in progress!