| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Jul | ||||||
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | ||||||
- Blogroll (45)
- Current Game Development (53)
- GoGo Digger (21)
- Lucky 7 Development Diary (32)
- Shuffle Blocks (27)
- Solitaire Siege (14)
- Uncategorized (1)
- 19/07/2009: I’m back at last and there’s lots of news.
- 14/06/2009: Unity ROCKS and loading time problems with Solitaire Siege
- 07/06/2009: Solitaire Siege running on my iPod
- 31/05/2009: Solitaire Siege finally on the real hardware and Shuffle Blocks for the XBOX 360
- 18/05/2009: Finished the gf/x for Solitaire Siege and 10 min reviews in the forum.
- 10/05/2009: Another Solitaire Siege picture and Plants vs Zombies.
- 04/05/2009: Not all Clones are created equal
- 26/04/2009: Preview of the Comic Strip Adverts.
- 19/04/2009: Net Books, Starting up a business and more Solitaire Siege.
- 12/04/2009: Happy Easter
Blogroll
I’m back at last and there’s lots of news.
19/07/2009 by admin.
Hello,
I’m back!! Sorry for not blogging the last couple of weeks, but I’ve had my head down working hard on the games, trying to get everything finished up as much as possible.
Nearly all the work has been aimed at getting our games onto the iPhone and iPod, which to be honest isn’t that hard as I always designed the games with just the mouse been used for all the control system (I did this because when ever I watched my Dad play on his computer, he would never touch the keyboard (often it would be left on the floor of his computer desk)). So the games are not too difficult to transfer across and the only thing to really think about was the reduced screen size on the iPhone / iPod (320×480 screen size compared to at the very least 640×480 on the PC and MAC). So some clever redesign work was needed for some of the games, but not that much.
I’m also on Twitter by the way (http://twitter.com/BadBumble) if you want to follow me and this way there’s less chance of missing out on some of the stuff I’ve done during the weeks and if you want to ask me any questions, just twitter me (it also makes me feel like I’ve got lots of friends and important =))
I’ve also been playing around with Unity MAC and iPhone versions and it seems really, really nice. I was able to get a little 3D rolling ball game prototype done featuring a character that looks a fair bit like Homer Simpson running around a 3D city / maze in a couple of hours. So when the dust finally settles done, I’m going to have a really good go at Unity and see what sort of game I can come up with.
Speaking of iPhone games, I’ve been playing a lot of games just lately on my iPhone. Off the top of my head I can recommend the following:
Rope’n’Fly ($1):
It’s a Spider Man style game where you swing from building, to building and try not to smash into the ground. Theres also a lite version available.
Moon Drop ($1):
Another simple little game that get’s really active. Try to land the astronauts on the Moon base by pressing near them, to deflect their flight/landing path.
Draw Racer ($1):
The idea is to draw your driving path around a race track and then your car will follow it. You just have to make sure you don’t draw to fast or you will slide of around corners. Simple, but fun game.
Glpha (Free):
It’s a clone of Joust by Williams. It’s a nice smooth and fast version of the game and its free!
Jetman (Free):
For some reason I’ve played this game for ages and I have no idea why. Basically you just fly down a corridor dodging objects. Your only control is a single button to fire your jetpac. Graphics are simple, but it’s smooth enough and I played it for hours on and off. I would never buy it, but for free, give it a try.
Star Trigon ($1):
A Namco game where you jump from planet to planet trying to capture little aliens. Simple, fun little game. Not sure if this was a special sale price or not, but I wouldn’t pay much more for it.
Harbor Master ($1):
I’ve played this game a
BaseBall Slugger ($1):
This was on sale or else I would never have bought it and I would have missed out on a great little game. Basically you just have to hit the ball out of the stadium as many times as possible and every time you miss the ball or you cause a foul, you lose one of your ten lives. Sounds dull (I know, it’s rounders), but it plays really well and is nicely polished.
Weekending 19/07/09
Solitaire Siege:
Well there’s been loads of new things going on with Solitaire Siege. It’s almost finished now and I’m expecting it to be ready to send to Apple next week all been well. There’s been lots of little set backs over the last 3 weeks from not been able to get iTGB to build the game correctly (that took a whole week to fix in it self), too getting the loading times down to a half decent level, where at the moment it now loads on my iPhone in under 12 seconds and it’s even quicker on my iPod. Isaac has it now so that it automatically saves the game after every level, so it’s nice and easy to quit out of the game if needed and come back in again later, which is always nice for a portable game.
At the moment, there’s about two bugs left to catch and Isaac is busy optimizing the game to get some more speed out of the game and I’m expecting a new build later today from him.
We are still adding little polishing touches to the game, simply because as your play testing it, you start to think of new stuff to add or that may improve things slightly, so you try it and if it works then that’s great, and if it doesn’t you take it back out again. So when you finally get a chance to play the game for yourselves, it should be a nice, solid game which is nice and smooth to play.
GoGo Digger (iPhone/iPod):
There’s been a fair bit of work been done on GoGo Digger as well in the past couple of weeks. It’s just been me doing the designs for the game (it’s going to be a much improved version of the PC & MAC version) and I’ve got the basic graphical design down now and I’ve just finished building the barrel copter you fly when you go to different level. Below are a few mock up screens of the iPhone/iPod version, they are all using in game graphics but are what I’ve knocked up in Photoshop just to give me a better idea of how to do everything on the iPhone/iPod. So don’t be too surprised if the finished game appears slightly different.
There’s actually a fair few new additions that I have planned for the game and it will be interesting to see how well everything plays out with the game, but I’m making sure that the overall style of the game is not effected by these new features as I think the game itself is ideal for the iPhone/iPod and after all the current version of this game came out on mobile phones anyway (the very original version I made came out on the Amiga, written in AMOS almost 20 years ago).
Lucky 7 (iPhone/iPod):
I’m taking a slightly different approach with the iPhone/iPod version of Lucky 7 as the desktop version have a much bigger screen, I’ve had to play around a bit with the game for the iPhone/iPod. The basic game play is still the same, but due to the nature of the iPhone/iPod, I’ve made it more of an arcade style of game (at least for the main game mode) as I personally think when you play games on mobile devices, you want quick, short games that you can play while waiting in line in a queue, but they should have lots of replay value to the games as well. The picture is a mock up for me to work out the screen layout, it’s using the in game gf/x’s so it will look the same when it’s released, but the actual layout could change depending on how well everything plays out.
As long as we can keep the speed of the game going on the iPhone, it will be a great game to play and there’s been a couple of games that have just come out recently that have come pretty close to the style of game that is Lucky 7, so I would like to get this game out before anyone else does. Wouldn’t want anyone to think I was copying someone else’s ideas.
You may also notice that the games have a graphical connection through out all the games in that they all have Star Balls and Land Mines. This is just simply because I want the player to be able to play any of our games and knock basically what these things will do. It’s the same kind of thing as Nintendo has done with the Mario games. You know that collecting a mushroom is going to cause you to grow in size, and if it’s good enough for Nintendo, then it’s good enough for me =)
Right, I’ve got to get back to work now as there’s lots, and lots of stuff for me to do and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter if you want up to the minute updates and just to ask me stuff and please feel free to give any feed back you may have about any of this.
Take care,
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, GoGo Digger, Current Game Development, Lucky 7 Development Diary, Blogroll | No Comments »
Unity ROCKS and loading time problems with Solitaire Siege
14/06/2009 by admin.
Hello,
I hope you are all having a good week.
It’s going to be a really quick blog today I’m afraid as I feel really ill at the moment and I think I’m going to go straight to bed for an early night and try to shake it off.
It’s been a fairly poor week all round this week I’m afraid. The best part of this week is that I’ve been playing around with a new engine called Unity (www.unity3d.com) and it’s great. I’ve already bought the Main part of it and I’m looking at the iPhone add for it now. After using the Torque iTGB, I wasn’t expecting that much from Unity to be honest seeing as TGB is basically as simple as you can get (or so I assumed), but Unity is 1000 times better from what I can see. Within 20 minutes I had a large textured terrain covered with trees and grass that blows in the wind and I was able to run around it. All this with just watching a couple of little videos of the site to get me started.
I spent yesterday trying out the iPhone module for it and that is also really, really nice as well. Some of the demos are really impressive and you can even try the iPhone game without even sending it to the iPhone, you just use the iPhone to control the game and the MAC sends a (reduced size, but then enlarged so it looks a bit blocky) video feed back to the iPhone, which is really handy for when you want to try the control system out without having to constantly build the app in Unity / Xcode.
So I’m really thinking now that once the games I have planned for the iPhone using iTGB are done, I’m going to move over to Unity for doing iPhone stuff at least. I’m still going to be using TGB for Lucky 7 as that game is almost finished and it would be daft to not finish it as it’s a smart, fun game.
Also, Unity allows you to build your games for the web, so don’t be to surprised if in the future, you start to see some little test games popping up on here.
Weekending 14/06/09
Solitaire Siege:
I’ve spent what seems like most of this week trying to get Solitaire Siege to load up quickly. I’ve spent about 3-4 days on this so far and I’ve got it down from around about 100 seconds, down to about 42 - 43 seconds, which is still way, way too long. It should be loading up in under 20 seconds. I’ve tried everything I can think of from converting as much of the gf/x as possible from PNG files to PVR files which knock the size down and can be used straight away by the iPhone / iPod with out having to mess around with them like it does with PNG files. The down side is they can look really bad on clean / cartoon images (which is most of my graphics in the game). If you have ever compressed a SPG file down real low, then that’s the same kind of effect you’ll get with PVRs. It’s fine for photos, but not for nice, clean 2D sprites. This took 2 days to do and it didn’t make any difference to the loading times, so I’m going to change them back.
I’ve got a video of the game in action now, but I still need to look into how to convert it for YouTube.
Shuffle Blocks:
Dave is back on course for doing the XBOX port of the code again and I’ve done a little bit more on the gf/x side of things, but with been on call this week, I’ve been going to bed early in case I get called out during the night, which really eats into your time during the week, but saying that, I’ve almost finished updating the gf/x now. Just a few more renders to do.
There was one problem we had this week of trying to convert the new font over for the game. Dave spent almost two days trying to get it to go in and the fault was because I had a couple of characters slightly higher then the others, so it wouldn’t import correctly. It’s amazing how such a stupid little things like that can cause such a huge problem =/
Well I’m afraid that’s it from me for this week as I really need to go to bed now as I’m ready to drop, so I hope you have a good week and I’ll see you next week.
Take care,
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, Shuffle Blocks, Current Game Development, Lucky 7 Development Diary, Blogroll | No Comments »
Solitaire Siege running on my iPod
07/06/2009 by admin.
Hello again,
I hope you all had a good weekend. This will be a quick post as I need to go out (sorry).
It’s been a pretty good week in the end for the projects (day job has sucked thou).
It was E3 this week as well, which I’ve only caught the basic overview of the news this week as my Internet connection is been really slow just lately, but it looks like Microsoft had the best showing of the big three (not sure about the new camera control system thou and the kid simulator thing that Lion Head showed off just seemed to give me the creeps). There’s also a couple of new Mario games coming out for the Wii, which will give me a reason for dusting it off =)
I know I said that I would be spending the whole week just working on Shuffle Blocks, but that didn’t go according to plan and about half the time was spent on Solitaire Siege as well, which isn’t a bad thing at all.
Weekending 7/06/09
Solitaire Siege:
After a lot of messing around and help from the Garage Game forums I’ve finally been able to get Solitaire Siege working on my iPod and playing correctly the way it should, it’s damn nice as well. As long as we can get plenty of people to look at the game I’m sure it will do really nicely for us and is definitely worth the asking price.
It’s a dead simple game to play so it’s nice and easy to pick up, play for ten minutes and then turn off, except that it’s got that one more go feel to it so you end up playing it for a couple of hours at a time and as each level is random, the replay value is really high.
It’s going to be cheap to buy as the introduction price will only be $1, yet unlike a lot of the games at that price, it is going to be a game that you will keep on your iPhone / iPod and keep coming back to long after, even just for a quick go.
Also because of the type of game it is, it works perfectly with the touch screen controls, which just makes the player feel more comfortable when playing the game (you don’t have your fingers covering the screen while you are playing).
We also have a few other ideas and features for the game, which we hope to implement into future updates for the games (which will all be free of course as is the nature of the App Store).
Isaac is currently hammering out the last couple of bugs in the game and there’s a few more little finishing touches that needs to be done be for we submit it, so I need to go through the game with a fine tooth comb and pick up all the little things that need to be polished up, little features to be added and just a general tidy up so it’s as nice as we cane make it.
We also need to make the file size as small as possible as at the moment it’s about 14 Meg and it needs to be below 10Meg so iPhone users can download it straight to their iPhones which I’ve been told is a major plus point in impulse purchases and with the game coming out at a dollar, it definitely fit’s into that market.
I’ve got a few ideas for saving space on some of the (in game) presentation screens, which could even allow us some added animation opportunities and added atmosphere to the game.
The next thing we need to do is cut the loading times down as at the moment it’s taking ages to load (90+ seconds), that will go down a lot of course when we get the file size down, but it’s not going to be that easy a task to do. Also, anything over 30 seconds (so I’ve been told) causes the iPhone to cancel the loading, so it’s pretty important to sort out =)
My iPhone SDK has now thrown a tantrum and is refusing to build the current version of the game. I don’t think it’s anything to do with the iTGB end, but it’s down to the Xcode end, so I’m going to have to play around again with that and try to get that running again and when it does, I should be able to grab a quick little game play video from it off the simulator for you to see (need to set up a You Tube account as well). It’s not the first time this has happened to me this week either, on Friday night I had to re-install the OS on my iPod as Xcode refused to see it as a development bit of kit =(
Shuffle Blocks:
Dave has run into a slight problem on the XBOX version as it uses a different compiler or something from the PC version, so they are a few things that need to be re-written to get it to work on the XBOX, but it’s getting there.
From a graphical point of view, I guess I’m about half through re-doing the higher resolution graphics for the XBOX version and I must admit, it’s looking a LOT nicer then the original PC version, so after the XBOX version is done, the PC version is going to get the same treatment. Even thou I’m about halfway through doing the gf/x’s it still going to take me a bit longer then a week to finish them off as the stuff that is left I think will be a bit more tricky to do (I did go for most of the easy stuff first). I’ll upload a couple of mock ups screens next week for you to show you the difference in gf/x’s for the two versions.
Well that’s it for now folks, but if you have any questions, please feel free to post them and I’ll try my best to answer them for you.
I hope you enjoy the rest of what’s left of your week.
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, Shuffle Blocks, Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »
Solitaire Siege finally on the real hardware and Shuffle Blocks for the XBOX 360
31/05/2009 by admin.
Hello,
Hope you are all well.
Sorry for not posting last week, but last week / weekend was just a mess, everything has been all over the place, but I think things are starting to get back to normal again now.
This will be a pretty short post as I’ve got a huge amount of work to try to get through this week and every second counts, so without furtherer to do, let me tell you what’s been done.
Weekending 31/05/09
Solitaire Siege:
The big news is that I’ve finally got my license for the iPhone Apple development kit. So I can now test Solitaire Siege on the real hardware. It took me two whole nights to get everything set up correctly and to be able to send the game to the iPod. Most of this was because I rushed straight in and I had to download in total about 5 Gigs worth of stuff to get everything going. It was a lot more complex then I expected it to be to be honest, but I guess there’s a lot of security involved to stop developers from been able hack other peoples phones.
So anyway, the good news is that the game can now be played on the iPod Touch (I had to upgrade to the Beta of OS3 and I didn’t want to risk losing all my contacts on my phone if anything went wrong, so I used my iPod and lost all my movies which I have to stick on the MAC now to get then back onto the iPod). It runs a bit slower then on the PC/MAC build, but it’s still playable except that there’s a strange bug where the cards don’t get update, but I’ve been told what could be causing that and it should be a fairly quick fix to do.
Isaac has also been having a rough couple of weeks, so things have slowed down a bit, but the game is almost there I think. Isaac did start to do some mini games for the game while we were waiting for the license and to take a break from bug hunting which I no doubt will end up in the game in a later update (I want the first version to be nice and clean for the Apple submission, so nothing goes wrong). We do have plans for some interesting updates for the game but we want to make sure that the basic game is fun for every one first and then we can build on it.
Shuffle Blocks:
Dave has been secretly hammering away at the XBOX version of Shuffle Blocks and he thinks the game could be finished by the end of next month, all been well.
Tommy has done another couple of tunes for the game which I’ve been told are really nice (after all, everything he does is really nice) and I’ve been starting to convert the gf/xs to the strange resolution the XBOX 360 uses (1280 by 700). This is causing a lot more hassle then I expected it too. So much that I’ve had to redesign the in game playing area and I’m going to have to redraw all the gf/x again which will take at least the rest of the week to do at the very least, but I don’t want to hold Dave up as the game will be really nice when it’s finished and fingers crossed, should do well on XBOX Live (the community games bit). I’ll post some gf/x for it during the week (if I have time so you can compare the differences the change in screen size makes). The other plus point about this is that the PC version will benefit from the upgraded gf/x, even if I can’t use the new layout.
Right I better get back to work I guess. Have a great week and I’ll see you next week.
Take care,
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, Shuffle Blocks, Current Game Development, Blogroll | 2 Comments »
Finished the gf/x for Solitaire Siege and 10 min reviews in the forum.
18/05/2009 by admin.
Hello,
How’s everything going?
Sorry for the late post, but I’ve been having Internet trouble and trying really hard to get all the gf/x finished for Solitaire Siege =)
I’ve also knocked up a couple of little iPhone / iPod Touch reviews in the forums for you to have a quick look at, if you get a spare couple of minutes. There’s a few reasons for doing this, one of the main ones been that I’ve bought a huge number of games for my iPhone, some been really good, while others been really, really bad; and that’s even after reading a couple of reviews. Another reason is I’ve had the forum sitting there for a while now and it seemed like an easy way to start to use it and hopefully other people will start to post review on there (I need to sort out some basic rules / guidelines for that, but I don’t see any reason not to allow other people to post reviews as well).
My reviews are based on generally playing a game for about an hour or so (some times longer if the game is good, shorter if it isn’t) and it’s just the general feel I get for the games and as every ones tastes are different, I don’t expect every one to agree with me, but you are more then welcome to leave your comments on the forum. You do need to register on the forum to be able to post of course, or else it will get full of spam and links to gambling and porn sites. I do recommend you trying the two games I’ve reviewed as I did enjoy them a lot.
Work wise this week has been a bit hit and miss (getting called out at 2:30am was a major highlight of the week), but I was able to get my head down and do a fair bit of work during the end of the week and I think I’ve finished all the graphics now for Solitaire Siege, at least until I can see it on the real hardware and then I’m hoping it will just be minor changes.
Weekending 18/05/09
Solitaire Siege:
Isaac thinks he’s almost gotten rid of all the bugs now in the game and now it’s a case of adding the other little details in the game (effects for the weapon attacks and the like). He’s also been adding various sound effects and other audio into the game as well (thanks to the new engine), the only downside is that you can’t hear the MP3 audio unless it’s on the real hardware which is annoying to say the least.
I’ve just finished all the particle effects for the game and I think it will look really nice in game (I particularly like the Flame Thrower effect and the rocket launcher, just hope that it runs okay on the real hardware). I’ve also finished all the other screens in the game like the Statistics Screen for the end of each level, help screen, credits screen and cleaning up various other screens.
Shuffle Blocks:
Dave got married on Friday, so Congratulations to Dave and his better half and I wish you all the best.
Dave is aiming to do a Xbox Live Community game version of the game, which means I need to redo all the gf/x for the higher resolution (current gf/x where aimed for a lowly 640 x 480), so they will have a lot more detail in the new version and I guess the PC version will also get a big boost out of the updated gf/x now as well.
Tommy is writing up some new tunes for the new version as well.
So as you can see, it’s all go again last week and I’m expecting this week to be just as busy =)
So I think that’s everything for this week, but if you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch and please let me know if you think the game reviews are any good or a waste of time, or if you want to post a review yourself, just ask.
Have a good week and take care.
Take care,
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, Shuffle Blocks, Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »
Another Solitaire Siege picture and Plants vs Zombies.
10/05/2009 by admin.
Hello,
I hope you are all doing well.
It will have to be a fairly quick blog this week as it’s getting a bit late now and I really need to get to bed because I’ve been up since 5am this morning and I’m half a sleep as it is.
This week has been all over the place for me. It’s been full of lot’s of little jobs I’ve had to do, that seem to have taken most of my time up. You know how it is, you have a five minute job to do and it ends up been most of the night wasted on doing it and then that causes a few more little jobs and it starts to feel like a never ending circle.
So anyway, this week I’ve been working on Solitaire Siege again and a bit of work on Shuffle Blocks, which Dave has asked me for. The new version of iTGB has just come out as well, so that’s going to take a few nights to look at and see what new stuff is in that.
I’ve also been playing the new PopCap game called “Plants vs Zombies” which is a really nice game once you get into it. I say that because the demo really doesn’t do the game justice (for some reason PopCap game demos are nearly always a bit dull) as the game doesn’t start to get interesting until about the 90 minute mark. Basically it’s a simplified Tower Defence style game where you have five lanes which cartoon style zombies come down and you have to stop them from getting to the other side by placing plants in their way. It starts out really simple and a bit dull to be honest, but the later levels really do start to pick up and it’s a very engrossing game to play and the polish in the game is fantastic and you are going to love “Crazy Dave”.
Well here’s a new little game advert for you to look at. It’s just something quick I knocked up tonight so I would have something to show you guys. The plan was / is to also use the nerdy clone from last week with this Hulk style clone in an advert, but it was taking to long to layout correctly, so I knocked this one up instead and I will finish the planned advert next week.
Let me know what you think of it and feel free to pass the pictures around if you want to, just don’t alter / modify them please.
Weekending 04/05/09
Solitaire Siege:
Isaac has sent me a new build for the game which he thinks has nearly all the bugs knocked out of the game, but with the new version of the engine we use coming out, we need to make sure it will work with that as it now supports MP3’s so we can have Tommy’s music in the game and a lot more sound effects.
I’ve just been working out a few screens for the game just on paper at the moment, but after playing the game, they are a few things that need to be added so it’s as easy as possible for a new player to get in to the game as quickly as possible. It may be a lot more work then I expected, but it’s definitely something that needs to be done.
Shuffle Blocks:
Dave has been in touch this week with regards to Shuffle Blocks. The game is back up and running again now and is nice and solid again. I’ve got a font done for the game which I need to save out and send to Dave for the timer for the Land Mines in the game.
Still now sure if we should do a knocked down version of the game for the community games for XBOX Live or just keep on slogging away and get the full, deluxe version of the game out, but at the moment all my time is taken up with Solitaire Siege and the other projects.
Well that will have to be it for now as it’s getting late and I’m up early tomorrow, but if I get a chance I will try to post mid week, but I’m also on call next week (day job) so I don’t know when (if) I will have any free time next week.
Have a good week and take care.
Take care,
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, Shuffle Blocks, Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »
Not all Clones are created equal
04/05/2009 by admin.
Hello everyone,
Hope you all have had a good week.
It’s been a bank holiday here this weekend and it’s actually been fairly nice out side, so I went against my better judgement and went out for a couple of days while it was nice (which is why the blog is a bit later then normal (sorry)). I basically went along the East coast, visiting a few of the sea side towns. It was nice and I ate loads of ice cream and I’m still finding sand in my shoes.
I’m fighting a cold of at the moment so I’m a bit grumpy and I’ve got the attention span of a gold fish at the moment so I’ve been jumping around a bit doing different tasks and just been watching Heroes when I just couldn’t face coming home from work after sitting at a computer screen for eight hours and spending another couple of hours sitting at the computer at home.
Any way, I’ve started to work on another advert for the game as I want to get at least six done before the game is ready for release. It’s not finished yet, but here’s one of the cells/renders for it.
This advert will be about how creating clones is like baking a cake; if you don’t follow the recipe perfectly, you get mishaps. This picture shows one of these mishaps, a rejected clone. I actually modelled the character after Bernard from “Day of the Tentacle”, a great little point and click game by Lucas Games (it was one of the first CD-Rom adventure games) and one of the first adventure games I completed without any help.
Weekending 04/05/09
Solitaire Siege:
I’ve done a couple of things for the game, just graphical touch ups and a new card attack called “The Spy”, which was Isaacs idea for the game. It works well and is a none violent card for once =) Most of my time has been taken up with doing more stuff for the adverts. I think I’m got most of them planned out now I think and fingers crossed, I can use a lot of my old 3D models in these, or at the very least, have a base model to work off from.
I’ve also been playing the new builds of the game for bug testing, Isaac keeps sending me every other day or so. I think I played it other the weekend for about 7 hours which isn’t bad considering I was out every day and only got a chance to play it on the night time. To be honest, even was the few bugs which are in it at the moment, it’s still really playable and it really didn’t seem like I was playing it for that long. We will need to do some adjustments to the level difficulty a bit I think as it seems a bit too easy at the moment, but we will know for sure when it’s finished and we can test it on new people.
Right I think that’s everything for this week, I know it was a bit short this week, but I’m hoping to have a bit more interesting stuff next week for you.
Take care,
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »
Preview of the Comic Strip Adverts.
26/04/2009 by admin.
Hello,
Hope you are all well.
It’s been a bit of a rough week for me this week. With been on call out, I’ve been going to bed a bit earlier then normal just in case I get called out for an emergency. I did get called out, but it was just as I was getting ready to go out for a meal on Friday night. So I had to miss the meal (which I was looking forward to the whole week) and instead spend 5-6 hours at work instead.
This week with what ever time I have had free, I’ve been trying to work mainly on the comic strip advert idea I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago. Well I’ve done a couple now to give you a basic idea of what I’m going for. The first one is as serious as they will get. This is due to the fact that I want to get the basic idea across that there’s this big, evil army been created of clones that’s threatening to take over the world once it’s at full power and your not really killing people in the game, just mindless clones (maybe cyborgs?).
The second one with the stealth fighter plane is more along the lines of what I intend all the other comic strips to be like. Light hearted and showing the actions from the clone’s point of view and this one will probably be the most violent one out the lot as the other will be a lot lighter. So have a look at them and let me know what you think about them. Are they a good idea or not?
Weekending 19/04/09
Solitaire Siege:
It’s been a bit slow this week to be honest, because I have been mainly concentrating on the adverts. I’ve done a few little task here and there for the game, but now its really comes down to getting the finished game ready and sitting down with it and pointing out all the little things that could do with been touched up and polished
Isaac has been very busy with the game this week as he has been hunting down all the bugs in the game and correcting them. He thinks he’s just about got them all now (there was a couple that took him a whole day to sort) and with Isaac been such a diligent coder, he makes such that it’s done correctly.
Isaac also just got himself an iPod Touch, which he loves and is really impressed by it, and who wouldn’t be!?
Well I guess that’s it for now I think as I’m feeling really hungry now and I need to get something to eat (my stomach always rules my head), so enjoy what’s left of your weekend and I hope to see you next week (which is a bank holiday for people in England).
Take care,
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »
Net Books, Starting up a business and more Solitaire Siege.
19/04/2009 by admin.
Hello everyone,
Hope you are all well and happy.
Well it’s finally a nice sunny day here, bit cold, but there’s a nice clear blue sky overhead and I’m stuck inside working away at the computer =) It’s been a bit of a hit and miss week for me this week. I made the mistake of going out shopping with my sister on Easter Monday because she wanted a computer chair. The one she wanted was in PC World and they only had the display model left, which she got after waiting around for a while for them to find all the other bits. It then took another 20 minutes for them to find the thing that takes the security disc of the chair so we could take it home. After getting it home, I had to set it up for her (it’s a gaming style chair with speakers in (which I though was horrible, but my sister found to be really comfy)) and I find out that it’s broken (the display and speakers don’t work), so we take it back and have to hang around again to get a refund. Anyway to cut a long story short, we went to another few computer shops looking and I’m getting so fed up, I’m losing the will to live. Any way we end up in Comet (a big electrical store in the
I also went to a Enterprise Business Show which gave me lot’s of useful information about setting up my own business so that everything is above board and I know I’m not breaking any laws or not paying any taxes I should be paying. There was also a few talks / seminars which where interesting to listen to. A lot didn’t really relate to setting up a small games studio, but it was still interesting and it’s nice to know that what I’m doing seems to be the correct way of going about it all and everyone I talked to seem to think I had a good chance of succeeding (especially after showing them the current build of Lucky 7), but it’s still a huge mind field of forms and stuff I need to fill in.
Weekending 19/04/09
Solitaire Siege:
From a project front, it’s been a really good week for us. Solitaire Siege is really coming along now. The combo system is almost complete (just the reward system to finish on it) and nearly all the bugs are gone now. I’ve just finished the graphics for two possible ways on how we are going to deal will the player picking up too many special cards. At the moment, you are limited to four of each type of card (weapon Cards and Mercenary Cards) and there going to come a time when the player is going to be able to pick up another card, but not have the space in the deck for it. So we have to allow the player to either just remove the card (so the player can still continue), use the new card straight away or give the player the chance to use one of the existing cards to free up some space. It’s not a big deal, but it is an important element to think about.
Another feature that Isaac has just added to the game and to be honest I wasn’t sure about when he told me about it is that the invading clone army will shoot back at you if you miss an available card. It works really well and really makes the player concentrate when playing the game a lot more. The reason I wasn’t sure about adding it was if a player had a strategy which would involve leaving a card free, but I can’t think of a reason for doing that.
I’ve also been working on the comic strip idea for the game advertising, which I’ll show off next week all been well (I’m on call out next week so I can’t be sure what time I’ll have free and I normally go to bed a bit earlier just in case I do get called out on a night time / early morning), but the first idea is almost done.
At the moment a lot of my time is taken up play testing the new builds to make sure that there’s no bugs, it’s good fun, but it makes it hard to get any work done when your playing the game for 10 minutes and the next time you look, two hours have past and it’s time for bed.
I’m still waiting to get my development license from Apple which may hold things up a bit as we need to know that the game will run okay on the actual iPhone and iPod touch (it works fine on the simulator, but that’s not the real hardware).
I’ve also updated the web site banner from the Shuffle Blocks logo to the new Solitaire Siege logo and I changed the colour scheme to match as well. I’m not sure if the banner is a bit too busy or not, but it okay for now.
I think that’s everything for today, I’m sure there’s other stuff that I’ve done for Solitaire Siege but I can’t for the life of me remember what (old age is really starting to take it’s toll on me now) 
Have a great week and I hope to see you next week.
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Lucky 7 Development Diary, Blogroll | No Comments »
Happy Easter
12/04/2009 by admin.
Hello,
Happy Easter!!!
Sorry I’m a bit late, but I’ve been having some Internet / computer problems which have taken some time to sort out.
Anyway, let’s get down to it and let me try to remember what I’ve been doing this week on Solitaire Siege (it was my first week back at work after been away for almost two months, so that was a knock to the system if you know what I mean).
The game itself I think is getting really close to been finished now I think (well at least from a gf/x point of view), as I think I’ve only got a couple of more particle effects to do for the game and a couple of help screens to explain the basics of the game and what the various cards do. Of course, now that I’ve just said that, I’ve just jinxed myself and there’s going to be a load more stuff that I’ve forgotten
I’m really starting to think now about how I’m going to start to get some publicity for the game now that it’s getting really close to been finished. To be honest, I think I should of done this pretty much as soon as I started the game, but to be honest, I’m very passionate about the idea of going out to unknown people / sites asking them to look at my game. It feels a bit like begging to me, if that makes sense, but it’s definitely something I need to do if I want to even make my money back from all the stuff I’ve bought just to do this in the first place and please, if any one is reading this and can help to spread the word, please do, even if it’s just adding the game to your signature when you post on forums, it all helps (now’s that begging for you (smile)).
Anyway, one of the ideas I’ve got for a bit of marketing (and I admit now that I’ve not totally weighed up everything yet) is to do a couple of comic strips with the troops from the game. My basic idea is that all the troops are identical, so that must mean that they are clones and my idea is to do a couple of short comic strips of “In Day of a Clone” type of thing. You know, stuff like basic training and the like and if I can’t think of many funny jokes, then more surreal stuff. The next thing is to try to get these comics out to semi related sites (this is the bit that my plan may fall down), but it shouldn’t take too long to do the comic strips and I’m hoping it will get some publicity; at least it can’t do any harm (I hope).
Weekending 12/04/09
Solitaire Siege:
I’ve been playing around a bit with the game to be honest this week now that it’s all pretty much working as a solid game now, it gives you the chance to really see how it plays and how everything slots together as it doesn’t matter how much work you do on the project, until it all starts to come together in a coherent, solid form, you can’t be 100% sure that all the elements work and you can see what needs to be changed and what else you can add to the game now as you don’t want to be constantly adding stuff early on in a project as it increases the chance of just never finishing the project, but near the end of a project, you can start to see the finishing line up ahead, which really increases your motivation and you really try to go the extra mile to get everything looking and feel just right.
With this is mind I’ve been playing around with some simple weather effects for the game. In this case, I’ve been making a snow blizzard for the snow level using a couple of particle systems. It looks nice and will add some extra atmosphere to the level but I’m not sure if it will start to annoy the player after a few games and it could be distracting to the player when they are trying to concentrate on the game, so it’s 50/50 at the moment if it will go into the game or not.
Other work I’ve done this week includes updating the main title screen (see above) so it has a slightly more army feel to it, but I still wanted to keep the card game feel as well, so it’s a bit of a balancing act, but I think it works okay. I’ve also finished off all the various in game text menus / screens and cleaned up the old ones as I didn’t feel that they instantly got the message across to the first time player, so the new versions hopefully will and at the very least at are a big improvement over the old ones I think.
I’ve also just finished the graphical text messages of for when you start to score combos / links of cards. There’s going to be 8 different ones in total which will just add a bit more of an achievement / reward to the player for doing it.
Isaac has been busy the whole week updating the way the special pick up cards (weapon and mercenary cards) are displayed in the game. We where a bit concerned about having too many cards in a small area when it comes to clicking on the screen to select the desired card (that’s something that really annoys me in some iPhone games), so we have now split the two groups up any the player can swap between the two groups, while still been able to see the other group in the top left of the screen, but using smaller gf/xs. It works really well and is a really simple and clear way around the problem. We have also limited the number of cards the player can store too 4 of each card. This way, it also adds an extra little bit of strategy to what cards the player will keep.
Right I think that’s everything for this week and please if anyone out there can help us in providing any publicity for the game please get in touch. as been a small developer, good word of mouth from supports can really make a difference for us and you get the pleasure of knowing that you are helping a group of people produce fun games for other people.
I hope you all have a good Easter and don’t eat too much chocolate (I can’t have any as I’m on a diet *sniff* (speaking as a chocolate fanatic, Easter is the best holiday in the year and I can’t have any, life can be cruel sometimes)).
All the best,
Mike.
Posted in Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »