29/08/2008 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  Well it’s Friday again and that must mean that it’s time for another update.

  It’s been a long week for me this week and by the looks of it the next couple of weeks are not going to be any better for me.
  The big news is that I have gone out and got myself a MAC (well off e-bay, but it’s the same thing) so expect to see GoGo Digger on the MAC soon (all been well for the end of next week).  It’s totally emptied by bank account now, but I’m hoping with the ability to release games on the MAC as well as the PC, it will be able to pay for itself as that’s the only reason I’ve bought the MAC to be honest.
  I’m still playing Galaga Legions on the XBLA and still really enjoying it a lot (it’s great for a quick 20 minutes blast now and again).

  I’m still thinking about doing stuff for the iPhone (part of the reason for getting the MAC), but I’ve already spent £500 on the MAC and it’s going to cost me another £400 just for the updated development software and then I’ve actually got the iPhone to buy on top of that, so I’m not sure it’s actually going to be worth while to develop for this format at the moment as it will take a while to recoup the investment and I don’t have that kind of moeny to spend at the moment.  Maybe after we have a couple of games out already and if they do well, then we could move onto the iPhone as well.

Weekending 29/08/08
GoGo Digger:
  I don’t think there’s been a lot happening on the GoGo Digger front to be honest with you this week.  I keep googling “GoGo Digger” every now and again just to see if there’s any new reviews, but that’s it.  Isaac has just sent me the MAC build for me to test when my MAC comes sometime next week, so if it works okay without any problems you should be able to download it by the end of next week (I’ll have to have a look for an installer program for the MAC as well I guess).

Lucky 7:
  Just got an e-mail from Isaac this week about Lucky 7, by all accounts he has been hammering away at Lucky 7, sorting out the bugs and he said he would send me over a new build during the weekend, and trust me when Isaac says he’s been working hard at something, he really has been working hard on it.  I’m sure the guy doesn’t sleep.

Shuffle Blocks:
  I’ve not had that much of a chance to really work on Shuffle Blocks that much this week.  I have modelled and rendered out a few of the trade items which took a lot longer then I expected it to.  This was partly due to the fact that I messed up the plugin Light Wave uses for rendering out hair and it took me a re-install to get things working correctly again.  Anyway, I’ve got about half of the item’s rendered out now and I’ve just noticed that a lot of the items are food and drink related (I think that that says more about me then I would like it to)
  I’ve got a few things I need to do over the weekend, but I’m hoping to get the trade items finished over the weekend.

 All the best,

Mike Moore.

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25/08/2008 by admin.

Hello,
Just a quick up date to let you know that there’s now a few reviews coming in for GoGo Digger and it is getting really good scores across the board (maximum scores in a lot of cases).

Here’s a list of reviews and scores so far:
http://casualgamerchick.com/2008/08/24/gogo-digger-review/
Scores 5 out of 5

http://www.take9.com/game-reviews/gogo-digger/
No actual score, but a nice review.

http://www.nonags.com/nonags/gmpuz.html
Scores 6 out of 6

http://freewarehome.com/index.html?http%3A//freewarehome.com/mainpage.html
Scores 5 out of 5

http://www.fileplanet.com/190685/190000/fileinfo/GoGo-Digger—v1.0-(Free-Game)
Indie Spotlight Game for the week with a current score of 4.8 out of 5

Can I also ask please, that if anyone does review the game (or if you see a review which I have not listed), could you send me a link please (good or bad review, I don’t mind), as it is really nice to see what people think about the game and it makes the long hours worth it.

Also on a similar note, I’ve noticed that the subscription to the News Letter has increased a fair bit in the last week which is really nice to see as it really shows that people are interested in our work and to we would just like to say thank you to everyone that has joined the New Letter and I promise I will not spam you with lots of e-mails. I’m going to see if there’s something special we can do for the subscribers as a thank you. It’s still very early days yet, but I think it’s only fair to give the people that support us something a little extra back. So let me have a think and see what we can come up with.

Take care,

Mike Moore.

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22/08/2008 by admin.

Hello everyone,
It’s Friday, so that must mean it’s time for another update.

Well I’ve been off work this week on holiday, so I was hoping to get a lot done this week. That didn’t actually happen as I managed to get a bit of food poisoning, which floored me for a couple of days and I still feel a bit crappy now to be honest.

I’ve also been playing a new XBOX Live game called Galaga Legions. It’s an updated version of Galaga (Galaxians) and it is fantastic. It’s a shoot em up, but it’s so different to any shoot em up I’ve played. The game is more down to pattern memorization (it even draws the path of the enemy before they appear on screen) and what’s the best way of placing your firing drones (your ship can drop automated drones that constantly fire in a given direction). This is done by simply pushing the right stick in what ever direction you want them to fire in and if you want to call them back, you just press the left trigger button (all very simple).
The idea of the game is just to survive the constant on slaughter of enemies, which on later levels, pretty much just fill up the entire screen. Each grouping of enemies have a master / leader enemy and if you can take that out, it kills either all the other enemies in the same group, or at least a huge amount of them. I really would recommend you downloading the demo version and giving it a try.

The web page has now gone over the 1000 unique hits this week and is steadily rising, which is really nice. I guess the new traffic is coming from File Planet users seeing as GoGo Digger is the Indie Spot Light” game for this week, which has really made my week to be honest with you and everyone who has left a rating has rated it high (one 4 star and three 5 stars) 4.8 out of 5. Of course there’s also the old saying “If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, then don’t say anything”, so who knows =)

Weekending 22/08/08
GoGo Digger:
Well I’ve spent a fair few hours trying to get the game on to a few sites. It paid off big time with File Planet as you know and I’ve sent it to a few download / share ware sites, but it will take a month plus before it appears on any of the sites. I never really expected it to be this hard and long winded to get a game onto other sites, but I really think GoGo Digger has been an eye opener for me on this side of the business and for the next game, I will really need to start pushing for publicity a lot earlier, which so be honest is something I’m not that keen on doing as most game that get hyped up, most of the time end up been average at best. I don’t know if this is because you end up expecting so much from a game, that it ends up been almost impossible to meet your expected standards or if the game is just average and the only way the publisher is ever going to shift and copies is because of the hype in the first place.
Any way, with some luck, I’m hoping to start to get some reviews of GoGo Digger over the next couple of months.

Lucky 7:
Isaac has been really busy with Lucky 7 and the latest build is really shaping up now to be a good game. I found myself playing it for well over an hour and that’s without any real level organization in there and for the vast majority of the game, just place holder art work (definitely no polish) and no audio yet. So that’s a really good sign for the finished game if I can sit and play it for so long when it’s so early in the project.
I’ve also just seen the news that the Torque Engine is coming out for the iPhone, so depending on the costs for that, there’s a good chance that it may get ported over to the iPhone as well as it looks like it would work really well on that device and maybe even release GoGo Digger on it as well.
I’ve been reading all the hype about the iPhone and they do look very nice, but has anyone actually got one and bought software for it? If you have, could you let me know what it’s like and how easy it is to buy and install the software please?

Shuffle Blocks:
Right, I’ve kind of been jumping around with Shuffle Blocks this week. I’ve got the Main Menu finished (kind of). All the layers are done and I’ve been told by Dave that it looks really nice (I’ve not seen it yet so kind say, but I think it should look good).
I’ve also finished the font for the Main Menu (I’ve kept with the gold rimmed one), but I made it as a non-proportional font (which means instead of having every letter sit in the same size box (that’s a proportional font) I’ve squashed everything up, so if a letter could use less space, it will do), but that’s a pain in the bum to program, so I’m going to redo it as a proportional font instead, but as a place holder, I’ve created all the buttons as sprites which was long and boring to do. I also had to plan out the Main Menu flow diagram which sounds easy and is kind of, just very, dull and the menu system is a lot more complex then I think it needs to be (see picture below), so it’s going to get a bit of a re-design and see if I can make it easier to program for Dave and so it will allow us to add and remove stuff if needed.

Due to been ill this week, I couldn’t really concentrate too much so I started to model up some of the items for the trading / mission section’s of the game. All just simple objects and fairly quick to model up, so ideal for when your clutching a bucket feeling ill (by the way, don’t try to play Galaga while you have food poisoning as it really doesn’t help your game having to pause the game to run off to the toilet).

Right, I think that’s it for this week. Don’t think I’ve forgotten anything, but I might of as I am getting old and my mind really isn’t as good as it was.
Have a good week and thanks again to everyone for helping to get the website past the 1000+ visits.

All the best,

Mike Moore.

PS. I also finished Bionic Command from last week as well (if you are interested).

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21/08/2008 by admin.

Hello everyone,
Just a quick bit of selves promotion and to let you all know that GoGo Digger has just been picked as this weeks “File Planets Indie Spotlight game”, which means that File Planet thinks that the game showed enough quality in production values / game play to be displayed on File Planets front page.

So if any of you guys already have a File Planet account (the basic ones are free by the way), would you guys mind rating the game for us please as it will only take 5 seconds to do (drop down menu with 5 possible scores) as it would be nice to get some feed back. So far, it’s been rated 3 times and has a total score of 4.7 out of 5 (which by my poor maths is two ratings of 5 stars and one rating of 4 stars), which is a good score.

Thanks, I’ll do a project update tomorrow.

All the best,
Mike.

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15/08/2008 by admin.

Hello everyone,
Hello again, it’s time for another update.
The day job has been really rough this week, but that’s okay because I have next week! I’ve been busy with Shuffle blocks when ever I could find a spare moment and I’ve jumped around a bit doing different things on that.
I’ve also been playing the new Bionic Command remake on XBOX Live. I’m really in two minds over this game. It one of those games where it really frustrates you to the point of wanting to throw the joypad through the telly (the down side to wireless joypads) and really liking it.
There’s lots of little things that annoy me about the game, such as not knowing if there’s a platform below you when you drop off, the control system can be really fiddly sometimes, the icon locations on the map menu could have been better so you could tell what each location was straight away and the graphical style is nowhere near as nice as the original arcade game (I know it’s an update to the NES version, but I liked the style of the original arcade version with the big chunky characters), but they are some nice little graphical touches in the game. I know I’ve just moaned about the game, but it is still a really nice game to play and I’m almost at the end of the main game now (there’s still loads of stuff to still find in the game (hidden sections and LOTS of time trial levels). It seems to step a really fine line between frustrating and making you want to continue in the game. I think it’s the buzz of been able to swing around the level, once you get use to the arm mechanic that makes the game. I also liked the music in the game as it has a retro 8 bit feel to the game and I don’t normally pay much attention to the in game music.
Anyway, here’s what I’ve been doing project wise this past week.

Weekending 15/08/08
GoGo Digger:
I’ve spent a couple of nights trawling the web to find casual / freeware sites that review games and I’ve been told that www.casualgamerchick.com will review the game soon. If you have a website that review casual games and would like to review the game, please feel free =)

Lucky 7:
Isaac is busy with Lucky 7 and has got the profile system up and running and the start of the Arcade mode. If fact he has just send me an update of the game that I will try as soon as I’ve finished typing this.

Shuffle Blocks:
This week I have mainly been working on the Main Menu screen for the game. I’ve attached an early mock up of the screen, it’s using real in game assets, but it’s not actually taken straight from the game and there’s also a few effects that are not been shown from this. It’s been good, because it’s given me a chance to play with my Wacom tablet again, drawing clouds (which is really relaxing).

The plan is to have several layers of clouds scrolling by (the screen shot only has two layers at the moment (background and one semi transparent layer), with shilloetts of distant planes and air ships flying by in the distance. I’ve also animated the buttons which still need to be tested to see how well it works in game, but it will look nice I think and set the tone for the rest of the game. The way you select the game modes and options will also be a bit different I think and follow the style of the actual game which will be a nice touch. Not totally sure about the font for the letters, but I want something nice and colourful.

Dave has been busy trying different style of effects for the bombs in the game. I’m trying to follow the same object logic through out the games, so when you see a bomb, you already have a good idea how it’s going to react in the game from playing over BadBumble games and you know that a Star Ball is a good thing. It seems to make sense to do things this way and it’s the same kind of logic that worked for all the Mario games and if it’s good enough for Nintendo, it’s good enough for me =)

Right I need to get back to finishing off the other cloud layers for the menu and then I can have an early night (well get to bed before midnight).

Have a great week and I’ll see you need week I hope.

All the best,

Mike Moore
www.BadBumble.com

Posted in Shuffle Blocks, GoGo Digger, Current Game Development, Lucky 7 Development Diary, Blogroll | No Comments »

08/08/2008 by admin.

Hello everyone,
Well it’s been a busy work week for me, this week.

The day job has really take up most of my time this week and because I have spent a lot of time in air conditioned computer rooms the last couple of weeks, I’m fighting a bit of a cold so my night work has been a bit slow.
I also bought a pack of music files from All Game Music.com (1000+ MP3 tunes) for about $32 us dollars. I was actually surprised by the quality of the tunes. I was expecting to only get about 6-12 tunes that I would like, but so far, there’s been at least 12 tunes I really like and I’ve only looked at the first section (about 80 files). They will be handy for little freeware game and in game menu music, and I’ve still got another 900+ tunes to listen to yet.
Also finally got my empty game case replaced from Tesco (it’s the biggest super market chain in the UK). It took an e-mail to the main branch and three arguments with the staff at the store to get it replaced and I don’t think I would have got it replaced if it wasn’t for who I work for, as you could tell by the look on their faces they really didn’t want to do it, but simply because of the way the first staff members talked to me when I tried to get a replacement, I was determined to get it replaced. So the next time you buy something from a big super market, check the box straight away.

Weekending 08/08/08
GoGo Digger:
I need to start trying to push the game around to some of the indie websites to try to get some reviews of the game and try to get some more publicity for the game.
Isaac is still having a rest from finishing the game, well I say resting, but he has been working on Lucky 7 as well =)

Shuffle Blocks:
I’ve been working out how the Cannons will work in the game and creating the basic cross hair sizes for the game, I’m guessing you may be wondering how cannons are involved in a word game, well I’ll explain that later.
I’ve also been remodelling the GoGo character. I’ve changed the design slightly and made the model a lot more detailed so I can now animate the full face and the hands now. I guess the new model has a slightly 50’s art deco style to it and I’ve slimed him down a bit. Not totally sure if it’s the right way to go with the character, but I think it will read better on the screen. It’s still a work in progress of course, so thing could and probably will change.

Posted in Shuffle Blocks, GoGo Digger, Current Game Development | No Comments »

01/08/2008 by admin.

Hello,
Well it’s time for another update. It’s been a fairly relaxing week (especially compared to last week). The web site has been getting lots of unique hits over the couple of weeks which is nice and there has been no faults reported about GoGo Digger, which is a nice surprise. I didn’t expect many faults, but I did expect at least one.
I had a good rest on Sunday and went out to the seaside for a relaxing day by the sea. It was nice to get out by the sea during a hot summer day with a cool breeze coming in from the sea. The down side was that I got sun burn driving home and basically half of my body turned bright red (I never go brown) so I ended up looking like a colour blind version of Brave Heart and was in pain for the next couple of days due to it.

Weekending 1/08/08
GoGo Digger:
Well it looks like GoGo Digger is finally done and completed now so expect to see the finished version up on the website today and I will be sending it to all the upload sites I can find to help to get it out to everyone.
I’ve tried to make Isaac take a rest this week, but he’s been off working on Lucky 7 (our next game), which is coming along and is now playable.

Shuffle Blocks:
I’ve been slowly getting back into this project and after playing a new build of the game (which is shaping up really well) we have been able to tweak the gf/x to help make the board a lot more readable for the player as it can cause the player to go kind of letter blind if your not careful.
So the first thing we did was to tint the vowels a slightly different colour and to add guide lines to the board when you go to scroll a row or column, which works really well and helps the overall readability a lot.
I’ve also made a few sound effects for the game which will add a lot of atmosphere to the game I think (hope).
Dave has been busy adding new features to the game and basically making sure everything plays together correctly and even now the builds are playable and shows a real lot of promise.
What I really like about the design is that it feels kind of like a word search game, a spelling game and a puzzle game all at the same time (which as fair as I know is pretty unique) and as long as all the other elements work out as expected, it will be a cracking game.

Right, it’s time I went back to work so have a good weekend,
Mike

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