1000+ Hits, Food Poisoning and Galaga Legions

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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