26/09/2008 by admin.

Hello,

How have you been this week? I’ve had a really crappy week (I warn you now, it may end up been a really big rant).

You may remember me telling you about my old pc that’s basically act as a kind of mini file server, well this has cost me the whole week trying to get the piece of chunk to work, it’s a long story so if you are sitting comfortably I’ll begin.

As you know my little file server / Internet box died on me at the start of last week. The complete machine just died. I’ve had it a while so I thought it was time for an upgrade and I didn’t want to be without a machine for too long not knowing for sure which part of the machine is faulty (it could of been everything that had blown).

So with that in mind I ordered a cheap little pre-build gaming rig that I could just swap over my old hard disks into the new case and I would be up and running again (my day job is with computers / networks, so having to mess around with them on a night time isn’t my idea of fun). So the new box arrived and I waited till the weekend to swap over the hard drives. The first problem I came across was that the machine only has one IDE connector and the old box has three hard drives, so that meant I had to get another SATA drive for the new box so I could transfer the data across (a bit more expense, but okay), so that knocked me back another couple of days.

So the new hard drive arrives and it takes almost 3 hours to format and I transfer the first IDE hard drive across, which took a while, but did it. I then removed the now empty IDE drive and replaced it with the other IDE drive and turned the PC on. XP came up and said it found some new hardware and needed to reboot, which I agreed to and everything looked fine until halfway through rebooting the new machine just dies, the exact same way as the old box. So after 5 minutes of constant swearing at the box I decide to go out and buy a new case / PSU for it the next day. I paid a decent price for it as well as I waited a half decent PSU. Stuck the new motherboard and CPU into the new case and pressed the power button and… Nothing, nowt, zilch!!

I double check all the connections, the power cable, fuse, you name it, I checked it. So the old IDE hard drive I stuck in not only killed the PSU, but it’s also killed the mother board and / or the CPU. At this point, I’m getting so close to throwing the box at the wall. Out of pure frustration I take the old IDE hard drive out in to the back yard and hammer it in half with a five pound hammer just to make sure I don’t kill anymore PC’s with this and I’ve got to say that IDE drives are really well build as it took me almost 10 minutes of constant hammering to smash it totally in half.

So, start of a new day, I’ve calmed down again and I go out to buy a cheap motherboard and CPU as my bank account / visa card has really taken a beating over the last couple of months. I come back home and stick the new motherboard and CPU into the new case (so now everything is brand new (the evil IDE drive has never been anywhere near this new kit)) and… NOTHING!!

So by this time I’m shouting at the top of my voice, cursing and swearing (I’ve got a really bad temper when it comes to computers; people, I always stay calm with, but inanimate objects, that’s different) because this must mean that the actual new expensive case is faulty and I’ve bought a new motherboard and CPU for nothing. So to double check this, I clear a space on the desk and open up my main PC and use the PSU from that on the first new motherboard and CPU and it powers up using the onboard video card, it doesn’t seem to want to start up with the video card in, but I can work around that, I just want to get the machine back up and running so I can get back to work and get the room tidy again so I can at least start to work again (see photo, it got a lot more messy then this and I had stuff in the hall way landing as well (the red Mr Shine bottle ended up been thrown against the wall (by accident) and smashed into loads of pieces and the room stunk of polish for the next two day, which cleared my cold for a bit, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a cold treatment)).

  Just to add to the run of bad luck, it’s my first wedding anniversary on the 29^th of September (my (beautiful) wife lives in Canada, while I’m in the UK (waiting for visa’s to be sorted out)) so I wanted to make sure my wife got her present in plenty of time, but it came back to me last weekend all the way from Canada because I didn’t write my wife’s name on the parcel (just her address), so it’s 50/50 now on if my wife will get her present and card in time.

Project wise, things are quite this week I’m afraid, not stopped, but quite. Things will pick up next week I promise. So fingers crossed, I should have everything back up and running again. I just hope I’ve not lost anything really important that can’t be replaced.

Let’s hope things settle down a bit now so I can start to work again.

*Update*: It ended up been a faulty power switch on the case stopping it from working and the video card is dead, but that will wait till payday as I’m not spending any more money, so I can now start to work again on the projects, first thing in the morning when I’ve cleared up enough working space to actually be able to work.

Take care,

Mike

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »

20/09/2008 by admin.

Hello,
  I hope you are all well, because I feel really rough =(

It’s been a bit of a rough week for me this week, so this weeks post will be very short as to be honest, I’ve hardly done anything on the projects except for a couple of little things on Shuffle Blocks (sorry, I’ll try to update during the week to make up for it).  I’m fighting off a cold or something as I’ve been coming home from work feeling really rough the whole week.  I have not even been playing with my iPhone, which for me is really bad as I’m normally all over a new toy, especially when it’s as good as the iPhone, (which I really, really like by the way and would recommend one to any one).

  Overall, it has been a pretty bad week for me.  On Monday, my old PC I use as a basic file server died on me and it’s amazing how much I took that machine for granted as there’s a fair few files on there that I need.  So I had to order a simple replacement for that, which came on Thursday, but I’ve not had time to swap the drives over yet as that PC is in the corner of the room and it’s been awkward to get at and I’ve not had that much patience this week so not really the best time to do it.

  I’ve placed my order for iTGB, which should be released at the end of this month, so I need to start looking at TGB a lot more so I can have a play with that.  At the moment, I’ve got about 6 game ideas that would suit the iPhone platform, but because it’s only going to be done by myself, I need to think long and hard about which game it’s going to be.  At the moment, I think it will be a version of Lucky 7 as it fits the format well (it can be a quick, simply game to play) and thanks to the ability of the motion sensor thing in the phone, it allows me to add a couple of nice features.

  Okay, it’s almost midnight now and seeing as I always get up for 5am, I really need to go to bed now, so have a good week and I’ll do a more detailed posting during the week.

 Have a good weekend,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Current Game Development, Blogroll, Uncategorized | No Comments »

13/09/2008 by admin.

Hello,
First off, sorry for this post been a day late, but my Internet connection just wasn’t working. I kept trying till about 1 am to send the post, but gave up in the end and went to bed. Still wasn’t working when I got up and I’ve had a few jobs to do today so only just had a chance to send this post now. The other really annoy thing about this is that I’ve just bought an iPhone and you need an Internet connection to active it, so I’ve spent a couple of hours just looking at a nice shinny phone and not been able to use it. Anyway, the Internet connection is back and I’m ready to post again. I’ll post a basic review up soon about the iPhone after I’ve had a day or too to play with it (first impressions are good, but the instructions are very poor (it took me about 30 minutes to find and install the sim card (this may say more about my logic and observational skill, then the phone itself, but please, a little icon on the inside back of the envelope isn’t good enough when you spend that much money on a phone and I then spent 10 minutes trying to find a paperclip to destroy so I could get the sim holder out, which after doing that, I found the metal clip stuck to the envelope, which just looked like a nice bit of design (okay after reading that, I know what your thinking and yeah, I may be stupid, but I would at least expect the icon and metal clip to be on the same page, it felt more like a puzzle from an old Lucas Games adventure (it felt like a puzzle out of Monkey Island, I was never any good at them either))))).
It’s been another long, hard week for me this week at the day job and I’ve been coming home to tire to do that much this week, still done a bit, but not as much as I would like.
There’s also been a few more people signing up to the newsletter, to which I thank you for doing that, we do appreciate it and we won’t bug you with e-mails every month like other sites do (we know you all have busy lives and don’t need us nagging you just because I’ve added a new paragraph to the website), so thanks again to everyone for joining.

Weekending 12/09/08
GoGo Digger:
Well I’ve added the MAC version to the website after having loads of trouble trying to upload it to the site (the supplied software I use only allows 10meg file uploads and I didn’t want to split the game up into files as that can get messy), so I had check to see why the MAC version was 2 megs bigger then the PC version. It turns out that there was a few temp files hidden away in the folders which I deleted so I could get the game under 10 megs and I was able to create an install file for the game, which was really easy to do (thanks to a quick Google search of course), so there’s now two versions of the game on the site and I plan on releasing it for the iPhone as well, but I will be charging for that version as it has cost me about £1,800 (about us$3,600) to get all the equipment and software, so I really do need to try to earn some of this back.
I’ve now got to start advertising the MAC version to various sites as well now, so if any readers can recommend and good MAC sites (totally new to the MAC world) could you e-mail me some links please?

Lucky 7:
Isaac has been busy again (as he always is) on Lucky 7 and has been adding new features to the game and is currently trying to add a couple of features, which if they work will let me create the game in a certain graphical style that I think could look really nice and be fun to play and it may even add a new dimension to the gameplay, but like everything, it needs to be prototyped first just to see how it all plays out as first and foremost, it has to be fun for the player and if it isn’t, that feature will get dropped.

Shuffle Blocks:
It’s been another poor week for me for doing work on Shuffle Blocks and my weekend was taken up with doing lots of little 5 minute jobs, that ended up taking most of the day (so much for my nice free weekend). I’ve done the menu elements that I needed to do and I think I’ve done all the trade items now (still need to render them out) and I’m playing with the main menu font again as Dave has done / found some code to display the non-proportional font for the game, it’s just proving a bit annoying trying to get the graphic file through the editor correctly (that’s a coder thing and I’m not going anywhere near that, Dave just tells me how he wants the font laying out and that’s it for me, I do as I’m told (you can ask my wife)).
Dave is also just about to buy himself a 360 XBOX, so it looks like this game will definitely become to the XBOX in some form or another.

Right I need to go off and install iTunes and start downloading some stuff for my new toy (it’s all for research purposes of course =) (Super Monkey Ball here I come)).
Of by the way, if anyone reading this in the UK, Morrisons are currently selling console games at about half price (I’ve just got Metal Gear Solid 4 for £25), but I think it ends on Sunday.
Hope you have a good week.

All the best,

Mike Moore.

www.badbumble.com

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

11/09/2008 by admin.

Hello everyone,

Just a quick post to let you know that I have uploaded the MAC version of GoGo Digger., so if you know anyone who has a MAC and likes free, fun games, pass the info on for me please.

*Image from the first level of GoGo Digger which acts as a tutorial for the game*

I’m sorry it took so long for me to post this version, but the file was a lot bigger then the PC version and I couldn’t understand why. It ended up been due to a lot of old files been included in the game folders (screen grabs, place holder gf/x’s and the original gf/x from the original mobile phone game) and it was zipping up to over 12 megs, but I’ve got it down to 9.5 megs now. Anyway, for all you MAC users I hope you enjoy the game and if you do please join the mailing list to show support for the games which will encourage us to continue doing MAC versions of our games (feel free to e-mail me as well (I don’t bite unless I’m hungry)).

Also the PC version of the game has just been through a Softpedia scan on the program, just to make sure that there’s nothing nasty or underhand hidden in the file (I told you that there wasn’t anyway, but it’s best to be safe then sorry).

I’ll do a progress update tomorrow for Shuffle Blocks and Lucky 7.

See you soon,

Mike

www.badbumble.com

e-mail: mike.moore@badbumble.com

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

05/09/2008 by admin.

Hello,
Well it’s the end of another work week for me and it’s the weekend at last.
It’s been a fairly quite week on the game project front I’m afraid as it’s been a pretty bust week at work and I have been coming home feeling half dead.
My MAC off e-bay came and I got Isaac to do a build of GoGo Digger for the MAC and it works great, I’ve just want to find an installation program for the MAC so I create an installer for it (it’s better then just doing it as a RAR / ZIP file. I can’t make my mind up about the MAC, I really don’t know if I like it or not. There’s some really nice things about it (it basically set itself up on for the Internet connection) and then there’s some stuff that I really don’t like about it (I pulled my USB external drive out of the MAC without ejecting it and it crashed when I tried to turn the MAC off (plus there’s the strangeness of a new operating system to get used to, but that’s just a case of time I guess)), but its early days yet and I need to get used to the different operating system.

Weekending 29/08/08
GoGo Digger:
The MAC version is already to go up onto the website as soon as I get an installer program for the MAC (if there’s anyone out there that knows of a good one, please let me know as I am a complete newbie when it comes to MACs).

Lucky 7:
Isaac sent me a new build of the game and he seems to of gotten rid of almost all of the bugs in the game. There’s still a lot of level balancing to do to get the game feeling right, but it’s definitely heading in the right direction. I need to do some better place holder graphics for the game to start to get the right atmosphere for the game.

Shuffle Blocks:
It’s been a poor week for me for doing work on Shuffle Blocks, I’ve only been able to knock out a few more trade items for the game and I’ve got a couple of menu elements I need to finish off main menu screen. On the bright side I think I have the weekend free, so I should be able to get my head down and make up for the lack of progress during the week.
Dave has been busy doing front end and various hidden coding bits on the game.

All the best,

Mike Moore.

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