29/11/2008 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  Hope your well.  It’s been a busy week this week, I’ve just started call out cover at the day job, so for one week in four, I am on 24 hour call out cover, which is fine as I can still work while I am at home, it’s just that you are also just kind of hanging around, expecting the phone to ring.

  This weekend and a fair bit of the week will almost totally be taken up with some home DIY.  I’ve now got the small back bedroom almost empty and ready to be converted into a little office for myself.  So I went out tonight after work and bought some metal shelf racking and the wooden shelving and then I’m going to spend the rest of the week trying to get it to stay on the wall, while keeping the wall upright and trying to stop all the bleeding.  What I’m basically trying to say is that I’m crap at DIY.  I can knock it up in 3D in 5 minutes, but in the real world, it would take me the whole weekend to do and I will probably lose an eye or finger in the process.

  Project wise, I’ve been mainly working on Lucky 7 the whole time.  It’s been a bit all over the place with what I’ve been working on.  One moment I’m working on Menu Selection graphics, the next it’s more in game text and the next, it’s working on new designs for the monsters.  So I apologize if it doesn’t seem like that much has been done, but there’s actually more then I realized.

Weekending 28/11/08

Lucky Seven:

  I spent ages trying to get the particle graphics to work correctly for the game and after A LOT of trial and error, I think I’ve finally came up with some nice sprites that work well in the engine.  I basically found out that for the best results, basically use grey scale colours and thin transparency, so they look smoother against the background.

  I have also been busy with lots of other little jobs during the week for the project, which include anything from level menu design work, more character design work and other bit’s and bob’s.

  Isaac also created another attack for the game.  It was originally for the “Pumpkin Blitz” attack, but due to a slight mix up in communication, it ended up as something totally different.  The new attack, slowly starts to spread and grow across the screen, preventing the player from been able to select the blocks (if you have ever played Boulder Dash, it’s the same kind of thing as the amoeba in that).  So we are going to keep the attack, but I’m going to create some glowing slime animations for the game and call it a slime attack.

  Isaac also asked me for some more large graphic text “WAIT” & “GO”, but would not tell me what it was for, so there could be a nice surprise for the next build.

Shuffle Blocks:

    Dave sent me a new build of the game, but I couldn’t get it to install correctly, which by all accounts is pretty common, so I’m still waiting for a build to test out.  Dave has also been busy doing some secret business work for BadBumble, which I hope may provide fruitful in the new year.

  It also looks like we may also have a new musician to work on both projects.  Going by his online portfolio, he seems to have a good range of styles and has some really high quality tunes.  It’s still in the early days of talks at the moment, but fingers crossed.

  Right, I think that’s everything for this week, so as long as I survive my DIY quest, I hope I’ll see you next week.

 Mike.

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Shuffle Blocks, Current Game Development, Lucky 7 Development Diary, Blogroll | 1 Comment »

22/11/2008 by admin.

Hello again,

  This will be a quick post this week I’m afraid as it is late and I really need to go to sleep now.  This week, I’ve been hammering away again at Lucky 7 constantly.  I got my head down and knocked out lots of little graphical jobs that needed to be done for the game and tried a couple of new ideas that I think will work really well and look nice.

  There was also the new Xbox update, which turned out to be a lot nicer then I expected it to.  The avatars are a bit too close to the Wii Me’s for my liking, but it sees a lot faster to move round the place.  The one thing that did annoy me was that I couldn’t make the avatars fat enough to be a true representation of myself, which probably means I need to go on a diet more then anything else =/

  Game wise, I’ve not really been playing any games (I have been playing Lucky 7 a lot, but that’s been classed as work,(even if it is great fun)), but I noticed that Field Runners (a tower defence game on the iPhone) was updated last night, so spent a hour playing on that and if you have an iPhone, then you really should get this game as it’s probably the best game available on the iPhone at the moment and the update makes it just so much better.

Weekending 21/11/08

Lucky Seven:

  There’s been lots of little additions to the game this week, some just minor additions and others which were spare of the moment ideas for little graphical touches, which should work really well in the game and give it an added “WOW” element for the player when they play the game.  It’s amazing how replacing the place holder text elements with nice new, colourful text graphics can add so much polish to the game.

  I’ve also been trying to do some particle effect sprites for the game.  Now I’ve never done graphics for sprite particles before, so it’s a bit of a learning curve for me (not to mention learning how to use the particle editor in TGB (which is pretty easy so far)).  Anyway after lots of playing around with drawing sprites, I think I’ve come up with some nice glittering glows and sparkles for the game.  The only problem is that I’ve messed up the transparency on the sprites, so they look like they are behind smoked glass, but that’s easy to fix.  Then it’s just a case of creating some nice particle effects with them.  I’m actually looking forward to doing this a lot as it’s a lot quicker then when you do particle effects in a 3D package.

  It was also Isaac’s birthday this week, so Happy Birthday!  Coding wise, Isaac has just finished coding the high score tables for each profile and overall high scores.  He has also added a couple of more attacks and added the new big and beautiful text which makes it look a lot more polished and gets rid of the place holder text.  The game is now starting to take on some character all of it’s own.

Shuffle Blocks:

  Dave has promised me a build of the game this weekend after spending most of the week having to rebuild his PC (computers are great), and once that’s done I can have a good play on the build and decide what else is to be done on the game.  The basic game play is there and all the elements are there to create the various levels, so it shouldn’t be too much work I hope to get finished.

  I hope the new letter users where able to download the GoGo Digger phone version (I didn’t receive any e-mails to say otherwise) and I plan on doing more stuff later for the News Letter readers.

Right, that’s every thing for me this week I think, so have a good one and I’ll see you next week.

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

15/11/2008 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  It’s been a really rough week, this week and I’m looking forward to the weekend.

I’ve had lots of little family jobs to do this week, which has really eaten up a lot of my time.  You know how it is, you just do a quick 5 minute job for someone and that turns into 3 hours because you have to hang around for this or that.

  This week, project wise has been solely spent on Lucky 7 again (I really need to give some more time over to Shuffle Blocks), but it’s coming along really well.

  Game wise, I had a quick look at Gears of War 2 and it’s nice, but it just seems like an extension to Gears 1 so far (only played it for a couple of hours so I’m sure it will improve).  I also loaded up Fable 2 after not touching it for a couple of weeks and I found out that if you own any property in the game, it still collects the rent money even without playing it, so I went out and bought almost every building I can in Fable and I get over 16,000 gold each turn!  This is definitely my favorite game so far on the Xbox 360.

  Also for any Dilbert fans out there, check out the new “Dilbert V2.0” book (it’s a nice big (about A3) hard back book that comes in it’s own sleeve) that comes with a DVD with every Dilbert comic strip ever released.  Check it out on Amazon.

Weekending 14/11/08

Lucky Seven:

  This week I’ve been working on some of the HUD options and I’ve started to work on the monster main character models (the PumpKing baddie been the first).

  Isaac sent me the new build of the game with a few (about 5) of the attacks already implemented in the game and it all seems to fit in and plays really, really well.  One of the strangest attacks is when the game starts to rotate the blocks, it really does throw you for a couple of seconds, such a simple idea that works really, really well.

  I think the game could be a fair amount of work to balance all the levels out so the game has a fairly smooth difficult ramp, but it should be fine with the way we are allowing the level selection, (which is a grid based layout).

Shuffle Blocks:

  Dave has been full of cold this week, but has just about finished sticking everything together, so that means we can test all the main game functions out and see where we need to go from there.

  Also for all the members of the News Letter, I’ve got everything setup now for you to download the mobile phone version of GoGo Digger (J2ME (Java) version), it’s taken me several hours of swearing at the computer and my web hosting software, but I think I’ve got the News Letter ready to go out now, so you should be getting something in your e-mail first thing, Saturday morning.  So if you don’t see anything, have a quick look in your spam / junk folder, just in case it’s been stuck in there.

Right, I think that’s everything for this week, so have a good week and I promise to get the link sent out to all the News Letter members by the end of the weekend.

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

07/11/2008 by admin.

Hello again,

  Hope you all had a good week and didn’t eat too many sweets (candy if you are American).

  Well the American elections are finally over with so the news can get back to normal.  Coming from England (so not having that much effect on me), it was amazing to see all the build up and rallies on the TV.  You never seem to get that much showmanship in the UK, you would never get people with cardboard cut out’s of the party leader for example.  You do get the leaders of the parties going around the country, but it just seems a lot more controlled and a lot lower keyed affairs.  I guess, the Americans politicians are seen more as movie stars (a lot more charismatic) then the equivalent UK politicians.

  I don’t know if the right person won the election (I don’t really follow politics that much at home, so I have even less interest when it’s in a different country), but it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the next few years and it must be a rough start for him, what with Iraq and the current financial situation.

  It was also Bonfire Night here in the UK on the 5^th November, but I ended up walking home from work in the rain and got totally soaked and I didn’t fancy going back out there in the rain to watch the fire works display the local council did from the marina.  I did see a bit of it on the local news and it looked good, but also very wet.  It was also strange this year, normally for a couple of weeks before and after Bonfire Night, you can hear and see fireworks been let off every night by the local kids, but this year, there’s not been a single one let off.  I guess the local police are clamping down this year.  As kids, for two weeks before Bonfire Night, we would go around the near by areas and take as much wood as we could find for our street Bonfire.  It wasn’t unusual to wake up in the morning to find your wooden fence had disappeared during the night, but local bonfires have now been banned due to all the accidents every year.  It’s a shame as it was great fun as a kid, raiding the other streets bonfires to get the wood.

  Any way this week I’ve been working away like made on Lucky 7.  Week end was an almost lost cause as far as the projects where concerned, but I’ve been getting at least an hour in every morning before work and 2-3 every night to catch up and there has been a lot of progress been made.  It took a lot longer to convert the gf/x across to 800 * 600, but it’s definitely been worth the extra work as it has allowed a lot more detail in the graphics and it makes everything just that little bit smoother and in some cases, it’s allowed me to do things that I couldn’t do before, well do them good enough to go into the game.

  Also because a lot of the graphics (sprites) are rendered from 3D models, it’s allowed me to increase the animation a bit more without too much extra work, which will increase the overall download size of the game, but adds that little bit extra polish to the game and I like doing animation and it also helps to add a bit more character to the game.

Weekending 7/11/08

Lucky Seven:

  Well, as I have already said above, this week has mainly been redoing all the graphics again for the higher screen resolution (from now on, every game I do from here is going to be 800 * 600, or higher), but I have also done some other graphics for the game and added more frames of animation to the various sprites, so everything moves that bit smoother and I have even added extra animations for things like the Pumpkin Bombs (it now winks and laughs at you, and bounces up and down) and the ghost blocks can now have a bit smoother fade to them.  I know it may not seem like much, but it all makes a difference when you see it all together.

  Isaac added the Ghost Block Attack to the game, but there was a slight mix up in communications.  The actual attack effect was right, but how it was implemented was basically reversed.  The good thing is, it also works this way as well, so that’s another special attack we can use for the game, but we will need to come up with a new name for the attack as the original idea was to have ghost blocks that go blank when you mouse pointer goes near them, but Isaac did it so that the mouse pointer caused the blocks below the mouse pointer to go blank (it looks like you are shinning a torch on the screen), either way, it’s a neat effect / attack, which works really well.

Shuffle Blocks:

  Dave is currently busy sticking all the elements together (menu screens, main game and the like) into one build so we can see what else needs to be done to the game.  I need to render out some of the animations for the various attacks and time outs, which shouldn’t be too hard to do.

GoGo Digger:

  I’ve changed the MAC version from been compressed with Stuff it, to just a normal zip file (via OS X) so that it can be up loaded to the Apple site.  I’ve had a confirmation e-mail from them to say that they have it and now it’s just a case of waiting up to 90 days for them to review it and decide if they want to host the file.

  I hope they do as it should be good publicity for the site as well and for the other games that are coming.

  I’ve also found some more mini reviews for GoGo Digger, which I’ll update on the website when I find the text file with the links in it =)

  I don’t know how much work will get done next week.  It really depends on my will power because Gears of War 2 has just come out and I don’t know how long I can hold out without playing it (it’s sitting at the end of my desk now teasing me).  I also got Fallout 3 last week and forced myself to only play it for a couple of hours and leave it until Christmas as I know it will take a lot of hours to complete, where as Gears of War 2 should only take about 10 hours (I think) to run through, so it may be a case of a couple of late nights to get it out of the way.  It’s a hard life =)

  One last thing before I go, for all the people that have joined the News Letter (a big thank you again for doing that), I’m going to upload the original GoGo Digger mobile phone game for you guys ready for next week (I’ll send a news letter out with the link to it).  I’ve just got to find it (it’s hidden away some where on one of the many DVD back ups).  It will be the J2ME version which was originally designed for the Nokia 7650, but should work on any modern’ish J2ME compatible phone.  It works fine on my Nokia 6233 (except the phone screen size is a bit bigger, so the game screen doesn’t cover the full screen).  It’s still available on some Internet based phone game sites, so it’s not too bad for a thank you present I guess.

  Right, I think that’s it for this week as I need to get some more work done before the end of the day, so have a good week and I’ll see you next week.

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

PS.  Sorry for the long ramble this week.

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