New US president, Lucky 7 in HD 800*600 and Bonfire Night

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.

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