26/04/2009 by admin.

Hello,

  Hope you are all well.

It’s been a bit of a rough week for me this week.  With been on call out, I’ve been going to bed a bit earlier then normal just in case I get called out for an emergency.  I did get called out, but it was just as I was getting ready to go out for a meal on Friday night.  So I had to miss the meal (which I was looking forward to the whole week) and instead spend 5-6 hours at work instead.

  This week with what ever time I have had free, I’ve been trying to work mainly on the comic strip advert idea I was telling you about a couple of weeks ago.  Well I’ve done a couple now to give you a basic idea of what I’m going for.  The first one is as serious as they will get.  This is due to the fact that I want to get the basic idea across that there’s this big, evil army been created of clones that’s threatening to take over the world once it’s at full power and your not really killing people in the game, just mindless clones (maybe cyborgs?).

The second one with the stealth fighter plane is more along the lines of what I intend all the other comic strips to be like.  Light hearted and showing the actions from the clone’s point of view and this one will probably be the most violent one out the lot as the other will be a lot lighter.  So have a look at them and let me know what you think about them.  Are they a good idea or not?

Weekending 19/04/09

Solitaire Siege:

It’s been a bit slow this week to be honest, because I have been mainly concentrating on the adverts.  I’ve done a few little task here and there for the game, but now its really comes down to getting the finished game ready and sitting down with it and pointing out all the little things that could do with been touched up and polished

Isaac has been very busy with the game this week as he has been hunting down all the bugs in the game and correcting them.  He thinks he’s just about got them all now (there was a couple that took him a whole day to sort) and with Isaac been such a diligent coder, he makes such that it’s done correctly.

  Isaac also just got himself an iPod Touch, which he loves and is really impressed by it, and who wouldn’t be!?

Well I guess that’s it for now I think as I’m feeling really hungry now and I need to get something to eat (my stomach always rules my head), so enjoy what’s left of your weekend and I hope to see you next week (which is a bank holiday for people in England).

Take care,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »

19/04/2009 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  Hope you are all well and happy.

  Well it’s finally a nice sunny day here, bit cold, but there’s a nice clear blue sky overhead and I’m stuck inside working away at the computer =)  It’s been a bit of a hit and miss week for me this week.  I made the mistake of going out shopping with my sister on Easter Monday because she wanted a computer chair.  The one she wanted was in PC World and they only had the display model left, which she got after waiting around for a while for them to find all the other bits.  It then took another 20 minutes for them to find the thing that takes the security disc of the chair so we could take it home.  After getting it home, I had to set it up for her (it’s a gaming style chair with speakers in (which I though was horrible, but my sister found to be really comfy)) and I find out that it’s broken (the display and speakers don’t work), so we take it back and have to hang around again to get a refund.  Anyway to cut a long story short, we went to another few computer shops looking and I’m getting so fed up, I’m losing the will to live.  Any way we end up in Comet (a big electrical store in the UK) and I leave my sister to go off looking while I started to look at the Net Books.  Yeah, I ended up buying a little 8.9” Toshiba Net Book.  I had a memory stick with the latest builds of the games on and I was trying then on the display models and the games all rang really well on them so I though that it would be nice if I ever have to give any presentations of the games to be able to show people them running on a low spec Net Book.  I really like the Net Books to be honest, I can fit it in the top part of my rucksack with a USB DVD writer and all the cables without any problems, and it’s also really light and just really neat.  It’s like using a semi-high end lap top from 2005, just a lot smaller and neater.

  I also went to a Enterprise Business Show which gave me lot’s of useful information about setting up my own business so that everything is above board and I know I’m not breaking any laws or not paying any taxes I should be paying.  There was also a few talks / seminars which where interesting to listen to.  A lot didn’t really relate to setting up a small games studio, but it was still interesting and it’s nice to know that what I’m doing seems to be the correct way of going about it all and everyone I talked to seem to think I had a good chance of succeeding (especially after showing them the current build of Lucky 7), but it’s still a huge mind field of forms and stuff I need to fill in.

Weekending 19/04/09

Solitaire Siege:

  From a project front, it’s been a really good week for us.  Solitaire Siege is really coming along now.  The combo system is almost complete (just the reward system to finish on it) and nearly all the bugs are gone now.  I’ve just finished the graphics for two possible ways on how we are going to deal will the player picking up too many special cards.  At the moment, you are limited to four of each type of card (weapon Cards and Mercenary Cards) and there going to come a time when the player is going to be able to pick up another card, but not have the space in the deck for it.  So we have to allow the player to either just remove the card (so the player can still continue), use the new card straight away or give the player the chance to use one of the existing cards to free up some space.  It’s not a big deal, but it is an important element to think about.

  Another feature that Isaac has just added to the game and to be honest I wasn’t sure about when he told me about it is that the invading clone army will shoot back at you if you miss an available card.  It works really well and really makes the player concentrate when playing the game a lot more.  The reason I wasn’t sure about adding it was if a player had a strategy which would involve leaving a card free, but I can’t think of a reason for doing that.

  I’ve also been working on the comic strip idea for the game advertising, which I’ll show off next week all been well (I’m on call out next week so I can’t be sure what time I’ll have free and I normally go to bed a bit earlier just in case I do get called out on a night time / early morning), but the first idea is almost done.

  At the moment a lot of my time is taken up play testing the new builds to make sure that there’s no bugs, it’s good fun, but it makes it hard to get any work done when your playing the game for 10 minutes and the next time you look, two hours have past and it’s time for bed.

  I’m still waiting to get my development license from Apple which may hold things up a bit as we need to know that the game will run okay on the actual iPhone and iPod touch (it works fine on the simulator, but that’s not the real hardware).

  I’ve also updated the web site banner from the Shuffle Blocks logo to the new Solitaire Siege logo and I changed the colour scheme to match as well.  I’m not sure if the banner is a bit too busy or not, but it okay for now.

  I think that’s everything for today, I’m sure there’s other stuff that I’ve done for Solitaire Siege but I can’t for the life of me remember what (old age is really starting to take it’s toll on me now) 

Have a great week and I hope to see you next week.

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Lucky 7 Development Diary, Blogroll | No Comments »

12/04/2009 by admin.

Hello,

  Happy Easter!!!

Sorry I’m a bit late, but I’ve been having some Internet / computer problems which have taken some time to sort out.

  Anyway, let’s get down to it and let me try to remember what I’ve been doing this week on Solitaire Siege (it was my first week back at work after been away for almost two months, so that was a knock to the system if you know what I mean).

  The game itself I think is getting really close to been finished now I think (well at least from a gf/x point of view), as I think I’ve only got a couple of more particle effects to do for the game and a couple of help screens to explain the basics of the game and what the various cards do.  Of course, now that I’ve just said that, I’ve just jinxed myself and there’s going to be a load more stuff that I’ve forgotten

  I’m really starting to think now about how I’m going to start to get some publicity for the game now that it’s getting really close to been finished.  To be honest, I think I should of done this pretty much as soon as I started the game, but to be honest, I’m very passionate about the idea of going out to unknown people / sites asking them to look at my game.  It feels a bit like begging to me, if that makes sense, but it’s definitely something I need to do if I want to even make my money back from all the stuff I’ve bought just to do this in the first place and please, if any one is reading this and can help to spread the word, please do, even if it’s just adding the game to your signature when you post on forums, it all helps (now’s that begging for you (smile)).

  Anyway, one of the ideas I’ve got for a bit of marketing (and I admit now that I’ve not totally weighed up everything yet) is to do a couple of comic strips with the troops from the game.  My basic idea is that all the troops are identical, so that must mean that they are clones and my idea is to do a couple of short comic strips of “In Day of a Clone” type of thing.  You know, stuff like basic training and the like and if I can’t think of many funny jokes, then more surreal stuff.  The next thing is to try to get these comics out to semi related sites (this is the bit that my plan may fall down), but it shouldn’t take too long to do the comic strips and I’m hoping it will get some publicity; at least it can’t do any harm (I hope).

Weekending 12/04/09

Solitaire Siege:

  I’ve been playing around a bit with the game to be honest this week now that it’s all pretty much working as a solid game now, it gives you the chance to really see how it plays and how everything slots together as it doesn’t matter how much work you do on the project, until it all starts to come together in a coherent, solid form, you can’t be 100% sure that all the elements work and you can see what needs to be changed and what else you can add to the game now as you don’t want to be constantly adding stuff early on in a project as it increases the chance of just never finishing the project, but near the end of a project, you can start to see the finishing line up ahead, which really increases your motivation and you really try to go the extra mile to get everything looking and feel just right.

  With this is mind I’ve been playing around with some simple weather effects for the game.  In this case, I’ve been making a snow blizzard for the snow level using a couple of particle systems.  It looks nice and will add some extra atmosphere to the level but I’m not sure if it will start to annoy the player after a few games and it could be distracting to the player when they are trying to concentrate on the game, so it’s 50/50 at the moment if it will go into the game or not.

  Other work I’ve done this week includes updating the main title screen (see above) so it has a slightly more army feel to it, but I still wanted to keep the card game feel as well, so it’s a bit of a balancing act, but I think it works okay.  I’ve also finished off all the various in game text menus / screens and cleaned up the old ones as I didn’t feel that they instantly got the message across to the first time player, so the new versions hopefully will and at the very least at are a big improvement over the old ones I think.

  I’ve also just finished the graphical text messages of for when you start to score combos / links of cards.  There’s going to be 8 different ones in total which will just add a bit more of an achievement / reward to the player for doing it.

  Isaac has been busy the whole week updating the way the special pick up cards (weapon and mercenary cards) are displayed in the game.  We where a bit concerned about having too many cards in a small area when it comes to clicking on the screen to select the desired card (that’s something that really annoys me in some iPhone games), so we have now split the two groups up any the player can swap between the two groups, while still been able to see the other group in the top left of the screen, but using smaller gf/xs.  It works really well and is a really simple and clear way around the problem.  We have also limited the number of cards the player can store too 4 of each card.  This way, it also adds an extra little bit of strategy to what cards the player will keep.

  Right I think that’s everything for this week and please if anyone out there can help us in providing any publicity for the game please get in touch. as been a small developer, good word of mouth from supports can really make a difference for us and you get the pleasure of knowing that you are helping a group of people produce fun games for other people.

  I hope you all have a good Easter and don’t eat too much chocolate (I can’t have any as I’m on a diet *sniff* (speaking as a chocolate fanatic, Easter is the best holiday in the year and I can’t have any, life can be cruel sometimes)).

All the best,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »

04/04/2009 by admin.

Hello again,

  Hope you are enjoying your weekend.

  Just a quick update to let you all know that I’ve updated the Solitaire Siege and Lucky 7 pages with some sample tunes from the games.

  There’s seven tunes for Lucky 7 (I had to do seven with a title like that) and there’s two samples for the music from Solitaire Siege.  I really recommend that you download them and give them a try as they are really, really nice.  I’ve cut the music down to around the 60 second mark on most of the tunes and reduced the bit rate down to 96 bit (I think, I’m not an audio guy) so try to save some space, but the actual in games tune sound a lot better and clearer then these samples, but it will give you a really good indication of the quality of the games we are going for.

  Of course all music is copyrighted by Thomas Renshaw and used with permission.

So what are you waiting for, go to www.badbumble.com and to the relevant game page and give your ears a treat!

  Please do leave any comments you may have here as I’m sure Tommy would like to know your option (as would the rest of the team).

Thanks and enjoy the rest of your weekend,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Lucky 7 Development Diary, Blogroll | No Comments »

04/04/2009 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  Well I’m back on time again this week with the blog update and I hope to keep it this way from now on =)

  Well the maintenance work the hosting company I’m with went off okay, so that’s good news as I didn’t fancy doing the website again (but it could do with a clean up, guess I should start to learn Dream Weaver).

  Right then, lets get down to business and talk about our new game “Solitaire Siege” for the iPhone as I promised last week.

  Basically I guess the easiest way of describing the game is as an enhanced version of the card game Golf / Pyramid.  The idea of the game is to clear a set number of cards from the table.  This is done by dealing a card for the play (from the remaining cards) and if the facing up cards are either 1 value above or below your card, then you can remove that card from the table (turning the card behind that face up) and the player then uses this new card to find another match.  So you are basically trying to make combos / chains of cards to clear the table.  If there’s no more moves then the player deals another card from the remaining deck of cards and the game continues until all the cards are removed (in which case you win the game), or you run out of cards from the deck (in which case you lose).  It’s a very simple game to play, but really fun and engrossing for some reason.

  Well our version enhances this basic game play and makes it more player friendly as the original game was really hard to win and a lot of the time came down to pure luck.  One of the ways we do this is to give the player a health bar, so that even if you don’t remove all the cards, as long as you don’t do too bad you can move on to the next level.  So in this way we can easy the player into the game and slowly increase the difficult of the game.

  As well as having the normal cards, we also have various weapon cards that the player can use to help them clear the level, as for myself, one of the really annoying things about the original version of the game was been stuck with only a couple of cards to pick from and constantly having to keep drawing cards until you got lucky.  Well with our version, if you have picked up one of the weapon cards, you can use that against the card(s) to get things moving again.  The cards range from a simple Sniper Card (which removes a single card from the table, up to full scale “Air Strikes” and “Rocket Launcher” attacks on the cards, which can take out multiple cards at once.  We also have lots of other different attacks, which can be used in a more strategic way to help the player, but I’ll cover them in more detail in another post.

  We have also played around with the table layout for the cards, so each level has a different pattern to it (as well as the cards been randomly placed of course each time you play) and some levels also have tasks / missions in then that require to complete a task to gain access to the other part of the table, which can prove to be pretty interesting when your playing the game and causes the player to consider which way they are going to play the level.  The major thing about our version of the game is that it adds a lot more strategic elements to the game now as the player has more options to choose from and it adds so much more depth to the game, yet still keeps it nice and simple to play.

  I’ve attached a couple of screens for the game for you to get an idea of the game.  They are mock ups done in PhotoShop, but they are all in game art assets and the actual game looks a bit better because it has a few particle effects in there at the moment and for the work been done this week on the game you can continue reading..

Forest Level:

 Desert Level:

 Snow Level:

 Underground Base:

Weekending 03/4/09

Solitaire Siege:

  I’ve been pretty busy on Solitaire Siege this week.  I’ve been jumping around doing a few different things.  I’ve done a huge amount of sound effects for the game (lot’s of war sounds (Jet plane noises, loads of gun noises, bugle calls and way too much other stuff to remember)) which was fun to do, but I don’t think the neighbours where too happy with me =)

  I’ve also cleaned up the card gf/x’s, but there’s still some more work to be done on that.  I think the actual little soldiers look fine on the playing cards and there’s about as much detail as you can put into a space that size (about 36 by 56 pixels).  I re-modelled the Queen model again, well actually I cut up an old model I did a few years ago, but it works well for the game.  I still need to clean up some of the weapon cards (the Flame Thrower card springs to mind), but overall, I think the playing cards are okay and they stand out enough.

  I’ve also modelled a Stealth bomber for the Air Strike attack and the bombs it drops (Isaac has already implemented this and it looks good and it will be even better once the sound is all in (I’ve got a great jet plane effect for this and the whizzing bomb through the air sound effect for the bombs)).

  I also did some basic in game menu screens for the Ambush mode to the game (I know I’ve not talked about that yet, but I need to keep some things secret for you to find out in the game when you play it), but after playing the game for a while I think I need to make the different menus stand out a lot more so it’s instantly recognizable to the player what’s going on and I’ve got a nice simple idea for that which should work well.

  I’m also going to have to change the main menu title screen (you know the green one I showed you last week?) as it doesn’t really match the overall feel for the game, so I’ll have to have a think about that and see what I can come up with.

  Isaac has been really busy this week as well, adding more features to the game and then hunting out all the bugs these new features have caused, but that’s apparently have the fun of coding.  There’s a slight problem with the music for the game (not the actual tunes as they are really smart and match the cartoon army feel perfectly), but the game engine we are using doesn’t support the MP3 format yet, but will do in the next upgrade (so I’ve been told), which should be out in a couple of weeks time.

  Speaking of tunes, Tommy sent me a couple of tunes he has been working on for the game, and they are really good.  I’ve been listening to them while I’ve been playing the latest build of the game and I must have played it for about 3 hours solid today in a constant stretch and I didn’t get bored or annoyed by the tunes which makes a change for me as I normally turn the music off after 10 minutes of play.  I’ve just e-mailed Tommy asking if it’s okay if I can post a couple of short clips of the tunes for you to listen to and if he say’s its okay, then I’ll upload some examples for you to listen too.

  I’m still waiting to here from Apple Development for my license so I can start testing on the real hardware instead of the simulator and PC.  It’s not a big deal, but it’s getting close to the time where I need to start looking at optimizing everything so the load times are as quick as possible and I can really start to play test the game on the real target machine (plus I can play it when ever and where ever then).

  Right, I think I’ve covered everything this week and don’t worry the other projects are still on the go, it’s just that we want to get this game out so we can finally (fingers crossed) start to earn some money back to help to pay for all the money we have already spent doing these game (which is good fun, but is really starting to hurt our bank accounts and visa’s).

It’s late now and I need to get some sleep as I’m starting to fall a sleep at the keyboard here, so have a great week and I hope to see you again soon and if you could pass the word around about this game, that would be great as we really need all the help we can get to stand out with the App Store been so crowded with new games coming out every day.

Thanks,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Blogroll | No Comments »