Happy Easter

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

This entry was posted on 12/04/2009 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Solitaire Siege, Current Game Development, Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.