I’m back at last and there’s lots of news.

Hello,

  I’m back!!  Sorry for not blogging the last couple of weeks, but I’ve had my head down working hard on the games, trying to get everything finished up as much as possible.

  Nearly all the work has been aimed at getting our games onto the iPhone and iPod, which to be honest isn’t that hard as I always designed the games with just the mouse been used for all the control system (I did this because when ever I watched my Dad play on his computer, he would never touch the keyboard (often it would be left on the floor of his computer desk)).  So the games are not too difficult to transfer across and the only thing to really think about was the reduced screen size on the iPhone / iPod (320×480 screen size compared to at the very least 640×480 on the PC and MAC).  So some clever redesign work was needed for some of the games, but not that much.

  I’m also on Twitter by the way (http://twitter.com/BadBumble) if you want to follow me and this way there’s less chance of missing out on some of the stuff I’ve done during the weeks and if you want to ask me any questions, just twitter me (it also makes me feel like I’ve got lots of friends and important =))

  I’ve also been playing around with Unity MAC and iPhone versions and it seems really, really nice.  I was able to get a little 3D rolling ball game prototype done featuring a character that looks a fair bit like Homer Simpson running around a 3D city / maze in a couple of hours.  So when the dust finally settles done, I’m going to have a really good go at Unity and see what sort of game I can come up with.

 

 Speaking of iPhone games, I’ve been playing a lot of games just lately on my iPhone.  Off the top of my head I can recommend the following:

Rope’n’Fly ($1):

It’s a Spider Man style game where you swing from building, to building and try not to smash into the ground.  Theres also a lite version available.

Moon Drop ($1):

Another simple little game that get’s really active.  Try to land the astronauts on the Moon base by pressing near them, to deflect their flight/landing path.

Draw Racer ($1):

The idea is to draw your driving path around a race track and then your car will follow it.  You just have to make sure you don’t draw to fast or you will slide of around corners.  Simple, but fun game.

Glpha (Free):

It’s a clone of Joust by Williams.  It’s a nice smooth and fast version of the game and its free!

Jetman (Free):

For some reason I’ve played this game for ages and I have no idea why.  Basically you just fly down a corridor dodging objects.  Your only control is a single button to fire your jetpac.  Graphics are simple, but it’s smooth enough and I played it for hours on and off.  I would never buy it, but for free, give it a try.

Star Trigon ($1):

A Namco game where you jump from planet to planet trying to capture little aliens.  Simple, fun little game.  Not sure if this was a special sale price or not, but I wouldn’t pay much more for it.

Harbor Master ($1):

I’ve played this game a LOT.  You have to draw paths for the incoming ships, so that they can dock safely in to harbour.  The new update includes a new island that has pirates.

BaseBall Slugger ($1):

This was on sale or else I would never have bought it and I would have missed out on a great little game.  Basically you just have to hit the ball out of the stadium as many times as possible and every time you miss the ball or you cause a foul, you lose one of your ten lives.  Sounds dull (I know, it’s rounders), but it plays really well and is nicely polished.

 

Weekending 19/07/09

Solitaire Siege:

  Well there’s been loads of new things going on with Solitaire Siege.  It’s almost finished now and I’m expecting it to be ready to send to Apple next week all been well.  There’s been lots of little set backs over the last 3 weeks from not been able to get iTGB to build the game correctly (that took a whole week to fix in it self),  too getting the loading times down to a half decent level, where at the moment it now loads on my iPhone in under 12 seconds and it’s even quicker on my iPod.  Isaac has it now so that it automatically saves the game after every level, so it’s nice and easy to quit out of the game if needed and come back in again later, which is always nice for a portable game.

  At the moment, there’s about two bugs left to catch and Isaac is busy optimizing the game to get some more speed out of the game and I’m expecting a new build later today from him.

  We are still adding little polishing touches to the game, simply because as your play testing it, you start to think of new stuff to add or that may improve things slightly, so you try it and if it works then that’s great, and if it doesn’t you take it back out again.  So when you finally get a chance to play the game for yourselves, it should be a nice, solid game which is nice and smooth to play.

 

GoGo Digger (iPhone/iPod):

  There’s been a fair bit of work been done on GoGo Digger as well in the past couple of weeks.  It’s just been me doing the designs for the game (it’s going to be a much improved version of the PC & MAC version) and I’ve got the basic graphical design down now and I’ve just finished building the barrel copter you fly when you go to different level.  Below are a few mock up screens of the iPhone/iPod version, they are all using in game graphics but are what I’ve knocked up in Photoshop just to give me a better idea of how to do everything on the iPhone/iPod.  So don’t be too surprised if the finished game appears slightly different.

 

  There’s actually a fair few new additions that I have planned for the game and it will be interesting to see how well everything plays out with the game, but I’m making sure that the overall style of the game is not effected by these new features as I think the game itself is ideal for the iPhone/iPod and after all the current version of this game came out on mobile phones anyway (the very original version I made came out on the Amiga, written in AMOS almost 20 years ago).

 

Lucky 7 (iPhone/iPod):

  I’m taking a slightly different approach with the iPhone/iPod version of Lucky 7 as the desktop version have a much bigger screen, I’ve had to play around a bit with the game for the iPhone/iPod.  The basic game play is still the same, but due to the nature of the iPhone/iPod, I’ve made it more of an arcade style of game (at least for the main game mode) as I personally think when you play games on mobile devices, you want quick, short games that you can play while waiting in line in a queue, but they should have lots of replay value to the games as well.  The picture is a mock up for me to work out the screen layout, it’s using the in game gf/x’s so it will look the same when it’s released, but the actual layout could change depending on how well everything plays out.

  As long as we can keep the speed of the game going on the iPhone, it will be a great game to play and there’s been a couple of games that have just come out recently that have come pretty close to the style of game that is Lucky 7, so I would like to get this game out before anyone else does.  Wouldn’t want anyone to think I was copying someone else’s ideas.

  You may also notice that the games have a graphical connection through out all the games in that they all have Star Balls and Land Mines.  This is just simply because I want the player to be able to play any of our games and knock basically what these things will do.  It’s the same kind of thing as Nintendo has done with the Mario games.  You know that collecting a mushroom is going to cause you to grow in size, and if it’s good enough for Nintendo, then it’s good enough for me =)

 

  Right, I’ve got to get back to work now as there’s lots, and lots of stuff for me to do and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter if you want up to the minute updates and just to ask me stuff and please feel free to give any feed back you may have about any of this.

 

Take care,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

http://twitter.com/BadBumble

 

 

This entry was posted on 19/07/2009 at 07:21 pm and is filed under Solitaire Siege, GoGo Digger, Current Game Development, Lucky 7 Development Diary, 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.