14/06/2009 by admin.

Hello,

  I hope you are all having a good week.

It’s going to be a really quick blog today I’m afraid as I feel really ill at the moment and I think I’m going to go straight to bed for an early night and try to shake it off.

  It’s been a fairly poor week all round this week I’m afraid.  The best part of this week is that I’ve been playing around with a new engine called Unity (www.unity3d.com) and it’s great.  I’ve already bought the Main part of it and I’m looking at the iPhone add for it now.  After using the Torque iTGB, I wasn’t expecting that much from Unity to be honest seeing as TGB is basically as simple as you can get (or so I assumed), but Unity is 1000 times better from what I can see.  Within 20 minutes I had a large textured terrain covered with trees and grass that blows in the wind and I was able to run around it.  All this with just watching a couple of little videos of the site to get me started.

  I spent yesterday trying out the iPhone module for it and that is also really, really nice as well.  Some of the demos are really impressive and you can even try the iPhone game without even sending it to the iPhone, you just use the iPhone to control the game and the MAC sends a (reduced size, but then enlarged so it looks a bit blocky) video feed back to the iPhone, which is really handy for when you want to try the control system out without having to constantly build the app in Unity / Xcode.

  So I’m really thinking now that once the games I have planned for the iPhone using iTGB are done, I’m going to move over to Unity for doing iPhone stuff at least.  I’m still going to be using TGB for Lucky 7 as that game is almost finished and it would be daft to not finish it as it’s a smart, fun game.

  Also, Unity allows you to build your games for the web, so don’t be to surprised if in the future, you start to see some little test games popping up on here.

Weekending 14/06/09

Solitaire Siege:

  I’ve spent what seems like most of this week trying to get Solitaire Siege to load up quickly.  I’ve spent about 3-4 days on this so far and I’ve got it down from around about 100 seconds, down to about 42 - 43 seconds, which is still way, way too long.  It should be loading up in under 20 seconds.  I’ve tried everything I can think of from converting as much of the gf/x as possible from PNG files to PVR files which knock the size down and can be used straight away by the iPhone / iPod with out having to mess around with them like it does with PNG files.  The down side is they can look really bad on clean / cartoon images (which is most of my graphics in the game).  If you have ever compressed a SPG file down real low, then that’s the same kind of effect you’ll get with PVRs.  It’s fine for photos, but not for nice, clean 2D sprites.  This took 2 days to do and it didn’t make any difference to the loading times, so I’m going to change them back.

  I’ve got a video of the game in action now, but I still need to look into how to convert it for YouTube.

Shuffle Blocks:

  Dave is back on course for doing the XBOX port of the code again and I’ve done a little bit more on the gf/x side of things, but with been on call this week, I’ve been going to bed early in case I get called out during the night, which really eats into your time during the week, but saying that, I’ve almost finished updating the gf/x now.  Just a few more renders to do.

  There was one problem we had this week of trying to convert the new font over for the game.  Dave spent almost two days trying to get it to go in and the fault was because I had a couple of characters slightly higher then the others, so it wouldn’t import correctly.  It’s amazing how such a stupid little things like that can cause such a huge problem =/

Well I’m afraid that’s it from me for this week as I really need to go to bed now as I’m ready to drop, so I hope you have a good week and I’ll see you next week.

Take care,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

07/06/2009 by admin.

Hello again,

  I hope you all had a good weekend.  This will be a quick post as I need to go out (sorry).

It’s been a pretty good week in the end for the projects (day job has sucked thou). 

  It was E3 this week as well, which I’ve only caught the basic overview of the news this week as my Internet connection is been really slow just lately, but it looks like Microsoft had the best showing of the big three (not sure about the new camera control system thou and the kid simulator thing that Lion Head showed off just seemed to give me the creeps).  There’s also a couple of new Mario games coming out for the Wii, which will give me a reason for dusting it off =)

  I know I said that I would be spending the whole week just working on Shuffle Blocks, but that didn’t go according to plan and about half the time was spent on Solitaire Siege as well, which isn’t a bad thing at all.

Weekending 7/06/09

Solitaire Siege:

  After a lot of messing around and help from the Garage Game forums I’ve finally been able to get Solitaire Siege working on my iPod and playing correctly the way it should, it’s damn nice as well.  As long as we can get plenty of people to look at the game I’m sure it will do really nicely for us and is definitely worth the asking price.

  It’s a dead simple game to play so it’s nice and easy to pick up, play for ten minutes and then turn off, except that it’s got that one more go feel to it so you end up playing it for a couple of hours at a time and as each level is random, the replay value is really high.

  It’s going to be cheap to buy as the introduction price will only be $1, yet unlike a lot of the games at that price, it is going to be a game that you will keep on your iPhone / iPod and keep coming back to long after, even just for a quick go.

  Also because of the type of game it is, it works perfectly with the touch screen controls, which just makes the player feel more comfortable when playing the game (you don’t have your fingers covering the screen while you are playing).

  We also have a few other ideas and features for the game, which we hope to implement into future updates for the games (which will all be free of course as is the nature of the App Store).

  Isaac is currently hammering out the last couple of bugs in the game and there’s a few more little finishing touches that needs to be done be for we submit it, so I need to go through the game with a fine tooth comb and pick up all the little things that need to be polished up, little features to be added and just a general tidy up so it’s as nice as we cane make it.

  We also need to make the file size as small as possible as at the moment it’s about 14 Meg and it needs to be below 10Meg so iPhone users can download it straight to their iPhones which I’ve been told is a major plus point in impulse purchases and with the game coming out at a dollar, it definitely fit’s into that market.

  I’ve got a few ideas for saving space on some of the (in game) presentation screens, which could even allow us some added animation opportunities and added atmosphere to the game.

  The next thing we need to do is cut the loading times down as at the moment it’s taking ages to load (90+ seconds), that will go down a lot of course when we get the file size down, but it’s not going to be that easy a task to do.  Also, anything over 30 seconds (so I’ve been told) causes the iPhone to cancel the loading, so it’s pretty important to sort out =)

  My iPhone SDK has now thrown a tantrum and is refusing to build the current version of the game.  I don’t think it’s anything to do with the iTGB end, but it’s down to the Xcode end, so I’m going to have to play around again with that and try to get that running again and when it does, I should be able to grab a quick little game play video from it off the simulator for you to see (need to set up a You Tube account as well).  It’s not the first time this has happened to me this week either, on Friday night I had to re-install the OS on my iPod as Xcode refused to see it as a development bit of kit =(

Shuffle Blocks:

  Dave has run into a slight problem on the XBOX version as it uses a different compiler or something from the PC version, so they are a few things that need to be re-written to get it to work on the XBOX, but it’s getting there.

  From a graphical point of view, I guess I’m about half through re-doing the higher resolution graphics for the XBOX version and I must admit, it’s looking a LOT nicer then the original PC version, so after the XBOX version is done, the PC version is going to get the same treatment.  Even thou I’m about halfway through doing the gf/x’s it still going to take me a bit longer then a week to finish them off as the stuff that is left I think will be a bit more tricky to do (I did go for most of the easy stuff first).  I’ll upload a couple of mock ups screens next week for you to show you the difference in gf/x’s for the two versions.

Well that’s it for now folks, but if you have any questions, please feel free to post them and I’ll try my best to answer them for you.

I hope you enjoy the rest of what’s left of your week.

Take care,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

31/05/2009 by admin.

Hello,

  Hope you are all well.

Sorry for not posting last week, but last week / weekend was just a mess, everything has been all over the place, but I think things are starting to get back to normal again now.

  This will be a pretty short post as I’ve got a huge amount of work to try to get through this week and every second counts, so without furtherer to do, let me tell you what’s been done.

Weekending 31/05/09

Solitaire Siege:

  The big news is that I’ve finally got my license for the iPhone Apple development kit.  So I can now test Solitaire Siege on the real hardware.  It took me two whole nights to get everything set up correctly and to be able to send the game to the iPod.  Most of this was because I rushed straight in and I had to download in total about 5 Gigs worth of stuff to get everything going.  It was a lot more complex then I expected it to be to be honest, but I guess there’s a lot of security involved to stop developers from been able hack other peoples phones.

  So anyway, the good news is that the game can now be played on the iPod Touch (I had to upgrade to the Beta of OS3 and I didn’t want to risk losing all my contacts on my phone if anything went wrong, so I used my iPod and lost all my movies which I have to stick on the MAC now to get then back onto the iPod).  It runs a bit slower then on the PC/MAC build, but it’s still playable except that there’s a strange bug where the cards don’t get update, but I’ve been told what could be causing that and it should be a fairly quick fix to do.

  Isaac has also been having a rough couple of weeks, so things have slowed down a bit, but the game is almost there I think.  Isaac did start to do some mini games for the game while we were waiting for the license and to take a break from bug hunting which I no doubt will end up in the game in a later update (I want the first version to be nice and clean for the Apple submission, so nothing goes wrong).  We do have plans for some interesting updates for the game but we want to make sure that the basic game is fun for every one first and then we can build on it.

Shuffle Blocks:

  Dave has been secretly hammering away at the XBOX version of Shuffle Blocks and he thinks the game could be finished by the end of next month, all been well.

  Tommy has done another couple of tunes for the game which I’ve been told are really nice (after all, everything he does is really nice) and I’ve been starting to convert the gf/xs to the strange resolution the XBOX 360 uses (1280 by 700).  This is causing a lot more hassle then I expected it too.  So much that I’ve had to redesign the in game playing area and I’m going to have to redraw all the gf/x again which will take at least the rest of the week to do at the very least, but I don’t want to hold Dave up as the game will be really nice when it’s finished and fingers crossed, should do well on XBOX Live (the community games bit).  I’ll post some gf/x for it during the week (if I have time so you can compare the differences the change in screen size makes).  The other plus point about this is that the PC version will benefit from the upgraded gf/x, even if I can’t use the new layout.

Right I better get back to work I guess.  Have a great week and I’ll see you next week.

Take care,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

Posted in Solitaire Siege, Shuffle Blocks, Current Game Development, Blogroll | 2 Comments »

18/05/2009 by admin.

Hello,

  How’s everything going?

Sorry for the late post, but I’ve been having Internet trouble and trying really hard to get all the gf/x finished for Solitaire Siege =)

  I’ve also knocked up a couple of little iPhone / iPod Touch reviews in the forums for you to have a quick look at, if you get a spare couple of minutes.  There’s a few reasons for doing this, one of the main ones been that I’ve bought a huge number of games for my iPhone, some been really good, while others been really, really bad; and that’s even after reading a couple of reviews.  Another reason is I’ve had the forum sitting there for a while now and it seemed like an easy way to start to use it and hopefully other people will start to post review on there (I need to sort out some basic rules / guidelines for that, but I don’t see any reason not to allow other people to post reviews as well).

  My reviews are based on generally playing a game for about an hour or so (some times longer if the game is good, shorter if it isn’t) and it’s just the general feel I get for the games and as every ones tastes are different, I don’t expect every one to agree with me, but you are more then welcome to leave your comments on the forum.  You do need to register on the forum to be able to post of course, or else it will get full of spam and links to gambling and porn sites.  I do recommend you trying the two games I’ve reviewed as I did enjoy them a lot.

  Work wise this week has been a bit hit and miss (getting called out at 2:30am was a major highlight of the week), but I was able to get my head down and do a fair bit of work during the end of the week and I think I’ve finished all the graphics now for Solitaire Siege, at least until I can see it on the real hardware and then I’m hoping it will just be minor changes.

Weekending 18/05/09

Solitaire Siege:

  Isaac thinks he’s almost gotten rid of all the bugs now in the game and now it’s a case of adding the other little details in the game (effects for the weapon attacks and the like).  He’s also been adding various sound effects and other audio into the game as well (thanks to the new engine), the only downside is that you can’t hear the MP3 audio unless it’s on the real hardware which is annoying to say the least.

  I’ve just finished all the particle effects for the game and I think it will look really nice in game (I particularly like the Flame Thrower effect and the rocket launcher, just hope that it runs okay on the real hardware).  I’ve also finished all the other screens in the game like the Statistics Screen for the end of each level, help screen, credits screen and cleaning up various other screens.

Shuffle Blocks:

  Dave got married on Friday, so Congratulations to Dave and his better half and I wish you all the best.

  Dave is aiming to do a Xbox Live Community game version of the game, which means I need to redo all the gf/x for the higher resolution (current gf/x where aimed for a lowly 640 x 480), so they will have a lot more detail in the new version and I guess the PC version will also get a big boost out of the updated gf/x now as well.

  Tommy is writing up some new tunes for the new version as well.

So as you can see, it’s all go again last week and I’m expecting this week to be just as busy =)

  So I think that’s everything for this week, but if you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch and please let me know if you think the game reviews are any good or a waste of time, or if you want to post a review yourself, just ask.

Have a good week and take care.

Take care,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

10/05/2009 by admin.

Hello,

  I hope you are all doing well.

It will have to be a fairly quick blog this week as it’s getting a bit late now and I really need to get to bed because I’ve been up since 5am this morning and I’m half a sleep as it is.

  This week has been all over the place for me.  It’s been full of lot’s of little jobs I’ve had to do, that seem to have taken most of my time up.  You know how it is, you have  a five minute job to do and it ends up been most of the night wasted on doing it and then that causes a few more little jobs and it starts to feel like a never ending circle.

  So anyway, this week I’ve been working on Solitaire Siege again and a bit of work on Shuffle Blocks, which Dave has asked me for.  The new version of iTGB has just come out as well, so that’s going to take a few nights to look at and see what new stuff is in that.

  I’ve also been playing the new PopCap game called “Plants vs Zombies” which is a really nice game once you get into it.  I say that because the demo really doesn’t do the game justice (for some reason PopCap game demos are nearly always a bit dull) as the game doesn’t start to get interesting until about the 90 minute mark.  Basically it’s a simplified Tower Defence style game where you have five lanes which cartoon style zombies come down and you have to stop them from getting to the other side by placing plants in their way.  It starts out really simple and a bit dull to be honest, but the later levels really do start to pick up and it’s a very engrossing game to play and the polish in the game is fantastic and you are going to love “Crazy Dave”.

  Well here’s a new little game advert for you to look at.  It’s just something quick I knocked up tonight so I would have something to show you guys.  The plan was / is to also use the nerdy clone from last week with this Hulk style clone in an advert, but it was taking to long to layout correctly, so I knocked this one up instead and I will finish the planned advert next week.

  Let me know what you think of it and feel free to pass the pictures around if you want to, just don’t alter / modify them please.

Weekending 04/05/09

Solitaire Siege:

  Isaac has sent me a new build for the game which he thinks has nearly all the bugs knocked out of the game, but with the new version of the engine we use coming out, we need to make sure it will work with that as it now supports MP3’s so we can have Tommy’s music in the game and a lot more sound effects.

  I’ve just been working out a few screens for the game just on paper at the moment, but after playing the game, they are a few things that need to be added so it’s as easy as possible for a new player to get in to the game as quickly as possible.  It may be a lot more work then I expected, but it’s definitely something that needs to be done.

Shuffle Blocks:

  Dave has been in touch this week with regards to Shuffle Blocks.  The game is back up and running again now and is nice and solid again.  I’ve got a font done for the game which I need to save out and send to Dave for the timer for the Land Mines in the game.

  Still now sure if we should do a knocked down version of the game for the community games for XBOX Live or just keep on slogging away and get the full, deluxe version of the game out, but at the moment all my time is taken up with Solitaire Siege and the other projects.

Well that will have to be it for now as it’s getting late and I’m up early tomorrow, but if I get a chance I will try to post mid week, but I’m also on call next week (day job) so I don’t know when (if) I will have any free time next week.

Have a good week and take care.

Take care,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

20/03/2009 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  Sorry again for not updating the blog lately, but I’m still all over the place with my dodgy leg.  At the moment it looks like a zombie has been sucking at it (there’s a big 6 inch oval / circle shape on the back of my leg with no skin on it and it’s all shades of red, yellow and green (and it’s a bit crusty)) and it is really painful.  I’ve also got a swollen ankle as well.  I’m really having some great look at the moment.

  I now understand why the Eskimo’s have so many words for snow.  By the time I left Canada, I must have had at least 14 words for snow and they where ALL swear words.  It was funny coming home as one of the drivers on the Grey Hound was new to the route and got lost a couple of times =)

  Here are a couple of pictures I took while I was in Canada.

  Because of the leg trouble I’ve not been able to really work on the games that much to be honest as I need to have my leg raised all the time and that prevents me from working at the desk (it’s hard to concentrate when every 10-20 mins you get a shooting pain in your legs).  I have been doing stuff on my laptop, but the way I have to sit means I can’t really use the mouse / tablet very well, so I’ve been doing art just using the keyboard in Photoshop (painting pixel by pixel), it kind of reminds me of how I used to do art on the Commodore 64 and Spectrum 48K (yes I’m old).  So my graphical style has changed from what is needed for Lucky 7 and Shuffle Blocks, so I can’t do anything for them.

  So I’ve come up with a nice little game for the iPhone which I’ve talked Isaac and Tommy in to doing with me.  It’s based on a card game (a Solitaire style game), but I’ve got lot’s of extras features for the game that really make the game a lot more friendly and fun to play.  Isaac already had the basic card game written (pure luck), but has started to re-write it has it was an early project he did and his programming skill have improved greatly.  The game is going to be called “Solitaire Siege” and I hope should be finished before the end of next month (it would be a lot sooner, but because of my leg, I can only work for so long before it starts to really hurt).  The current build is only about 25% done and already it’s really good fun to play and there’s no real extras in the game at the moment and if this game does well, we are going to do an updated version of GoGo Digger for the iPhone as well.

  I don’t want to jinx this game, so I’m going to hold back for a week or two before I start to release any screen shots of the game.  I guess a card game isn’t the most interesting game to look at, but it already plays really well and it will only get better and if it does well, then I’m sure we will convert it across to the PC and MAC.

Weekending 20/3/09

Lucky Seven:

  I’m afraid for the short term, every one is waiting on me as I’m holding everyone up for new gf/x, but everything should be back up and running again in a month, at the latest.  Sorry everyone for that.

Shuffle Blocks:

  I had another e-mail of Dave just this morning, he’s just about got everything re-written now so it’s totally modular now so we can plug new stuff into it with out any knock on effects and it’s all nicely done so we can port the code over to other things

  Well that’s it really for me this week unless you want me to go on talking about my zombie leg (and I’m sure you don’t want that), so I’m hoping things will be back to normal again for next week in regards to the blog (sorry again for the delay in posting).  So I hope you have a good week and I’ll see you soon.

Thanks,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

03/03/2009 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  Sorry everyone for not updating the blog lately, but I’ve been really ill while I’ve been in Canada.  The first full week, I got a huge cold and was laid up in bed.  The second week, my leg swelled up like a balloon and I ended spending four nights in hospital and then having to go back to the hospital every eight hours for over a week to get IV’s to help the infection.  So it’s not been the best holiday ever, but at least I got to spend some time with my wife, even if I was in a lot of pain for most of it.  The $8,000 medical bill has really knocked any shine off the holiday, but I’m hoping my travel insurance will cover it all, but the way my luck is going at the moment, I’m not holding my breath.  It really makes me happy to have the National Health Service in the UK.

  So as you can imagine, I’ve not been able to do anything work wise, but every one else has =)

Weekending 02/3/09

Lucky Seven:

  Isaac has been knocking up a lot more puzzles for the puzzle mode of Lucky 7 and generally just tidying things up a bit.

Shuffle Blocks:

  I’ve had a couple of e-mails from Dave and he now has everything set up into a truly modular frame work so everything is now re-useable and things can be added / removed as needed.  I need to re-jig some of the gf/x for the game, but there should be something show able by the end of the month (fingers crossed)

Right, I need to start packing again as I’m travelling back tomorrow to England so I’ve got 40 hours of non-stop travelling to look forward to.

Thanks,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

31/01/2009 by admin.

Hello everyone,

  This will be a really quick message this week I’m afraid as I have a lot to do and I’m falling a sleep at he keyboard here.

  Been a pretty bad week for me and very expensive.  I’ve basically been prototyping up GoGo Digger for the iPhone.  I know you wouldn’t think that there was that much work to do on it to convert it across, but just working out how to display everything correctly on screen (you are going down to 320*480 instead of 640*480, so you are losing half your screen) and you have the control system to think about and what’s the best way to do it.  I also want to clean up and update the gf/x a bit for the game.

  So with this in mind, I spent most of the week downloading all the latest versions of TGB, iTGB, X-Code and the iPhone SDK.  I also went out and bought the latest version of the MAC OS (Leopard), as I know that you need that to run the iPhone SDK.  The one thing I didn’t know was that I also need an Intel based processor in the MAC or else you can’t install the iPhone part of the SDK.  After about an hour of cursing, swearing and punching the desk (I’ve got a really bad temper when it comes to computers (people I can keep calm with unless I don’t like you in the first place, but computers, I soon see red)), I calmed down and know I had to bite the bullet and buy another MAC.  After a lot of web surfing, I ended up buying the base model of the 20’ iMAC, and I’ll upgrade the memory myself up to 4 gig as it should only cost me about £50 quid.  This iPhone development thing is really costing me a fortune now and I just hope I can earn my money back from it with the iPhone version of GoGo Digger.

  Next week I’m off to Canada for a month to visit the wife (we have been marred for 16 months and we have only been together for a single week, so I’m really excited about this trip even if it is -40 there), so I’ve been trying to get the laptop ready, which means basically rebuilding it again from scratch, which is taking ages.  It’s a real pain trying to find all the CD’s and manuals / serial codes for every thing, not to mention all the Window’s updates and video codec’s again (I really hate computers with a passion).

  Also on another random note, I just bought the new MicroSoft Blue Laser Explorer Mouse (DUH!! I’ve just almost blinded myself looking under the mouse for that name of it, that blue light is really bright!).  Its suppose to be the all new, singing, super duper mouse that you can use anywhere (including a “Park Bench” (they keep mentioning the park bench which just seems a little strange to me, maybe there’s a niche market of people that sit on park benches with laptops that need ultra fine control where the touch pad just isn’t good enough, but I’m betting there’s more people with shinny black desks that don’t want to have to use a mouse mat)).  Well it’s pretty poor when I try using it on a pure black desk.  It jumps around constantly.  Stick it on top of a magazine and it’s really, really nice, but on a dark, shinny black desk and you can forget it.  Maybe I need to swap my nice comfy chair for a park bench?

Weekending 30/1/09

Lucky Seven:

  I’ve been doing a couple of little sketches for the robot character, which I’m still not happy with.  Every time I draw it, it just doesn’t feel right.  It’s either to high tech looking or not evil looking enough.  The basic graphical idea / theme for all the games is to have a kind of steam punk / cartoon feel style feel to them.  Everything is powered by steam / gears / pistons and mechanical contraptions and weird flying boats and stuff (yeah I know, a bit strange, but it gives me plenty of freedom to do what ever I want, yet gives it a fairly fresh feel to it at the same time).

  Isaac has been really ill this week so there’s not been much happening really.  I warned Isaac to take it easy and get better before he starts working on the games again as your health has got to come first. 

Shuffle Blocks:

  Tommy has done another track for the game which is really nice.  I wasn’t totally sure about it at first, but I kept listening to it for well other an hour while I was working and it actually works really well, it’s not in your face at all, but once you start listening to it you start to hear other melodies in there which I didn’t pick up on before (if that makes sense).

  Dave has been working on the engine so he can port it across to other platforms if needed, basically making everything modular so it can be slotted into later projects and the like, at least I think that’s what he was explaining to me (it’s late and my head hurts).  Dave has also been trying to build an iPhone development kit as well from spare PC parts (a MAC clone?), but doesn’t seem to be getting that fair and it sounds like more trouble then it’s worth.

  Right then, it’s getting late and I need to be up early for the iMAC to come (I’ll be gutted if I miss it) and at least I can use the old MAC G5 as a Linx test machine and port the games over for Linx as well (may as well make the most of it I guess).

  I’ll still post about the same time again next week, but don’t really expect a lot of progress next week as I’ll be travelling for over 40 hours straight to get to Canada, so that’s going to be almost two days lost (planes and the Grey Hound and a lot of waiting around).

  Any way, have a good week and I hope I’ll see you next week and before I forget, thank you to every one that has been signing up to the blog and it’s okay to leave comments or ask questions if you want to.

Thanks,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

24/01/2009 by admin.

Hello,

  How are you?  I hope you are well.

Well it’s been a really hectic week for me, this week.  The day job has been none stop with early starts almost every day.  So when I have been doing game work on the night time, I’ve been half dead (like I am now) and I’ve been making a few stupid mistakes or going off on wild tangents, but it’s not all bad and I do find it fairly relaxing doing the graphics.

  Well you may have noticed that I added a couple of new wall papers to the Lucky 7 page and the logos and full name of the game.  Talking about the name of the game, I’m still not sure if I should stick the GoGo name in to the title or not.  He will be in the game, but that would be one really long title (Gogo Lucky 7: Escape from Monster Island), so I think I will leave it as it is now as it’s already long enough as it is.  It took me almost the whole weekend to get those two wall papers done (along with other little gf/x jobs) as I had to redo the logos again as I didn’t save the original layers (I’m a big, daft, fool for not doing that), but looking on the bright side, I should never need anything as big as the current resolution you on the wall papers.  The main reason for do the wall papers where that I wanted to play with my new copy of LightWave and this was a good excuse and I wanted to show what the overall graphical style for the game is without showing too much of the game off (it actually doesn’t show anything of the game off except for a couple of the monsters in the game).

  Speaking of LightWave, you know how I just bought the upgrade last week (did I mention that (wink)), well I just got an e-mail / advert telling me that because Newtek Europe is now 10 years old and the new official (free) update of LightWave V9.6 has just come out, for a few extra pounds you can get the software LWCAD V3 with the new bundle (to buy this by itself is about £400), so as you can imagine I was a bit gutted, but used to this kind of thing as when ever I buy anything nice, it either gets updated with a new model or drops right down in price.  Anyway to cut a long story short the really nice lady at Newtek said that she would see if she could help me out as I bought my update so close to the new promotional deal.  I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t happen to me a lot and most companies don’t want to know me once they have my money, so I am really, really impressed by NewTek’s customer services and I already rated LightWave very highly.  I think NewTek have a customer for life with me.

  It was also my birthday this week, but been on call out for work this week I couldn’t even go for a birthday drink in case I got called out and I had to drive (I wont even have a single drink if I’m driving), but that’s okay when you get as old as me, you don’t want to celebrate your birthday that much and all the candles on the cake would be a huge fire hazard =)

Weekending 23/1/09

Lucky Seven:

  So what have I done on Lucky 7 this week?  Let’s see, I updated the web page for the game a bit and added a couple of wallpapers from the game, which I hope you like and download.  If nothing else, it will give you an idea for the overall look and feel for the game.

  I’ve also finished the little 2D icons for the Quest Mode Level Selection of the game, which to be honest, may change slightly once the rest of the style / theme of that screen has been finalised.  Most of them are animated to help the player understand what each one of them represents.  Actually each one of them represents a different rule or feature of the level which can be added to the level, so by just quickly looking at the icons, the player can get a good feel of the difficulty of the level.

  This is a rough mock up of the Quest Mode level selection.  It uses real in game graphics and is mainly just for Isaac and myself to work out the correct sizes and positions for everything.  Making sure that we are able to give the player enough information without cluttering up the screen or scaring the player off because it looks to complex, which in itself is harder then it seems as when you design something, you already know what everything does, so it already makes perfect sense to you, but a new, fresh pair of eyes will point out all the weaknesses in your design.

  Any way, Isaac has got all this in the game and has the basic foundations in so when you complete a level, it unlocks the surrounding levels for the player to try (which should allow the player to keep on playing without getting stuck on a level and make it really hard for us to get the difficulty level right as the player can and properly will go off in an unexpected direction).

  I guess I should explain a bit more about what you are looking at.  The top part is the basic level map where each block represents a level (the colours of the blocks also have a meaning).  You noticed that most of the blocks have a glass window effect around them, well this means that, that level is currently unavailable to the player and must be unlocked.  The blocks with the gold frames around them are special bonus rounds that will unlock / rewards the player.

  Isaac has been out of contact for most of the week as he has been away on a business trip, but knowing Isaac, he has found time to work on the game.

  Tommy has sent some sound effects for the game and they sound really good, and that’s without hearing them in the game, so when they are implemented into the game, they should really, really add to the game.

Shuffle Blocks:

  To be honest, I’ve not had any time to work on this game, but Dave and Tommy has.  Tommy has done a really nice tune for the game, which I listened to for well over 50 minutes  looped, without realising it, so it will be great for a word game where you don’t want to be distracted by an annoying tune.  It’s really nice.

  Dave has been busy with sick kids, trying to sort out a MAC development solution for himself and various code “house keeping” on Shuffle Blocks (which went way over my head when he was explaining it to me, but it will make the other games a lot easier to do and make new features for Shuffle Blocks a lot easier to do).

Well I’m falling a sleep at the keyboard again (which I’m going to use as my excuse for any spelling mistakes and mindless ramblings that I may have done in this post), so I’m calling it a night now (I am getting old after all).  Of course, if you have any questions feel free to add your comments and I’ll be more then happy to reply back.

So have a good week and I hope to see you next week

Thanks,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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

10/01/2009 by admin.

Hello,

  Happy New Year!!

I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year.  My Christmas was good, but the New Year bit has been a real pain so far, loads of things have gone wrong so far.  You name it, it’s gone wrong, from the normal stuff, such as choppy Internet connection to things just breaking such as my DVD player not been able to play normal DVD’s now, breaking my computer chair (I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself there, but thanks to my cat like reflexives and my fat ass I’m I live to tell the tale), bricking my MP3 player and my LightWave (the 3D software I use) is playing up (well it’s not playing up, but the old version I have doesn’t do hair / fur very well (but the new version does)), so that’s costing me a small fortune to upgrade (which is a good excuse as I’ve been wanting to get the latest version for ages).  So not a great start to the New Year.  On the bright side, Newtec, the company that makes LightWave have an excellent service depart and I can’t fault them at all.  So if you are after a cheap (for 3D software at least) 3D all in one package, have a look at LightWave.  I’ve always liked using LightWave and the service is fantastic from them (sorry that sounded a bit like an advert, but it’s not I just really like the software).

  With it been the holidays, there’s not been a lot done on the game projects to be honest, well, considering it’s been almost 3 weeks, but the Christmas period is a time to spend with family and friends after all, eating lots of chocolate, mince pies and even more chocolates!!!

Weekending 8/1/09

Lucky Seven:

  To be honest, I can’t remember all the things I have done on Lucky Seven during the holidays (I can’t even blame it on drinking because I didn’t get drunk this year (I really need to start making lists, could be a New Year resolution for me)), but the main thing that springs to mind is that I made another monster for the game and got it all animated ready to render out as soon as I get my new copy of LightWave (been told it’s coming on Tuesday).  It’s a cross between a bear and a rabbit.  So it’s got a big fat body with rabbit feet and rabbit ears (it looks better then it sounds, honest).  My wife says it looks like me, I think that’s because of the man boobs I gave it, but I still can’t work out if that was a complement from her or not (if in doubt, I always take it as a complement, it saves a lot sulking and no one like to see a fat man cry *Grin* ).

  Isaac has been putting the finishing touches to the slime attack and added the new gf/x for that which looks a lot nicer now.  He’s also been doing a bit of optimization to make sure everything is running as quick as possible and I need to do a few things as well to help him with that.  Not hard work on my part, just a bit dull, but you can almost turn your brain off and just get on with it.

Shuffle Blocks:

  Tommy has been working on a couple of tunes for the game and Dave has been investigating a possible engine so we can port the game over to the iPhone, mobiles and PDA’s

I think that’s it for now to be honest.  It’s a bit shorter then normal, but that’s because of the holidays and my current destructive nature I’ve seemed to have picked up since the New Year, but it will be back to normal again next week (fingers crossed).

So have a good week and I’ll be posting some pictures next week of the monster and maybe some other bits and bobs.

Thanks and I hope to see you next week,

Mike.

www.badbumble.com

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