Holiday Update

So here I am, working at home and writing code on an Acer Aspire 5532 I bought during college so that I could write papers. A cheap deal at Best Buy and something never really built to be coding on. Build times are a good bit longer and I can barely play Overflow, the good news is that I don’t really need too since I’m working on the map editor.

The overhaul is coming along pretty well after I finally broke the bug that had stumped me for three hours the other day. Players will be able to switch map sizes, play player tiles on the board, save & load to multiple save slots!

What I need to finish up is in the preview options have the tiles display player colors (at present they only know what grey tiles are) and in the actual game I need to make sure that the pre-placed player tiles show up and function correctly.

Matt talked to Dean, the Ai professor at Champlain, and he gave us some great advice. That is probably the next thing I dive into.

Had someone on Facebook ask about Android, and it’s a total possibility. Flash can apparently build straight out to Android, which is awesome. The biggest thing that is stopping me from doing so is that I don’t have a device to test on + I don’t know if there is even an android device with the same resolution as the iPad. If not then I need to scale everything to fit a range of particular resolutions which just becomes another thing on the long list of things to do. So we will see.

Friday!

Today we are going to try to hit our list of contacts Mike put together for us yesterday; we have around 30 people thus far. We did this last time for Loc, and from experience it’s super hit or miss. Sending an email to webmaster@somegamesite.com is a dead end. Stuff just gets buried under a landslide and quickly lost.

So this time around we are going to try communicating via twitter with some people, skipping the unknown webmaster and going straight for people who actually write the articles. We will see how it goes.

By end of day today I will also be rolling out the team/replay build of Overflow on Testflight, which will also update our game submission for the Pax East Indie Showcase.

Starting to pull together a list of stuff I might be working on over break:

Map Editor Overhaul: Currently it works, but functionality wise it needs a little help. A player cannot create and save multiple maps easily at the moment. They have to save the game in a particular slot, go back out to the main menu, go to the game setup screen and select another slot to save in.

What should happen is from the map editor the player should be able to switch easily between map sizes, be able to add player pieces to the board, test it (right from the editor) and save to any slot.

Map of the Day: thought of that yesterday. I would create a map every day, throw it up on a server and have the game pull it down. Would provide a new (official) gameplay experience to those who might have gotten bored from playing the official maps and don’t want to create new ones.

Ai: Might want to start working/thinking about how this is going to work. Never written Ai code before, so could be kinda hard. The largest hurdle will be making the Ai not brutally difficult.

Might be in on Monday, probably for a little while, my flight doesn’t leave until 5ish, but stay tuned. I will probably be updating the blog over the holiday.

Submitted!

We have successfully submitted Overflow to the Pax East Indie Showcase!!!

Originally we were delaying until apple approved our build (which also happened yesterday) to send them a promo code. However, Mike went back and started looking through the rules and discovered that you may send your build via testflight! Test flight allows for mass ad-hoc testing without having to pass the build through apple.

Wish us luck!

In other news, I got a replay feature working in Overflow. At the end of the game the player will have the option to view a replay of their game. The replay will auto play from the beginning and show every moment stored in the timeline. Players will also be able to tap anywhere on the timeline to move to a particular moment in time.

Today I want to try to get a fast forward button which would increase the speed of the replay so players can watch a time lapsed version of their game. From our own experience, matches can last upwards of an hour and as of this moment the replay is in real time, so in order to watch that hour long match it would take almost as long.

And because Apple got back to us and our build is now approved we will be sending out emails/twitter requests to the press. We have a decent list of contacts thus far, but it anyone is interested in getting the game on the iPad please let us know and we can make that a reality.

Preparation

Apple should be responding as early as tomorrow and by latest by Friday. So we have some preparation to do. Checking up on press contacts, writing those emails, getting facebook/twitter banners, backgrounds, still working on our gameplay video, get another batch of screenshots up, etc.

Yesterday I successfully got team gameplay working! And from our own playthrough’s its pretty fun. That new update went live on the website and by the end of the week ill put it out on test flight.

With the completion of teams I completed my short list of to-do’s. What remains are some of the bigger ticket items. From feedback it seems that Ai will be the next major update that will happen, but before I start work on it I’m waiting to speak to the Ai professor at Champlain. So until then, I’m going to focus on a replay system for the game.

Once a game has been completed, players will (hopefully) be able to watch their game. This replay system will become a learning tool for player to examine their moves and see what they could have done differently at any point in time during their past game.

The Little Things

I’m headed home next week, just worked out that way with the price of airfare. And while I can do some things at home, I cannot build out to iPad, Which limits how much work I can do. So this week I took my giant wish list, looked forward at the future and began to make some plans.

Yesterday was sound day. I created a Sound Manager for Overflow, which will be (like its name implies) solely responsible for the in-game sound. Button click noises and all of that I’m not really worried about. The major hurdle in front of us when it comes to sound design will be how the tiles sound when they cascade.

I built two different methods yesterday that would give unique sound effects to the cascade depending on how long it goes on for, what I’m waiting on now is to coordinate with Griffen Fargo, a good friend of ours who is helping us with that department.

The goal is to hopefully push an update that is sound oriented the week after we get back from break.

But until we then there is some quality of life stuff and some little things I’ve mapped out to work on over the course of this week.

For you hard-core fans who don’t allow take-backs, the undo button can now be removed from the game! It’s on by default, but in the options menu you can turn it off. In addition, all choices made in the options menu will now be remembered. You like playing with the percent bar always on, well good news, turn it on once and it will always be there.

The map editor got some love yesterday as well; you can now draw the tiles on the board! (Before you had to click each tile) it’s a little laggy, but for the most part I think it works well. + When saving your own maps the font size is no longer ginormous. Still don’t know why the font gets bigger on the iPad, but whatever Apple.

Today is dedicated to creating team play! 2v2,3v1,2v1 that kind of thing.

And now we wait

Apple will get back to us sometime this week and until that happens we wait. But there is still plenty to do. Need to get the gameplay video in order, Marguerite is working on that. Looked over our press contact page, updated it and added a few more people who would be more appropriate to contact, beginning to create new marketing material (banners, backgrounds, etc).

And what I did over the weekend was start to shift through my code and try to find more efficient ways to do things. Those of you with an iPad might notice the lag time it takes for a mass number of tiles to flip over in a single move. That is what I am trying to alleviate.

In addition I’m going through and ripping out defunct functions and unused variables that have just been sitting around since I tried this or that. In addition I’m going through and commenting on what some of the functions do or why I did something in a particular way so that down the line I will remember.

I started a giant wish list of things to add to Overflow as well, ill sort it into major and minor in a few days and see if I can start work on some of them. Based on the feedback from testing most people wanted to see AI added to the game first, which would be a major task. I’ve never coded Ai and it’s a scary task, :<

Matt setup a meeting with a professor from Champlain who teaches Ai, so he will hopefully help to get us on the right path.

Gold Master

The deadline kinda crept up on us. Remembered that the contest was a mobile one, which means they somehow need access to the game. The best way to do that if your building an iOS game is to give your promo codes out. Now The only way you can do that is to submit your game to Apple. Good thing we already went through the first round of apple submission, but we still need to update the build.

So today has become the deadline. At noon we will ship it off to apple, and hope it takes them less than a week to approve it. Once approved we can email out enter the Boston Indie Showcase with our game.

Yesterday was a flurry of activity, looking through tester reports, gathering together the bugs, selecting an icon/new symbol.

Matt and I finally!!!! Squashed the undo bugs that began to appear. He ended up taking the wheel and rewriting a good portion of my code for that to be possible. It was all an issue of restoring the state of the selector tiles…. And ended up being and 3 or 4 hour slog, but in the end we won.

I was also able to tackle the tile flipping bug, where tiles would get permanently stuck in mid flip. Simple fix, thank goodness.

Three little things today and that will be it!

Little Victories!

So yesterday night we held testing at Champlain college. I printed out 30 testing sheets pulled together 5 iPads and thought that we would be fine.

Little did I know that there was going to be 40+ people coming. The turn out was amazing and from the general chatter they were enjoying the game immensely! A few known (and unknown) bugs crept out of the woodwork. More than half dealing with the undo button breaking something… Making it more and more likely that I might just remove it until I can get it to work 100%.

I now need to shift through all the feedback I got back, so busy morning today!

Testing tonight!

10 days left.

Finished a tutorial that will stand up on its own for a while. Ended up creating a 16x10 board, pre-populated with some enemy tiles so that in the practice mode players can just kind of experiment with the rule set.

In addition a very simple step by step tutorial is at the bottom of the screen, which the player can read through at their leisure. They can also reset the map instantly, so overall it’s a good playground that was not too difficult to create.

Moving on, now we get to more aesthetic stuff. The main screen is changing a bit. Adding some color, some life to it I feel is really important. The background tiles now flip on their own randomly becoming a triangle/diamond/star tile of a random player color.

Was working on menu transitions as well. As of this moment, going between menus is instantaneous. It could look better if menu’s faded in and out as a transition. At the very least the main menu on game start will fade in because I am hoping to get a birnamwoodgame splash screen in there.

Oh! And Testing Tonight @ Champlain College in Huake 008! We were fortunate enough to secure a slot and this will be the first large scale testing of Overflow! So it will be exciting to see some reactions. In addition we will be voting on a game icon as well as a tier 3 symbol ( we need to change it). Why? Because it shares the same qualities as the Star of David, and while we all don’t believe it will be taken out of context (it also looks like a policeman’s badge) being safe is better than being sorry.

So Marguerite has a bunch of other self-similar shapes that fit the same polygon trend we established with the triangle and diamond.

Day 1 of the Tutorial

Gah…

Quickly turned into the nightmare I thought it was going to be. Sat down and tried to create something dumb simple, a tutorial that would force the player to step through the rules 1 by 1.

Created a small, 7x7 board, with a pop up screen that would direct them to click here, and then here, read some instructions, then click here. However, the system was very easy to fool. It was completely automated, with no checks to see what the player was actually doing. And in order to achieve that I would have to really dig into some of the core code and change it, not what you want to do when you have 11 days left.

So we need something different.

Working towards a free play system where the board is prepopulated with “opposing tiles” yet the player is able to play by themselves. Might do a pop up system in the future, but as of now there will be instructional text at the bottom that players can scroll through and read at their leisure that breaks down everything.

What I have learned from this experience thus far is that tutorials are extremely difficult to build. You have to break your own code & force it to basically slow down so that you can explain what is happening. Its really messy and with that looming date, beginning to get stressed. We have to have a tutorial system. End of story. If we cannot communicate our rules and design to allow complete strangers to play, we have basically failed.

2 Weeks and counting…

Getting close, oh boy. I have 12 days to get Overflow into shape, which means this week is all about the tutorial system. Will be mapping it out today.

Thus far I know that it must be a step by step kind of thing, entirely scripted. Big friendly pop ups that tell you what is supposed to happen and all that jazz. Will probably be creating custom super small boards to make it less frightening for people as well.

There is currently a bug with the undo button after a player attempts to undo resetting their stars to 0. So I also need to tackle that.

We have a testing day at Champlain! So come by Wednesday night 8:30 – 10:30, to play some overflow and give us some comments, advice, etc!

Last, but not least, congrats to all of the Champlain Seniors who presented. You all have created some great games, far beyond the scope of any year previous. Good luck on moving forward into 2^nd semester.

Advice

Yesterday I hit the pavement around Champlain to talk to some of the professors and get some feedback. And overall, feeling pretty good. Gameplay is solid now, don’t have any more lingering worries about it besides actually teaching people how to play (I really am not looking forward to building this tutorial system).

Sound is now becoming the biggest concern, we have two potential people who are helping us already, but that dec 15^th deadline just keeps on coming closer...

UI changes feel pretty good, the player selection stuff needs some work, but overall a way better system. Just being able to see a full preview of the map is great.

So today…

Polish up player selector thing, make sure the menu stuff with creating your own maps functions correctly. Had some rumors that the undo button wasn’t working yesterday, potentially squashed it so lets see how it works now, and finally im starting to have thoughts on team games… 2v2. Hmmmm.

User Interface

One of the most fundamental aspects of games, yet one that rarely receives any attention. The User Interface (UI) guides a player through your game, it is represented with every screen you ever show the player.

Yesterday (and through today) we have completely broken down the main collection of menus, player selection, map selection, and even the way users access the map editor, and collected it all into one very nicely designed screen (thank your Marguerite). This is a huge step towards reaching some milestones on the polish side of things.

With this update players are now able to see in real time the map they are about to play one, not just small previews, which means that players can view the entirety of the battlefield before committing to starting their game. This not only works with the standard maps that come shipped with Overflow, but any additional maps users now create.

Speaking of which, there will now be six save slots per map type. Players can make a total of 18 unique maps, all of which can be reedited at any time.

Player picked colors will be next on the list!

Polish

Looking at our timeline as well as the gigantic list of things to do it was time to figure out priorities. Which means unfortunately the work towards Async will have to be postponed. As cool as it would be to get async in there it’s more important that we have better menus.

One of the biggest rules in usability design is that more screens separating the player from the game the higher the chance that they won’t even play. To avoid this we are combining the player selection screen with the map selection screen.

This would give players the opportunity to select their own colors as well as potentially their own symbols. The other addition that will be coming is a quick play feature which will instantly load the last map that was played, to expedite the process of getting players in the game even faster.

The last really big ticket item is a tutorial…

I really don’t want to make one. I know that it is super important, possibly the most important aspect of the game because it’s so key for new players, but it is extraordinarily boring to do so. But the thing is, I’ve got to make this look polished as heck, because we are going up against some really good indie studios for this Boston Showcase. So I’ll bite the bullet and make the stupid tutorial.

Evolution

One of the challenges that was plaguing Overflow was a clash of identities. The original design, which is currently called “simple” was great in a lot of aspects. The rules were like the name implies,  were simple, 1+ 1 == 2, 2 + 2 == 3, etc. However there were problems. Player 1 had a distinct advantage (given that they knew what they were doing), because due to the nature of turn based rules they would unlock their special tiles. Which means that player 1 could dominate the board and there was no way to stop them.

So along came the second iteration, nicknamed “complex”; which, just like the original design had its own improvements as well as flaws. Complex changed the rules of how tiles interacted with one another. It became a game of simple math, 1+1 == 2, 2+1 == 3, 3+ 1 == 4. However when any number combination == 4, the tile(and all adjacent lvl 3 tiles) would wipe to 0. Which was really satisfying, because now you could actually counteract the moves of other players.

A fourth tile was created in this version that could only be placed on lvl 3’s, and would basically solidify the board. I added this tile to ensure that the game actually ended; otherwise it was possible that players would infinitely block one another from winning.

The biggest shortcoming was that the rules became murky. When placing a tile it would effect the board differently depending on it the tile was placed on your own pieces or an opponents. Ultimately, while fun, it was incredibly difficult to break into and understand.

Thanksgiving rolls around and I start thinking. What if we mash the two game types together? Create a hybrid of design?

Well, that is exactly what I did. The game plays like the simple version, but has the fourth tile and the ability to counteract/stop other players from winning. The new addition will be available soon, I need to figure out how exactly I’m going to approach tutorials in the future.

And we're back

Great holiday for everyone, super relaxed and now all prepared to jump back into it.

Played alot of Overflow and now have a new punch list of sorts. So over break i started to tackle some of them:

1. Symbols? The major problem with art is that the game is still difficult to explain to people. Its very mechanical: A level 1 tile + a level 1 tile == level 2 tile. To counter this i started to play around with new symbols.

2. End Game Early: Now when you end a game early it shows the break down of who won.

3. Player positions: Players were originally set up in a Z formation, now its a clockwise circle.

4. Starting to work out an Undo Feature! After playing on an iPad over break, it became apparent that because Touch is so finicky its almost necessary. In addition it allows players to experiment and learn. The undo button will be a toggle option, on/off.

5. Thinking about bumping the medium map to be a large map, and create a new map size somewhere between small and medium.

So off we go! Things to do and now that December 15th deadline is looming closer.

Adjusting the Async Strategy

Friday was mostly spent understanding how Smartfox operates and ensuring that I could make the necessary calls to and from the server. But as I dug deeper into what it offered and began to understand more and more what Overflow actually needed I discovered that Smartfox was not the right direction.

Smartfox has some really cool features. Player connect to a lobby where they can browse the games and then connect, which is ultimately what I do want. However, it does it all in a way designed for real-time multiplayer scenarios. I began to look over the async tutorial again and discovered that he was only using the Smartfox as a hand off between the client and his database. He was not actually taking advantage of any of the multiplayer functions Smartfox came with.

So Matt and I really started to break it down and have decided to ditch the server and instead send calls out directly to a PHP page which will add, subtract, and edit the database for us. We are doing this for a variety of reasons, 1. We are both far more comfortable using PHP. Yes, we will have to figure out how to make it secure, but just getting async working is the goal. 2. The server would have required us to keep a machine running 24/7 and we would have probably had to start paying to use Smartfox. It allows for 20 concurrent users for free, which is at the end of the day only good for testing purposes.

The other good news is that if we get this system working, not only will it work for Flash, but also for Unity. Killing two birds with one stone.

Keep on going

Ok, round 2 for async, here we go. The challenge today is to have the client request something from the server and get a response. From there it’s requesting something from the server, which in turn requests something from the databse. But one thing at a time.

In other news!

Guild Wars 2 is rolling out a huge amount of content today, creating a new zone for upper level players as well as introducing a new dungeon along with ideas/armor/crafting material. Yay!

Server Code…

Dove into the async tutorial I found the other day: http://www.indieflashblog.com/how-to-create-an-asynchronous-multiplayer-game.html . For the record I have never done anything remotely like this before.

The way it works is with SmartFox, server software that is built to talk with Flash. Downloaded/installed and started parsing through the tutorial text trying to get a handle on how everything works. Unfortunately the indieflashblog tutorial completely skips over how he learned to write serverside code, leaving a little note saying that if you want to learn that go look at SmartFox’s own documentation.

I created a simple MYSQL database on our website, no problem there; I did some PHP server stuff while working for Champlain. The problem that I just smashed my head against for the past three hours was trying to get the client (ie the game) to talk to the server.

Smart Foxes documentation is ok, but flawed because it doesn’t show ALL of the code you need, only snippets. I kept trying to communicate with the server Zone I had created, but it kept telling returning a non-useful error that had 0 google hits….

The other issue is that most of the code written is created on the timeline! WHY?!!! NO ONE DOES THIS! For those who don’t know, writing code directly in flash is a nightmare. You don’t the dozens of useful features like code hinting that have been around for something like 20 years. I code in Flash Development, a program that creates external classes.

Writing AS3 in the timeline and in external classes is almost identical, but every once in a while there is some big differences (importing external libraries, tracing statements, etc.)

Finally ripped open an example file and discovered that, while I was successfully connecting to the server, I was not properly logging in as a guest… which the smartfox documentation failed epically to point out.

So after this minor victory, I’m going home. Brain is too tired to keep coding.

Here goes nothing

Two weeks ago we hit the white board and planned out everything I thought was going to be possible for us to have in Overflow by Dec 10^th, our deadline for the Boston Indie Showcase. The major elements were local multiplayer (check), differing map sizes (check) and a host of small nitpicky things (tutorial overall, selection UI overhaul, etc). And as of yesterday I feel confident to say that Overflow has nailed them all! Which is impressive because two weeks ago we thought it would take us right up until December.

So now it’s time to shoot for the moon. Expect no further daily updates after today, because I’m going for the big one: Asynchronous multiplayer. Here goes nothing.

Modes

We now have two separate game modes available for players to try out, complete with their own rules/tutorials (available as of yesterday). Simple, is just your normal everyday Overflow. Complex, on the other hand, is a slightly different animal.

The changes in gameplay evolved for a variety of different reasons.

When I was first watching people playtest Overflow, stacking a lvl 1 tile on a lvl 1 tile they immediately tried to stack another lvl 1 tile on a lvl 2, thinking it would change. Now, that is possible.

But getting to the lvl 3 state was too powerful, once a player did so there was nothing anyone else could do. To counteract this, a new 4^th tier tile has been added. These dark colored tiles can only be played on tier 3 tiles, and when they are they transformed to a 4^th tile state, which replaces the old 3^rd tile state.

By doing this, games become longer, more strategic affairs that cause players to chose between sabotaging one another or permanently securing territory.

Over the next few week we will be play testing the modes, seeing which is more popular and making a decision on which will be the final version, but for now they are both freely available for you to play (your can do so HERE) and experiment with. Please let me know what you think @ zach@birnamwoodgames.com or at our facebook or twitter.

Timeline

We are approved! Apple has said that Overflow is good to go!

So now it’s time to figure out a timeline for releasing stuff out to the press along with what shall be going into the next build to push to Apple.

Need to get some more screenshots for the game for the press kit and we should really labor to create a good gameplay video.

Content wise, yesterday saw a pretty big update! Huge art pass, multiplayer colors were tweaked and we added horizontal slashes to the tiles in order for people to determine their level easier. Overall it has a much cleaner appearance.

The other major piece was that this weekend I was secretly working on a new game mode, which is now available to play around with. This, “complex” mode arose from several different factors that I had observed when new players first got their hands on it. I’ll go into it more later, right now it’s all about what falls on the punch list and when should we push to Apple again?

1. Create a tutorial for Complex Mode


2. Be able to choose mode & number of players after editing a map in the map editor


3. Selectors are still not clear, cannot really tell that they are buttons.


4. Tutorial Mode?

Hmm, well we will see what I can tackle today. The top two really need to happen before I submit again I think.

Workin on the Weekend.

Took some work home with me this weekend, had some concepts I wanted to play around with since I got some critique from the Champlain professors on Friday as well finished some major features. Now included is 4 player multiplayer! Which is really awesome. It changes the game dynamic in a lot of interesting ways, especially on the larger maps. Will find out the extent when I sit down to do a bit testing event sometime in the nearish future.

Priority list is now getting smaller, while larger aspects begin to loom. I found a guide on how to create Asynchronous multiplayer in AS3, no I’m not kidding. It was like finding the motherload. So that could be something I hit later in the week.

I want to add some additional options, give the game a timer, etc and this week I really want to figure out my color problem. Right now when you play the game it can be hard to differentiate between level 1 & 2 tiles at a glance. So I started playing around with color combinations and will be testing those out later this week.

In addition I may have fixed some of my efficiency problems. Originally every tile had a mouse event listener. Which means that there is a lot of them at any given time. What I got working this weekend was that the board now has a singular listener, when it detects a touch/mouse event it looks at the objects underneath and identifies the tile. Maybe zooming and scrolling will work now, who knows.

Realities

Much of yesterday was taken up by me just trying to understand touchevent.TOUCH_Begin & touchevent.TOUCH_End functions in AS3. Thanks to my little black box test program, I have a pretty good understanding of how dragging and zooming is supposed to work in flash.

Unfortunately that test has proven that my code is probably not very efficient, which kinda makes sense. Every single tile is continually getting pushed data like whose turn it is, what the selected tile they are holding, etc. So it comes down to a painful decision. Either rewrite a good chunk of my base code :( or leave it.

Looking at everything and thinking about the future reveals that the flash version of Overflow is essentially all throwaway. It will be replaced and until that point it just needs to work and look good doing it. The hot fix for the moment is that the iPad maps are just zoomed out so that all tiles are visible, though they are a bit small.

So onward!

Time to get four players into the game!

Hitting that Wall

Uggg. Getting a smooth scroll/zoom in flash is turning out to be more painful than first imagined…

I came into with high expectations, flash has built in multitouch gestures for pinch as well as swipe. However both of these actions are not smooth. You make a swipe action, and once you finish then it moves the canvas, not in real time. I’ve tried a variety of different methods and ultimately nothing has produced the same effect that all tablet users are used too.

So today its back to the drawning board, im going to open a new project and have only a single square to test this with. Trying to build it into the existing framework of Overflow has been tricky and who knows if anything else is somehow prevent the smooth motion of these actions.

Also Critiques! Headed to campus to go get some other outside perspective on things.

Got some other stuff done yesterday though, here are the updates for Overflow:

-          Added 6 additional maps, 2 per each additional map size

-          The game now will end the game if one player seizes more than 50% of the playable map with level 3 tiles

 

What’s next? – Overflow Part 3

On our white board right now we have a good sized list of next steps as well as a wish list of wouldn’t that be awesome. It all comes down to what we can accomplish in Flash, which is what I’m fluent in, and what would require a switch in engines.

Yesterday I added the ability to create maps of various sizes in the map editor which allowed Mike and I to send the last part of the day just having fun crafting new maps. There are now four available sizes, small, which was the old standard, medium (22 x 24), large (32 x 28), and Marathon (40 x 35)! Which is pretty ridiculous.

So today is all about getting those maps playable through the menu and making the same editor updates available on the iPad, need to add some movement control stuff for that to happen. Everyday ill continue to make these little modular updates, seeing how far we can push the design and polish it up before our next big deadline. As of this moment we have a little more than a month before submission to the Boston Indie showcase ends, so it’s all a matter of how much we can pack in. As I’ve said from the beginning, we want user feedback of any kind. Please let us know what you think, what you dislike, or what you would like to see added in the future, on either our Twitter, Facebook or via email @ zach@birnamwoodgames.com

Concepts Part 2

Everyone is saying it’s a bit like Go, or even that dot game, the one where players draw connecting lines between points and try to create squares. Which is interesting, because while creating the idea neither of those came up as inspiration.

I’ve played Go with Taylor and my biggest problem with it is that the game is so slow.  The Dot game comparison is closer, because when comparing them, players both have chances to create chain reactions that would drastically change the field of play.

What I wanted to create was a basically a digital board game. From the very beginning I had this image of two players across from one another in a coffee shop, playing on an iPad. In pursuit of this vision I did a few things with the layout.

1. As few as text as possible, most of it is represented through iconography. The quit button is an X, the rules are a ?, each of the maps include a small diagram of what they are beneath them.


2. The unlocking tiles have the color slowly fill in addition to having a numerical value, so just by glancing at it the player can see if it is filled or not.


3. Player’s pieces are on opposite sides of the board. If they are indeed playing across from one another, players don’t want to reach across the game board, obstructing the field of play in order to select their tiles.

The beautiful thing about the game is its simplicity. The primary game loop, is less than 600 lines of code. Each tile keeps track of its current state, its owner, and knows whose turn it is and what they have selected. It all comes down to incrementing tile states. If its player 1’s turn and they have a level 1 tile selected and they click on an empty space, it becomes theirs; the tile is flipped and turned the correct color.

For each tile there is only a finite number of states. The cool thing about the game is dynamic nature of changing those states and causing cascade events.

By Tuesday I had it working all working and realized that we could actually put it out for distribution. The game might not be feature complete, but players would at least get a taste of the gameplay and would hopefully give us feedback on what they like/don’t like or what they want to see added next.

So I pitched to everyone a deadline of Friday. I wanted to try what the Super Meat Boy guys did with the original SMB, a free flash game that was available on the internet that gained followers. And that is what we are going to do. Already, since the Friday deadline a whole new mechanic of differing terrain has been added! And soon to be uploaded will be a much better tutorial!

Thoughts on Overflow Part 1

So what happened last week was pretty spectacular and out of the blue; never thought that the production of Overflow would take off like it did. So many things just clicked and because of that we were able to meet our Friday deadline. So I'm going to try to slow down a little bit and look back at how all of this happened.

Turning back the clock, the days have been pretty standard for me. For a few months now I had been prototyping different ideas, some lasting a few day and others upwards of about a week. As a result my desk is covered with old printer paper with hand drawn maps, pieces of code, random words, and idea after idea for games.

I have always been a strategy fan; ever since my family refused to play board games with me anymore I dove into video games. Starcraft is one of my all time favorites; Supreme Commander was brilliant, backed Planetary Annihilation. And because of that I have always wanted to create a strategy game.

Overflow began as a very abstract thought, a water turn based strategy game. Water would pour down from higher terrain onto lower sections, taking them over in a cascading fashion. But what would create the water? Springs? Would they be water towers that overflow? Just kind of a lot of awkward questions that ultimately led me to abandon the idea.

But last week I started playing around in illustrator and ended up creating this:

This file is the game doc for Overflow. I began with some really simple, aesthetic colors and tried to differentiate, yet keep them in similar shades. When I created the first color spectrum the water idea just came back and I knew I could use it in an abstract form.

Immediately I grabbed some graph paper and started cutting out little pieces, colors for one side, numbers for the other to make it easy to differentiate them, and then Mike and I sat on the floor and played it out.

How much can we pack in?

So today is the day! Some time around 1 or 2 we will be uploading to Apple. So now its just a matter of seeing how much I can pack in. Yesterday I got side tracked by having to debug another application for JDK, but overall here is what was completed:

1. Ownership bug has been stomped! You can now stack level 2's on one another!

2. Cascading chain reactions! Now you can see exactly how one move impact the game board.

3. A map editor was created and was what I used to create the three additional map types.

The map editor took the majority of the as I have never made on before. It saves a player map out to an XML file which i can then read back in. I tried really hard to figure out how to get player created maps in, but it just didn't end up working out. In flash I cannot get the selected map URL link when a player clicks open.

Go check out these updates HERE!

So today i need to go back and start commenting code, hard code the map types in for iOS development, and Matt suggested a great temporary way to get people playing their own maps.

 

Punch List

So yesterday ended up being very productive. The tile game has been christened and named Overflow. Play it HERE, if you haven’t already.

1. A Proper menu was created


2. A pie chart at the end of the game was added to show how much a player has won by.


3. Switching between players has been made a bit more obvious.


4. You cannot get locked in an infinite loop of instruction screens.


5. A reset button/functionality was added.


6. The game was successfully deployed to iOS and runs exceedingly well on the iPad.


7. Basic tile flipping animation was integrated near the end of the day.

So overall, got a lot done. Even got some testing feedback last night which was even better. So now the bigger decisions need to be made, what functionality needs to come next?

Well, I believe I’m going to first make the overflow mechanic give more visual feedback. Right now when a stack spills over, the tiles flip instantly. What I always wanted to do was show the cascade, this set flips, which causes this set to flip, so on and so forth.

The next big question riding on the heels of this one is what after? And at this moment there are two choices, 1. Add more players (support for up to 4) or 2. Add additional maps, shapes, terrain features that would shuffle up the players experience every time.

If you have any crazy additions you would like to suggest please let me know, either on Facebook, Twitter, or at zach@birnamwoodgames.com.

Rapid Development! GO!

Last Friday I sat down and started to cut out little pieces of paper. With these little pieces and a sheet of graph paper Mike and I played a rough paper prototype of a turn based Strategy game.

Three days later I had a working build, and HERE it is.

So please go ahead and play and let me know what you think on either facebook or via email on birnamwoodgame@gmail.com. Your input is important because by Friday, we will be sending it along to apple.

Our submission to apple will be a dry run for the game. It will come out for free and that way we can build a base of users who might be interested in it, as well as incorporate their feedback should we decided to push the game to the next level where we build it in Unity.

Sandy Strikes!

So our landlord started to hand out pamphlets letting all the residents know that they should probably stock up on the basics. Road Crews had been prepped and ready, schools were preemptively closed, and people were sent home early yesterday.

And this morning we wake up to bright skies, a few downed trees and a rainbow.

So for us here in Vermont, just another day at work, our thoughts go out to everyone affected by the storm.

Techjam Wrap up

The Tech Jam is over and done with for the year, and I have to say that I really enjoyed the experience.

It was a great chance for us to introduce ourselves to not only the Vermont tech community, but also to the public. At the TechJam we showcased Loc, playable on an iPad as well as on a large television we borrowed from Marguerites parents.

We pulled out all the leftover kick starter goods, printed a banner for Off-shoot Studios, and created some simple twitter cards. By the end of Saturday, almost all of it was gone.

The first half of the day Friday came as a tidal force of middle school students. They we bused up to Winooski from nearby districts and at points we had a crowd two or three people deep trying to see what we had available. It mellowed out after the kids got back on their buses to head on back to school, and Saturday was pretty laid back.

Developers tend to really like these events. Letting the public play your game is always a great moment, and watching someone get it, and get pulled into the experience is priceless. After all of the negative comments on Steam Green light, it felt really good to have other people tell us that they enjoyed the game.

Vermont TechJam

We’re are back again at the Champlain Mill, one room down from where we spent all day programming the weekend before. So through today and tomorrow, from 10 until 5, we will be manning our very own Birnam Wood Games booth!

The Vermont TechJam is a once a year event that brings the software/tech community to the public spectrum. Job Seekers can submit their resume in person to a variety of different companies looking to hire and those looking to hire the services of a technology company can sit down and talk.

So come on down to the Champlain Mill in Winooski, our table is A9, either Marguerite or I will be manning the fort, so feel free to ask us questions and play Loc on either the iPad we have available or on the computer.

 

Flickr Stream

Finally got my HackVT Project live and on the web.

Had some serious problems getting it up, was working fine in engine, but the moment I stuck it on the web things started to fall apart. Had a crossdomain.xml page and everything. Went back onto campus Tuesday night to pick Manely’s brain about how to fix it, but for once I stumped him.

He did point me in the direction of Flash Firebug, a firefox plugin, that allowed flash debug messages to appear on the web! And bam, I instantly get an error message, about an hour later I have it working on the web.

So please go check it out here:

And let me know what you think.

So why did I make it?

Well, I wanted to create an aesthetically pleasing application that focused on photography that incorporated moving images.

Movement was a key aspect because it lends a few things: 1. Makes the application feel alive and dynamic, information is always changing and I wanted it to feel fresh and new every time. 2. Most users, when browsing images immediately begin scrolling down the page, so why not make the images move.

Possibilities:

This is a unique, engaging way to view a photographer’s portfolio, and artists work, or a company’s finished products in a slick new way. This is done way easier with a folder of images, as you can see here.

What I might add:

The ability to pause the screen, select individual images to see more about them, save them into favorites, search additional databases, make this available for free on mobile.

100th Blog Post!

For every day we have been in the office there is a blog post, which means that Birnam Wood Games has also reached its 100^th day. Four former students, recent graduates, have managed to not only start, but maintain a game company in Burlington VT.

Go us.

And this weekend we will be at the VermontTech Jam to showcase Loc and interact with the Vermont community! So come by and visit our booth at A9.

Right now we are continuing to plug away at our upcoming iOS game, had some issues with the latest build we just pushed out to our testing pool. Those who have an iPhone 5 or iPad 3 seem to be unable to play it. Mike thinks that should be an easy fix, so hopefully we can get it out the door.

Our potential future work includes creating a website from the ground up, so Matt has been busy buried in all things Drupal, seems like we might have to create a custom module.

Marguerite has been chipping away at the ginormous asset list we created for the iOS game, and I am still trying to figure out how to get my hackVT Flickr search program on the web, oh a Daisy is currently asleep.

It’s just another day at the office.

 

Hack-a-thon Part 2

On Saturday morning things got a little tense.

Matt took off at 11 the night before, marguerite left at midnight, I turned in at 1, and Mike was up until 3 in the morning. We came back in at 8 to pick up where we left off and quickly started to run into some problems.

When searching through the towns, just to view who was willing to barter, no matter how many results were stored in the database, we would only be able to view 1 of them. We ran in circles for hours trying to figure out this experience breaking bug. Even when the hack-a-thon finished the issue still persisted.

It wasn’t until the following Sunday morning Mike discovered that we had hit our limit of API calls that can be made to Google Maps within a 24 hour period…

So it was at 3 we sat down, a little defeated and frustrated at our application, to watch the other 30 groups present.

The best thing about these really tight time limits is that it there is always some really great ideas that find root. For instance: These guys created an app which allows any user to report a sighting of wildlife. The application takes in their location data and the current weather outside. This could potentially be used to track the migratory pattern of animals, or the spread of infestations, or even dangerous animal sightings. But this group went beyond that, they create their own API so that other developers could use this new dataset.

There was a downside to hackVT though, at least in my opinion. This year it was really well organized, tables had been laid out, teams were pre matched to their location, big money was at stake, and somehow it all felt wrong…

It was somehow just too slick.

For me, these kinds of experiences are like camping: you throw everything you might need in a car & go. If you leave something behind, you leave it behind and you figure out how to live without it.

HackVT didn’t feel like that, it had grown out of a grassroots livelihood and had become corporate and too big for its own shoes.

Survivors

In a little less the 24 hours, over the course of Friday/Saturday, we created not 1 new applications, but two.

The Hack-a-Thon kicked off at 6’o-clock Friday evening at the Champlain Mill in Winooski Vermont. We had come in a few hours earlier to set up our equipment and sign in. We had a great little corner in what used to be an old retail store; back in the day the mill, used to be a mall.

Instead it found itself crammed with over 100 different developers, ranging from students from nearby Champlain, St. Mikes, and UVM, to professionals. Teams were as small as 1 and as large as five.

We came in with four valid ideas that we believed fit the initial criteria: Make an app that in some way is helpful to the Vermont community and utilizes at least 1 of the data sets. Earlier that week we had been given the data sets, and it was almost too much, we could basically use anything that was available to the public.

We deliberated for about an hour, narrowing our choice down to what we ultimately called BarterVT. Just like it sounds, BarterVT would allow Vermont residents to post what they had to trade as well as what they were interested in.

Utilizing google maps posters would appear as pins. Anyone could search by city to see all available bartering opportunities available to them. You can see the finished product HERE.

There was some risk in attempting this though:

1.  we had never done anything like it before


2. The Google Maps API is written in Java Script. :( which is no fun, Mike told me.

The other thing was that for this project, I was basically useless. My java script skills are rusty, and Mike had been poking at Google Maps earlier in the week, so he was the most qualified to try to tackle that part. Matt was creating our database and handling the website aspect of things, the portal where users could create listings. The PHP he wrote was what passed the information gathered over to Mike to be viewed with Google Maps. Marguerite was in charge of UI, which left me out.

So I started my own project.

I wanted to create something simple, a scrollable, dynamic array of images. In order to shoehorn the concept into helping Vermont I decided to learn how to do REST api calls in AS3, and created an application that plucked images that were tagged as Vermont from the Flickr photostream. And the best part is, is that it works!

So overall, a tired, yet successful weekend at the hack-a-ton.

 

HackVT

So tomorrow we won’t be coming in to work, because instead we will be across the street!

This year MyWebGrocer is holding the annual Vermont Hackathon, an event that brings Vermont software developers together. We will have 24 hours to create an app that will in some way help the Vermont community.

The only other stipulation is that the application must use one of the many free open data sets that have been provided. The list of them is massive, ranging from NASA to a list of Vemont Cheese makers, so basically the sky is the limit.

Final products are graded on how closely they comply with the theme (of being useful to Vermonters), innovation, presentation, user experience, and overall quality.

So we are going to give it a shot, there is a little reward for the first place product, however the event is more about getting like minded individuals together to encourage cooperation, as well as letting developers, who have all probably been working on persistent projects, to let go and be creative.

Whatever we end up creating, I’ll let you all know on Monday.

Congrats Lucas!

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare has been released!

I posted about the game a while back when it was first put up on Kickstarter and again in its last moments when it successfully cleared its funding goal.

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare began as a mod on the source engine, called Age of Chivalry. From its success Torn Banner studios was created. Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, created with the Unreal 3 engine is impressive to look at, gritty/brutal melee combat coupled with the chaos of siege engines makes for a truly unique experience.

Lucas, who graduated with us in May, went to work for them a few months ago and now emerges with a shipped title under his belt that is now available on steam. For more information, or to purchase the game head on over to Steam!

 

8.

I am not a big television person, in my opinion its already been eclipsed by the superior services of Hulu (ads are terrible), but yesterday I turned it on and saw for the first time a windows 8 ad.

The new OS will be arriving in less than 2 weeks now and I don’t know of anyone who is holding their breath in anticipation.

It’s actually quite the reverse, from all reports Windows 8 could be one of the biggest blunders by Microsoft since the abomination they called Vista. I jumped in on the developer preview almost sixth months ago and watched as it blue screened when I tried to install some drivers… On the upside, they had one of the best Blue Screen images I have ever seen and sincerely hope that they kept it.

Metro – The new flagship layout of all things Microsoft will be an integral feature in Windows 8. Mike has a Windows 7 phone with Metro and I can’t help but say it does have a sleek and well organized appearance. The Developer preview also came with an early layout of Metro and from my experience adding its look and feel was a poor choice.

Metro is perfect for touch interfaces with large panels (easy to tap) and sliding features (simple to drag). However in a mouse and keyboard interface, the reality is that the interface is too simple. Scrolling left to right with the mouse is unintuitive and because of the high fidelity of a normal computer monitor the panels feel as they are a waste of valuable space.

Windows 8 is not all bad. We finally get native multi-monitor support (finally), native USB 3 support, improved Task manager, etc.

But the biggest news will be the introduction of the Microsoft Store, a blatant attempt to copy iTunes, and where everything becomes controversial. Gabe Newell, President of Valve, spoke out against this feature, saying that the top tier PC/OEM’s will leave the market and that margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people.

The issue is that on the Windows RT version will only support applications that are sold directly through the windows store. Which means that only applications they approve will run on these devices, in short they are creating a monopoly on a platform, which has long been open and free for users to do what they want with.

Keep Them Coming Back

Games, like all media, demand a time commitment.

But unlike many others, games usually have a much longer lifetime. Books, depending on your reading speed, can take anywhere between a few days to a week at most and film only asks for about an hour or two of your time.

But Games, games can last anywhere between a few minutes to an endless number of hours.

For reviewer’s sake, a games length is usually determined by the time it takes to “complete” them. This “completion” point is determined usually by a story element, if there is one, ends. Yet most games have additional content that extends beyond the primary narrative arc of the game. This additional content, whether in the form of multiplayer, side quests, world completion, etc. changes the definition of completion.

A player may continue to explore and interact with the world of the game beyond its predetermined length, which is often built into the design. Games are becoming less of a product, and more of a service. Content is continually rolled out to entice players to continue their experience. The longer a player plays, the more likely it will be that they will spend additional money on said game.

And now it’s October 15^th, which means according to retailers Halloween stuff was in the windows two weeks ago. And now games have jumped on the bandwagon. Guild Wars 2 will be coming out with holiday Themed Content, when Borderlands was released the Zombie Island of Doctor Zed came out during the end of October, The Festival of Blood DLC for Infamous 2, TF2 now has an annual Halloween event, and the list goes on.

The events will start up this week and into next week. I’ll post some of the best ones here.

#’s

Over the past few days I have seen some articles written in not only the gaming press, but in the normal media as well about the current NPD numbers of the industry.

Gaming Faces Its Archenemy: Financial Reality is head line for the New York Times article, I recently read through. The article goes into depth in how much sales have dropped over the course of the year and then begins to make comparisons to the famous crash of the game industry in the 80’s.

The article paints the industry to be in dire straits and on the verge of another crash; however the truth could never be farther. These numbers, as stated in the article, are purely based on retail only sales.

Game Informer just released a similar article about NPD numbers, stating the same facts the physical sales were on the decline by 20%, however they did acknowledge that if digital sales had been added, the resulting NPD numbers would have shown that game sales are on the rise.

I attended MIGS, the Montreal International Game Summit, which is a miniature version of GDC about 2 years ago when a representative of Valve gave a keynote. During his presentation he reveled the sales data for just Team Fortress 2 (TF2). The graph was unbelievable… When Super Meat Boy was released on Steam, the Super Meat team said that the game sold four times as well as it did on Xbox Live (XBLA)

I for one cannot remember the last time I bought a physical copy of a game, nor do any of my friends. With the advent of Steam and other digital distribution platforms who needs physical media anymore?

The thing is other industries have trouble accepting this fact.

As a rule of thumb, every three years is a major technology shift. The Game Industry is one of the leaders in creating new technology, so naturally it adapts to the new practices developed. Others like Film, Television, Newspaper and Print, have a lag time in adjusting to these technology changes and are suffering for it.

At the end of the day, the Game Industry is here to stay and it’s not going anywhere.

Reaching for the Sky

Yesterday, the team at Irrational put up a countdown timer. In 9 days we will finally be getting another taste of the world of Columbia in Bioshock Infinite.

For those who may not know, Bioshock came out 2007 and was heralded as one of the most ground breaking games of a decade. It took place in Rapture, a ruined underwater city where scientists, free thinkers, and geniuses of all professions could work in peace without having to be under the heel of the government.

The world, heavily influenced by the writing of Ayn Rand in her novel Atlas Shrugged, predictably falls apart and the player must find a way to survive to reach the surface.

Filled with some of the most unique art direction of its kind, a powerful story, and tight gameplay, Bioshock went on to win dozens of awards.

Four years later, the Irrational team revealed their next project: Bioshock Infinite. However, players will not be returning to the underwater city of Rapture, instead they will take on a new persona and be traveling to the floating city of Columbia.

The trailer, seen HERE, is simply amazing and promises to deliver a game that will once again rock the game industry.

Since its release in July 2011, the drip of information covering this game has dwindled to silence. A set of four videos showcasing a few enemies were released later in the year, as well as podcasts from the development team and voice actors, but throughout the entirety of 2012 there has yet to even be a whisper.

But the quiet will end! In 9 day something is happening, and the whole of the game industry will be watching.

The Importance of Deadlines

Last year the four of us were working on Loc and just before school began I stumbled upon the IGF submission to student category. That became the first real, hard, deadline that we wanted to hit. Before that we had set deadlines for ourselves, but there was nothing really motivating us to buckle down to reach it. The IGF entry was exactly what we needed, an external pressure with a date we could not miss October 30^th.

So while doing all the crazy work for school, the essays, the projects, etc, we worked on Loc to get it to a better playable state then what it was in. And 4 hours before October 31^st we submitted.

The amount of growth that Loc underwent during that time was enormous, a huge learning experience that broadened so much of our skill set. It didn’t really matter that we didn’t win anything, because right away we learned that at that stage Loc was incomplete, and everything else we were up against was polished to a T.

And now, a year later we find ourselves working on another game and striving for another deadline. December the 15^th is the last call for entrants into the Boston Indie Showcase. This year they are focusing on Mobile development, which is precisely what we are doing. Those chosen get a free table at PAX East, which is worth $1,500, along with the very good chance of media coverage.

So 1 day down, 66 more to go.

Newest Recruit!

We have added a new member to the team! Meet Daisy!

She is a sixth month old pup who is now living with Matt. She has a hard day of work, providing what my writing teacher used to call Dog Therapy, cheaper than a shrink and you end up feeling better anyway.

Indiecade

Indiecade just wrapped up. The half week event is held annually in LA and is exclusive to Independent development.

While it does not rank in as one the larger industry events it does bring together the largest group of independent developers. Open to the public it comprises a series of keynotes, activities, workshops, and hands of gameplay demos.

Like GDC, Indiecade has an official festival contest. Anyone may enter to compete for a varied array of awards. We entered, a $50 entry fee. Unfortunately, unlike GDC, Indiecade makes no distinction between student and profession which means that we were going up against the likes of Fez, Bonticula, Dyad, and other “professional” indies.

Which means that we had little chance of getting anywhere. However, they did give us actual feedback, which has never happened before in the contests we have entered! That all by itself is a great thing to get back. To have someone else, in the industry, give a critique, however short, is great. Maybe next year we will be able to pull together enough to go out and attend.

Retiree’s

Over the past few months major industry leaders have stepped down from their positions. Of those who have retired to a less hectic life, three stand out above the rest.

On September 18^th  The Bioware Doctors, Ray Muzka and Greg Zeschuk each wrote a public letter, giving a farewell to not only the company, but to the industry in general.

They founded Bioware in 1995 and played a major role in creating the Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age franchises as well as managing the merging of Bioware into Electronic Arts (EA). This is the end of their long road and the two partners will be splitting off to go pursue alternate, less stressful careers, in different fields.

Just this week Cliff Bleszinski has left Epic games. He was a 20 year veteran who helped to shape Unreal Tournament and Gears of War Franchise along with making the Unreal Development Kit available for free, to help kickstart independent development.

Known as one of the loudest voices of the industry, Cliff Bleszinski had a rare talent of not only being a great programmer and designer, but of being capable of showing his face to the world. He was not afraid to be a true gamer and was one of the biggest positive forces in bringing games into the public perception.

As of this moment he has taken his “retirement” has a well deserved break, and will hopefully be returning to the industry.

Orbit Math :(

One of the biggest challenges I faced with Oribit, was the amount of math involved simply because the game is so circle oriented.

The ship’s movement code is based off a piece of code that creates orbits ala planets. Which for that purpose, it would work great. If you just hold down the left or right arrow keys, the ship orbits at a smooth, consistent rate that looks convincing.

However, I needed to break that code in order to allow changes in direction. Here is what was needed to just move left:

//Used to fix ship Twitch
if (!left)
{
angle += spaceshipSpeed + 1;
}
//Circle Math :<

var rad:Number = angle * (Math.PI / 180);

display.x = origin.x + (Math.cos(rad) * radius);
display.y = origin.y + (Math.sin(rad) * radius);

angle += spaceshipSpeed;

display.rotation = angle - 90;

left = true;

And one of the first things you might notice from playing the game is that changing direction is not perfect. The ship just doesn’t quite go to exactly where it should. The reason is when there is a change in direction the sin/cos numbers flip creating a different angle which is a massive pain. My little fix for that was the left bool, which tried to counteract it to a limited degree of success.

Getting the bullets to travel in a straight line, based on the parent object (whatever is firing the bullets) rotation. This was a key problem which was also eventually solved with math

display.rotation = parentRotation - 90;

vy += Math.sin(degreesToRadians(display.rotation)) * bulletSpeed;
vx += Math.cos(degreesToRadians(display.rotation)) * bulletSpeed;

public function degreesToRadians(degrees:Number) : Number
{
return degrees * Math.PI / 180;
}

All this was before any gameplay was actually realized.

Bullet Patterns underwent a huge overhaul after I discovered that the built-in function of Event Timers in AS3 cause problems quickly. For those who don’t understand here is an example. The Eye (The big floating thing that inexplicably tries to kill you) has 36 individual bullet spawners. When a pattern is created I tell each bullet spawner how fast it should spawn bullets and how many.

Originally the bullet spawner would set a timer based on how fast the bullets were supposed to spawn, when the timer hit 0, a bullet would then spawn. Simple right? Well, the inherit problem with timers is that different computers do those timer calculations quicker than other sometimes. This causes all sorts of scary things like patterns becoming desynced.

So the solution was to make everything dependent on the frame rate. Frame Rates are set in-game and no matter how fast a computer is, it stays consistent. Thank you Matt for showing me what real programmers do.

Orbit Postmortem

I just finished my prototype for a flash game I have been working over the past week. Originally designed for the iPhone, Orbit is a shoot-em-up, or otherwise known as a bullet hell game. As the name implies, bullets are flying everywhere. The game is top down and you control a spaceship, which constantly fires.

Your enemy is a giant HAL like eye in the center of the screen and by pressing left or right your ship moves in a circle around it. That’s it. Just dodge the bullets. You can play the full game HERE.

So why did I make it?

For the past few months I have been creating mostly puzzle games or turn based. These are all very methodical, logic/strategy oriented and I wanted to try to break away from that. So I created what is known as a twitch based game; something that players need to react too immediately, on almost a gut instinct in order to survive.

What is new about it?

Bullet Hell games have been around for a while, Ikaruga and Geometry Wars are fantastic examples of the genre. However, when you look at all of them, most of them all play in a similar fashion. The game is vertical, with enemies streaming down towards the players ship, raining bullets.

On the iPhone specifically that control set is extraordinarily difficult, as it almost requires the use of four way directional movement.

I order to create a game designed at this target platform, I chose to go with a defined circular method of movement. First, as far as I am aware it is unique, no other bullet hell game has done something like that before.

Secondly, by binding the player to the circumference of a circle they are only given two options, Go left, or Go right. Which fits perfectly with the iPhone, by pressing the left hand side of the screen, the ship rotates counterclockwise, and by pressing the right the ship rotates clockwise.

Designing the Game

Bullet Hell games are all about creating patterns and directing the player where they can go. Depending on the rate of fire, the number of rounds, and the reload time of the bullet spawners an infinite number of patterns are available, which becomes the fun part of the design process.

Over the course of the game the player is challenged by five different stages of bullet patterns that get progressively harder.

The bullet patterns are the meat of the game, but to add flavor there is a powerup system, which gives added bonus’s to the player. Double shot, rapid fire, creating a shield, are all genre standards. However, I wanted to add a bit of Galaga to the game. One of the powerups allows for a second ship to be created that is 180 degrees opposite from the player. And the way all of the bullet patterns are designed there is consistently a safe spot 180 degrees away from the player’s ship. So in theory as long as the player next makes a mistake, their firepower is doubled.

Choice has always been something I strive to give the player and at the beginning of the game they are face with 1 of three. More aggressive players can get a permanent increase to their damage, defensive players can get an increase to the number of lives at the beginning of the game, and the last option doubles the amount of powerups that drop from the eye.

The game is still a prototype, bug probably still happen (I’m not the best coder in the world), but it should be playable and beatable. If you enjoy it, or have suggestions let me know at zach@birnamwoodgames or on facebook.

On the State of Reviews

A medium is only taken seriously when someone can make a living critiquing it.

And with the number of media outlets dedicated to gaming, I think its safe to assume the business world takes us seriously.

We have had our own, with Loc, which has had its share of reviews, both good and bad, from a huge array of different people. And they come to the game as players, as blank slates, who are not connected to the development process whatsoever, which allows them to be critical.

Resident Evil 6 came out today, and yesterday it was blasted by a score of negative reviews, calling it a monstrosity of gameplay that is attempting to reach too many audiences.

But the thing is, no one besides the development team knows what went into creating that game. There is an untold story under the surface, which could have been nightmarish. The critic’s have no idea, and only other developers could attempt to speculate and understand. But until someone at Capcom attempts to bring light to that story, no one will ever know.

And the thing is, every game is like this. It takes anywhere between 6 months to sometimes 3 years to put out a game and during that time, anything can happen. A game can be remade three times, a team could internally combust, or someone could accidentally delete an entire repository.

Yet how good a game is, is determined by those who are peering through the glass, looking in at the boiler that development is and making a judgment.

The fact that any game actually finishes production is a unsung feat and for that alone every developer deserves a round of applause, no matter how monstrous their product may seem.