Hi there,

A while ago the October-Challenge was held. It went over the entire month, with the simple rule “make 1$ with a game.”

I planned to enter this game, but unfortunately the port wasn’t ready in time. So now, with a slight (and very miniscule) delay I present my iPhone-game!

Unstoppaball DX is a marble-style puzzler, in which you roll a ball (by tilting the iPhone, no less) through 30 varied levels.

Check out the trailer if you’d like to know more.

Also features a new soundtrack and ball-customization, with 36 balls available.

It’s now up on iTunes. Some say it might be the Best Game Ever. (it’s not) (it’s still fun, though )

-Matthew

I’m afraid I have to skip this mini-LD48.

I already lost a day to my dayjob, have no idea for a game, and need the time to complete this:

-Matthew

…. it’s just that the GF dropped on me two days ago that she wanted to go up to f’ing Sacramento on Saturday for a birthday (I live in San Francisco). Besides this last minute annoyance, I’m excited about LD #21, but still haven’t quite figured out my plan. =)

I’m developing for iOS in Xcode 4. I’ll be using the terminal screenshot script that was posted today. I actually used it in the last Mini LD; and it works reasonably well, especially considering you don’t need to install any extra software, which is nice.

I have my own small library for iOS games, which is the accumulation of what I’ve learned until now. There are still some glaring holes, like that fact that I have no idea how to build/import any kind of map haha! But I’m sure I’ll figure something out. Last Mini LD, I figured out collision detection on my own.

Hmmm, since a lot of entries include photos and stuff, maybe I should do the same. I’m at work, so I won’t be taking pictures of my messy house, however, I started dicking around on some music last night, warming up for this weekend’s challenge (don’t worry! I won’t actually use it. And my “song” really sucks anyway, haha). So I included a few screenshots of that.

Wee!

Hey folks! Pyoing is live on the app store. I didn’t do much to it past the compo version, but my friend / co-worker Yann at Lucky Frame made the sounds for it. He also spent all day yesterday throwing together this amazing promo video and website.

I guess I can do a bit of a post mortem? Eh?

So about 12 noon, uk time I decided to throw my hat into the ring on this LDmini. I was otherwise just watching tv that weekend, and wanted to muck about with my game engine a bit more. I spent about two hours working towards getting something like Rampart in place, where you could place bases, and then you would be able to chuck cannonballs from your base. That seemed to fulfill the war theme, and was something I had been interested in making since the last LD.

At around 4, I went out to have a BBQ and did that until around 5:30pm. It was nice to get away from the compo for a bit and kick a ball around, and eat a ton, etc, etc. While I was there I talked to Yann (the man in the gif above) about the game, and he suggested a few things. First that I should just make crossfire, forget all of the ramparts stuff. Second he asked if I was using box2d, and I said “no, I think I can figure out the physics just fine thanks”. When I got home I spent about 5 minutes banging my head against the idea of doing the physics myself, and then about 20 minutes setting up box2d. I think I went to sleep that night with all of the basics in, except for the win / lose states. You could chuck around the balls, etc.

The next day, I got started on it and first put in the win / lose states. Then I did the full game loop with the beginning and ending screens. It was nice to have a tweener library around to get cool animations for everything without much work at all. I play tested it a bunch with my partner, and decided to add the limited shots mechanic. That made the game a whole bunch more even, and about strategy. After that, I still had some time, so I did the retina display version of the game. I had the graphics pretty well integrated with the box2d stuff, so I had to retune everything for the larger masses that were flying around. This resulted in the retina and non retina versions of the game playing slightly different. Hopefully this is not a huge problem. The last thing I did was integrate the audio engine, and throw in a few sfx. They were not super great, but good enough. I think I finished everything up by around 11pm. I want to say that the whole process took about 11 hours of computer time to get finished.

The next morning, Yann did all the sfx over again, and it made everything better, and we submitted to the app store. Done

The final thing was all the promo video, which is basically a scene for scene rip of the crossfire video. That took about a day to do, and we had to learn apple motion. Our greenscreen was a pink blanket purchased from a charity shop around the corner:

Anywho, thats about it! Here are a few promo codes, if you could please post the one you use in the comments, that would be great! If you don’t get one, let me know and I can post some more:

A4PE3LMF7AL6
EYJJWAFXKRNL
NFMN6LNJKKMY

Yay. I finally polished the graphics of my LD 16 entry “Where is the cheese” and submitted it to the iPhone App Store.
Get it if you like it.

Badass Frog postmortem – the ‘meh’ factor

After my LD #11 ‘Minimalist’ entry was voted “most innovative” game, I’ve been trying to pride myself as “that guy that makes innovative games”. So I thought long and hard about the theme for LD #13, “Roads”, trying to come up with something innovative. But the creative juices just weren’t flowing, and it didn’t happen (I’d also just bought Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip for Wii, which was taking time away from ‘designing time’). After 12 hours, with no good ideas for a game I was actually enthused about making, I decided to make a simple Frogger clone – at least this way I could hone my Processing skills, and learn the ins-and-outs of Mobile Processing.

Some thoughts about developing for mobile devices

Turns out there is a whole “other world” of mobile development that I just hadn’t really thought all that hard about. (more…)