This leads me to something I thought a lot about when I wasn’t coding my game. Quality. I may not be able to work on this as much as I’d like, but I certainly won’t push anything out too soon just for the sake of getting it done. That would cheapen my efforts and my time spent building this simple, little game is much too precious for that. If I can’t release this and be proud of it, I won’t release it at all.

In keeping with the theme of quality, I want to mention a few things that distracted me (in a good way) from writing code for S’troidz. These are folks that I have a massive amount of respect for and whether they realize it or not, continue to inspire and motivate me.

The guys at Gaming Your Way rock. They just released an incredible Asteroids-style shooter called, CronusX. This game is extremely well polished and really raises the bar on my favorite flash game genre… shooters.

Richard Davey’s site, PhotonStorm has been one of my favorites for a long time. Richard along with Christian Corti released Flod, a module (.mod) replay library. This is a huge accomplishment. To get an idea of how this can effect the flash game movement, I was able to insert a five minute song with only an additional 130KB added to the file size. Yeah. 130. [pause for applause]

Ben Garney is the man. Or borg. I’m not certain as I have reason to believe he never really sleeps. Besides guiding development of PushButton Engine, working on Grunts (PBLabs WiP), tearing up the forums and staying in touch with people on IRC he managed to start a video series that offer quicktalks covering a wide range of features available with PBE.

Finally, I have to mention Danc from The Lost Garden. He recently published part 2 of his “Flash Love Letter” series and it really is a must-read for anyone interested in flash game development.

There are many others I’d like to add but these are the folks who really charged me up over this past week when I was pretty bummed I couldn’t fit more quality into S’troidz!

OK, here we go…

S’troidz! r7 Changelog

• Started implementation of final alien type.
• Extended powerup duration. Enjoy the carnage.

S'troidz! Controls

The next two weeks are jammed full of work and familial obligations. Therefore I won’t be doing much (or any) coding on S’troidz! I will however be leisurely exploring sound effects and art in an effort to hone in on what this thing should look and sound like.

Thanks for stopping by!

OK, in the interest of time (which is very short) here’s the latest change log and release of S’troidz!

S’troidz! r6 Changelog

• Added Hyperspace Jumps
• Added Shields
• Tweaked difficulty progression to add more s’troidz sooner
• Fixed Power Up “value not a function” bug
• Bonus points no longer countdown when there are only s’troid core left on the screen
• Many other misc. bug fixes

S'troidz! Controls

I skipped out on adding the final alien type so I’d like to start work on that for r7. I’m also interested in adding interstitials between waves that will eventually act as place holders for things like stats and whatnot. The elephant in the room is the latest, greatest PushButton Engine revision that conforms to Adobe’s coding standards. If time allows, I’ll start moving the S’troidz! codebase on top of it. Otherwise, it’ll be the first thing I tackle in week 8.

Stay tuned!

OK, so what’s new in S’troidz! r5? Let’s see!

Because of my busy schedule, I thought I’d go ahead and spend a boat load of cash on advertising now in hopes of building up some early hype. In fact, I hired one of the more prestigious ad design experts around and am quite pleased with the results:

WTF?!

The folks at Evony better LOOK OUT!

The other two tantalizing items you’ll notice this week are a new alien bomber and a core attractor power up.

The alien bomber is the third of four total alien types that make up the family of baddies in S’troidz! The bomber either drops from the top or rises from the bottom of the screen and (you guessed it) drops a bomb in it’s wake. Be sure and stay clear of the explosion as it destroys you instantly.

So as not to just make the game more difficult, I’ve added a core attractor power up. Cores are harvested from smaller s’troidz and once you’ve collected enough of them, a new life is granted. The attractor greatly increases the velocity by which the cores move toward your ship, quickly boosting your count and helping you get the most out of the bonus points available.

OK, enough yappin’. Play DISCREETLY on your browser NOW!

S’troidz! r5 Changelog

• Added Bomber Alien.
• Added Core Attractor Power Up.
• Fixed a nasty alien movement bug.
• Started work on game difficulty progression.

S'troidz! Controls

The big item up for development this week is the obligatory hyperspace! Once that’s complete, I’m going to try and nail down a better form of gameplay progression and finally lay the groundwork for the last alien type. (Martijn, if you’re reading this… I’m sorry but no high scores next week. )

Finally, to anyone who (like me) works full time on other things yet still wants to be a productive game developer, let me offer you this piece of advice:

Get something done.

Even if it’s something small like tweaking a game value, play-testing or doing a sanity check on your design. You may not be as productive as you’d like but don’t brush aside an opportunity to get something done… even if it seems trite.

Thanks for stopping by!

Forcing players to move often is fine provided you give them a vehicle to do so that’s easy and most importantly, fun. Unfortunately, a zero-drag ship tasked with collecting many items in a short period of time is not. It felt like trying to collect marbles on an ice rink. And we all know what that means: marbles + ice rink = not fun. So with a few taps on the keyboard I added something that would solve my problem and also completely change the style of the game. Friction. You’ll notice now that moving the ship feels more like maneuvering a drift car. This makes it easier to collect power ups, s’troid core and in my opinion, makes it more fun.

Also worth noting is the Loot Controller component I wrote to support any ’stuff’ that could potentially drop from killing baddies. It’s pretty basic in it’s current form. Internally, the loot controller rolls against a table that returns the manager in charge of creating the loot you ‘won’. The biggest problem with my implementation is that it relies completely on my Spawn-family of classes. This makes sharing the component (which was my hope) difficult should someone else have their own way of spawning game objects. Frankly, creating loot and spawner components fit for public consumption merits it’s own development timeline. Needless to say, it’s out of scope for the S’troidz! project.

OK, up and at ‘em!

S’troidz! r4 Changelog

• Implemented Loot Table Component
• Created S’troid Core Spawner and Sprites
• 50 S’troid Core collected grants a new life.
• Created Increased Fire Power, Power-Up
• Various bug fixes with just a hint of refactoring

S'troidz! Controls

I have a lot of non-game related work and traveling to do over the next dev cycle and thus won’t be releasing a new version of S’troidz! next week. Once my schedule clears up, I’ll start work on a new alien type and if time allows, another power up.

Thanks for visiting!

When I first started tying game objects together I used events exclusively. Having just started using PBE, I wasn’t interested in changing the tools I was comfortable with. What I didn’t expect was how events would behave when you start dispatching, handling and responding to many of them several times per second. The results were sketchy. Inconsistent. The worst case scenario is that an event never reaches the handler. Unfortunately for me, this happened way too often. Shoving aside a list of items I wanted to address this week, I decided to rewrite the communication layer using function pointers instead.

The results were fantastic. It’s precise, reliable and direct. The downside is that I lose the convenience behind using events. For a relatively simple game like S’troidz! it’s not too gnarly having to manage it all yourself but in the future, I’ll probably want to design a more formal system. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still using events for other, less timely things but if it’s super critical, time sensitive and/or needs to happen in a serial fashion, I’ll stick with callbacks. OK, moving on…

Explosions! If refactoring a bunch of code was for me, adding explosions was for the player. It’s almost silly how something like this can add so much value to a game. Maybe I’m just being juvenile but it really is more fun when you can blow crap up.

Speaking of blowing crap up, why don’t you give it a shot?

S’troidz! r3 Changelog

• S’troidz no longer spawn on top of your ship.
• Explosions!
• Adjusted flight pattern of the ‘Waver’ alien. (If you’ve been hanging out in the center of the screen, you may want to think about moving.)
• A few other minor bug fixes.

S'troidz! Controls

This week I plan on wrapping up last week’s tasks which included creation of a loot table and power-ups. If I can rip threw those, I might begin work on the next alien type.

Let me know if anything breaks or just plain sucks.

S’troidz! r2 Changelog

• Added a logo.
• Added a preloader.
• Removed mouse cursor when the game starts.
• Fixed focus so that you no longer have to click the game twice to start playing.
• Added another alien! (clear 6 waves to meet him)
• Improved fonts.
• Added labels to scoreboard.
• Linear game difficulty adjustment.
• New hero ship!
• New missle sprites for hero and aliens.
• Increased large S’troid speed slightly.
• More bugs!

Note: I’ve been testing Flex 4 builds of PBE and S’troidz! which target Flash Player 10.

S'troidz! Controls

I hope you enjoyed this week’s release of S’troidz! Up next is design and development of a “loot table” component that will allow for things like power-ups. I also need to suck it up and deal with some annoying gameplay issues. Finally, if there’s time I’d like to also start work on explosion sprites and maybe even sound.

As always your comments and criticisms are greatly appreciated.

• Created dev artwork for first alien (Slider) and projectiles.
• Wrote Slider controller PBE component.
• Wrote Slider missle controller PBE component
• Wired up all collision detection for Slider/Ship and Slider missle/Ship interaction.
• Increased the ship rotation speed (slightly).
• Fixed a bug inside my random number from range utility function.
• Cleaned up some unused spatial properties.
• Implemented a ’safe period’ that occurs when a ship spawns (there’s no visual cue yet and you’re still fair game after a new wave).
• Tweaked the game balancing a bit. Things get gnarly pretty quickly.

OK, here we go…

S'troidz! Controls

Please share with me any bugs you find or thoughts about gameplay. Even in this raw form, that sort of feedback forces me to shift my perspective and ultimately has a positive affect on development. Have something you’d like to see in a future build? Let me know! I have a pretty clear design in place but if your request is on the list I have no problems bumping up the priority.

One last bit… releasing on Fridays doesn’t make a lot of sense for a number of reasons. Going forward, all new revisions will be deployed on Tuesdays instead. The next one will add another alien craft (fun!), some refactoring and if time permits, start work on designing a PBE “Loot Table” component that will allow for power-ups to drop from s’troidz. I’m also thinking it’s about time I add some dev art for explosions as well.

So much to do! Thanks for visiting and above all else, thanks for playing!

First let me tell you quickly why I’ve chosen this format to develop my first game…

I practice a type of Agile development at my “real job” where projects are broken down into sprints, cycles or whatever-you-want-to-call-them and releases are built at the end of each. Requirements drive these cycles and business folks get to choose what they’d like to see next. This empowers them to decide what’s most important and allows developers to show and share their work quickly and efficiently. The beauty is that you have a working “thing” every development period.

Moving on…

After creating what’s essentially a skeleton PushButton Engine project, I lifted some art from the interweb (I’ll totally give it back) and fleshed out the sprite sheets I’d need for the ship avatar and of course, the S’troidz!. The nice thing about using a framework like PBE is that once the project was setup, I only had to write a controller to deal with motion and collision. Input, rendering, spatial logic and other goodies are done for you. I spent about 12 seconds creating missiles in Graphics Gale which gave me all the assets I needed to move around the game screen and shoot stuff.

The next block of development was dedicated to object spawning and collision detection crap. The latter was a pain in the neck. I wrote a class a while back that I wanted to use but it flaked out way too often. Then I tried the PixelPerfectCollisionDetection class but that kept throwing runtime errors due to null object references (and I liked that one too ). Finally, I settled on yet another class that seems to be working well so far. (I haven’t played with Corey O’Neil’s Collision Detection Kit yet but it looks pretty solid.)

By the end of this period I had finished a family of Spawn classes that instantiate game objects based on things like collision detection. This allows me to easily create smaller chunks of S’troidz! when a large one was hit for example.

Now for the final development block where I spent most of my time writing countdown components, text render components and my own version of Dynamic Game Balancing.

The countdown component worked out really well. It’s amazing how handy this is for various game actions. PBE gives you a simple method to call functions in the future but I needed a few more bells and whistles. Once complete I was able to hook up the scoreboard, life counter and bonus point text rendering components. S’troidz! rewards fast play and the combination of countdown and bonus point render components makes it easy for the player to know how they’re doing.

Most recently, the game balancing piece was activated which relieves me of having to pre-package gameplay that accomodates 2 or 3 difficulty levels.

That brings us to today’s demo! Please keep a few things in mind:

• Expect bugs.
• Expect S’troidz! to spawn right on top of your ship killing you instantly.
• Expect it to be either really hard or really easy while I fine tune the balancing.
• Expect a slight delay while the game resources load after pressing the start button. I’m experiencing an old embedded resource issue again.
• No fonts are being embedded so if you see a grey box with no text, click it and the game will begin.

Ok, I’ll shut up.

(NOTE: If you have trouble viewing it below you can view the swf directly here)

S'troidz! Controls

If you’ve gotten this far it wasn’t so awful as to push you immediately from the page. That being said, I know it probably wasn’t a blast either. Good, bad or indifferent I’d love to hear your thoughts.

That wraps up week zero. The next dev cycle will focus on the installation of alien crafts and if I have time, implement a period of invulnerability for player ships that respawn after being destroyed.

Thanks so much for visiting. S’troidz! will be back next week!

The game is called, S’troidz! and it is Asteroids-like in that there are enormous rocks floating around that you need to destroy. There’s also the occasional visit from those pesky aliens. Unlike Asteroids however it will have several different alien ships, various power-ups, bonus points awarded for fast play and music.

One important decision I made about S’troidz! that I hope I don’t end up regretting is integrating what could be called  “Dynamic Game Balancing“. Experienced developers might also call this “Bull Crap”. They’re probably right but I have a poor man’s version wired up that seems to be working well so far. The details behind it will be covered in a future post. Anyhoo… let’s look at some concept art!

S'troidz! Concept Art

If that didn’t whet your appetite for more S’troidz! just wait till the next post when you get to play a demo from the latest iteration!

Stay tuned!

Me making a game

After reading blogs from Gambrinous, Gaming Your Way, Photo Storm, Untold Entertainment (and some others I’m probably forgetting) I’m now curious to know what it like to design/develop a game (A finished game, not countless experiments *cough*unfinished-tripe*cough*), find a place for it to live and attempt to monetize it. Soup to nuts. Check please.

Now, I’ve read about the influx of iPhone and Flash game developers and how LoOnY it is to think that everyone will be successful and for the most part, that’s probably spot on. But ’success’ is relative and without an army of game developers over the years we’d probably still be playing Asteroids. So that being said… SIGN ME UP, CAP’N!!! I have no delusions of making a crap-load of cash but if I can beat Two by Two, I’ll be pretty stoked.

Here’s the plan…

1. Come up with a game idea.
2. Make the game.
3. Find artwork.
4. Publish it somewhere.
5. Make more ‘monay’ than Two by Two.
6. Blog about it so my grandchildren can have a good laugh.

If nothing else, perhaps it can act as yet another guide to help other newcomers become rich make games.

At the very least it’s another bit ‘o magic uncovered for yours truly.

UPDATE: I’ve already finished step 1! Asteroids, baby! Actually it’s more of an Asteroids-style shooter with a few tweaks. It feels doable and frankly, who the hell doesn’t like shooting rocks in space? I mean, come on.

Now it’s on to development! Stay tuned!