Hey everyone.

So, progress has been moving along with Weapons on Wheels 2 this past week.  I finally have the car handling down and it feels very solid, big thanks to some of the guys at the TIGSource forums for assistance in the matter.

I also spent a good portion of the week tweaking the art (I’m still in the process of re-drawing all of the actual weapons, I didn’t like how they turned out the first time and they look much better this time around).

I know the screenshot doesn’t show much, but it’s pretty much what the game is at the moment, a car that drives around in circles.  You can see the old version of what is a booster attached to the car, there.

As for the rest of today (and the rest of the week for that matter), I’m going to focus on getting all of the art for the weapons finalized and even the four stages of damage to each car (isn’t that just going to be awesome-looking?).  After that, I want to get some minor, basic stuff out of the way.  For example, have the camera follow the mouse so the player can manually get a better look in front / behind them.  I figure this is an okay control scheme since the mouse buttons are a crucial part of the game, anyway.  I also want to work on getting large textures to tile and repeat so I can create enormous tracks.  Then, of course, I want to add in smaller things, like tire marks and camera shaking.

Once this week is done I will probably be able to work on bigger things.  Probably make a very simple testing track and start working on enemy AI (with waypoints) and start giving the weapons some function.

Alright, back to work!

Hey guys.  Early today, Trophiends was released on Newgrounds.  Go give it a play if you haven’t already and please don’t forget to vote, it really does help.  I’d be extremely happy if we can make it to the front page or even just win a daily award.  Also, late last week Trophiends was also released to Kongregate, too, so go play and vote there, too!

If you’re tired of the main portion of the game, don’t forget to check out the user-created levels, there’s some really interesting stuff in there.  You can even make your own levels very easy and share them with the click of the mouse.

Weapons on Wheels 2

Progress has been made this past week on my next game.  I spent a good portion of my time scrapping the designs I had for the original eight cars (seen here) for a more unanimous design.  This helps fix a lot of problems I was going to have later on with customizations.

As you can see, the cars are all the same with just a different paint job.  The actual designs of the cars aren’t terribly important, as long as they can be clearly identified (the red car, blue car, etc) then it’ll be fine.  Plus, as you can see from the image, the weapons, boosters, etc will be covering about 50% of the car anyway.

I also began tweaking what I had of the original prototype of the game to have the cars handle more fluidly – to have them “feel” like actual cars with power and mass to them but still be fast and snappy is a balance I’m trying to achieve early on in development.

My plans for this week are to finalize (or at least come close to finalizing) the movement of the cars and begin work on collision detection, car vs car and car vs wall / obstacle.  I’ll also work on animating and implementing some of the weapons into the game (probably not have them be functional, just attach them to the cars and whatnot).

Alright, go play Trophiends on Newgrounds now and don’t forget to vote!

So, Trophiends was released about a week ago now.  Practically the day it was released, Playtomic’s servers took a dump and never recovered.  For those of you who don’t know, Playtomic offers API’s for tracking game performance as well as other services such as level sharing (which Trophiends utilized).  It seems that they’re currently going under financial issues and to be honest, I don’t see them being around much longer.  It sucks, since they had so much potential.  They were always troubled with finicky up-time, though.

What does that mean?  Well, no one who created levels with the built-in level editor could save them.  This sucked.

The past day or two I spent my time swapping out Playtomic for GamerSafe’s LevelVault.  It was a very smooth transition besides one bug I couldn’t work out (level thumbnails wouldn’t save properly to the server).  I eventually worked it out with the aid of the FGL community and as of right now, the new version of Trophiends with a working level-sharing system is live.  Go try it out and be one of the first to have your levels saved to the game.

For anyone wondering, I believe Trophiends will be released to NewGrounds / Kongregate sometime early next week.  From there it’ll make its way around the internet and hopefully get viral.

Weapons on Wheels 2

Sorry to say, but I haven’t touched Weapons on Wheels 2 in the past few days.  By no means does this mean the game is in trouble, I’ve just been busy with other things.

Here’s a screenshot for you guys though, these were going to be the eight cars featured in the game (they would have more than likely gone under some additional tweaking in design as the game went on).  I’m using the past tense here because as of the past week I’ve very much made up my mind to have 3D models for the cars.

Now, the game will be in 2D, that’s for sure, but I’d like to have 3D models of the cars made up (in Blender) and then utilizing a tool like Swift3D, convert them into 2D for use in the game.  This will allow me to have some fun with the cars during gameplay.  (For example, if your car hits a mine, it might flip and bounce around a bit, in a cartoony-fashion.)

Plus I’d be able to use the 3D models in other ares too, the car-select screen, etc…

There’s one problem with this, though –  I’ve never created a 3D model in my life.

Learning how to design 3D models has always been something I wanted to do.  Not only does it look like fun as well as open up many new possibilities, it’s not a bad thing to have on your resume.  As a result, I’ve finally gotten a grip and started taking this learning thing seriously.  There are tons of incredible tutorials for this type of thing all over the internet (CGTuts and BlenderCookie.com just to name two).  I’ve already followed on of them the other day to create the model in the screenshot to the right, my first 3D model ever.  (It’s nothing new, plus I’m sure there are many problems – the fingers are creepy-looking when its rendered, but it’s not a bad start.)

Alright, that’s enough typing for me.  Just wanted to give an update on what’s going on, like I said, I’ll be making at least one post per week, like usual.

So it’s been a while.  Let me just get it out of the way that for the past month or so I haven’t been doing nothing, I’ve been doing a lot, actually.  However, everything I was doing ended up being for nothing.  I must’ve started and scrapped at least three separate projects.  It sucks, yes, but it’s best to nip it in the bud when you can first tell a game isn’t going to turn out how you were visualizing it rather than having it drag on.

However, I am working on a new project that seems to be a keeper – more on that in a little.  First, let’s get down to business.

Trophiends Released!

So after a few months of being up for auction, I finally got around to selling Trophiends to a very reputable sponsor, Jay from JayIsGames.com.  It was a great pleasure working with him and besides for an issue with getting the damn CPMStar ad working, the game-branding process went very smoothly.

Enough rambling though, go play the game and let me know what you think!  (If you get stuck on a level, just check out the walkthrough.)

While you’re at it, go read the great review from the writers of the JayIsGames blog.

For anyone unfamiliar with the game, here’s a quick summary.  In Trophiends, you play as either one, two, three, or even four little characters all trying to reach their respective trophy.  When all of the characters successfully reach their trophy (or even if some of them get killed) – the level is completed and you can move on.  The thing is, it’s not as straightforward as it seems.

Not only do you have to avoid hazards such as spike traps, TNT crates, electric poles, and shooting spikes, you also have to control all of the characters simultaneously.  This shines a very unexpected new light on the game making the otherwise simplest of levels much more difficult.

There are 30 levels, all of increasing difficulty, five extra bonus levels that are much more difficult than the other 30, and a secret reward for 100% successfully completing each level.

On top of that, one of the best features of Trophiends is the built-in, easy-to-use level editor.  You can create your own levels and easily share them with others either via a copy-and-paste code or automatically through the Playtomic servers.

I’m very proud with how this game came out and can’t wait to start hearing feedback.

Next Project

Now, with another game released, it’s time to get started on a new project.  (Well, granted, I should have started this project months ago, but things just didn’t work out that way.)

My next game will be a top-down racing game, the sequel to my first game that I released about two years ago – Weapons on Wheels.  Now, I like to believe that I’ve learned a lot over the past two years, so Weapons on Wheels 2 will be a vastly better game than its predecessor.

To be honest, though, Weapons on Wheels, being my first game, is one of my most successful games in terms of gameplays – if not the most successful.  With over 3.6 million sessions and about 1,000 plays per day, it easily shadows some of my other games such as Don’t Panic, with only 2 million sessions and about 500 plays per day.

Anyway, the point being, since Weapons on Wheels did so well (regrettably I didn’t have the state of mind to put a preloader ad on that game), Weapons on Wheels 2 is a logical step forward, what with my increased skill in both game design and development.

What Now?

What now?  Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go check out some feedback on Trophiends (seriously, go play it) and then get to work on Weapons on Wheels 2.  I will be posting at least once a week, just like old times – sorry again to any readers who were deeply saddened by that dry spell there, I won’t let it happen again 😉

Alright, so I’m two weeks late here.  Sorry about that.  What with finals and just generally procrastinating, I never got around to making this post.  Anyway, here’s what’s going on.

Space Fruit

I’m very happy to report that Space Fruit is nearly completed.  The gameplay is practically all there and I just implemented the pause menu last night.  I also have all of the necessary menus designed and ready to go.  In the next day or two I intend to implement the menu system and get the game to actually function like a game – what with a splash screen, main menu, etc…  After that I’m going to need to look up high score API’s and ad API’s and get them implemented (as little money as I’m probably going to make, I’d like to earn some from this game, alright?  Alright.)

Paranoia 2

I haven’t touched this since my last post.  By no means am I abandoning it, I have already put a lot of work into it plus I’ve been screen-recording every session I work on it.  Once Space Fruit is done I’ll try and wrap this up as fast as I can and get it released.  It should give you a laugh, maybe.

Next Project

I’ve had enough of Java, Eclipse, and Android development for now.  I went from 0% knowledge on the subject a few months ago to an (almost) completed Android game coded in Java using OpenGL, I have to admit I’m pretty proud of that.

Now, not to sound greedy, but I don’t feel I’ll be making nearly as much money in the mobile games market as I would normally with Flash games, so my next two or three projects will more than likely be Flash games.  In fact, I already have my next game planned and am very excited to get started on it soon.  So much so I’m pushing myself to get Space Fruit completed and shipped out so I can focus all of my attention on it.

Trophiends

Yeah, remember this game?  It’s still up for bidding on FlashGameLicense.  To be honest, I’ve received about 10 bids since it was uploaded in January, but they aren’t worth a quarter of what I feel the game is valued at, and I’m not going to undersell myself here.  I really have high hopes for Trophiends, more so than I’ve had with any of my past games.  These small bids are common and usually attract the bigger sponsors and larger, more serious bids – but for whatever reason, no one’s biting yet.

At the end of May I’m going to enable Quick Auction on it, which alerts sponsors that the auction will end in two weeks.  I’m hoping this will not only bring the game attention, but get the sponsors who have been watching the game to finally place their bids.  Now, if at the end of the Quick Auction I still don’t have any acceptable bids, I just won’t sell the game.  As per FlashGameLicense rules, I will have to wait six months before placing it back up for auction.  Whether or not it comes to that is yet to be determined.  I feel it’ll sell, though.  If I were bidding on something, I’d like to know there was a nearby end date so my money won’t be in limbo for 1 or 2 months, so Quick Auction should bring in more activity.

Alright, enough typing for me.