Nostatic Software Dev Blog

Ascent of Kings Review Round-up

2013-02-25T15:38:00.000-08:00

Some reviews of Ascent of Kings have popped up around the internet over the past week. You can check out what they had to say from the links below:

Chet & Jon
Indie Gamer Chick
IndieGames.com
CGR Undertow
gameding

Working on Playstation Mobile

2013-02-08T19:35:00.000-08:00

Yep, that's my game intro screen running on the Vita. I have spent the past couple of days porting my 2D game engine to PlayStation Mobile.

The PSM platform is C# based, so it was a really good match for me. Even though PlayStation Mobile uses MonoDevelop and I use Visual Studio, the two environments are assembly-compatible and I can still do the bulk of my work in Visual Studio and mostly just use MonoDevelop as a means for final deployment.

The hardest part of the process was getting the drawing code working. PSM provides a pretty low-level graphics interface, so it took me a while before I had my first triangle onscreen. When working with a new graphics api, the first triangle is always the hardest. There are a million different reasons (matrix transforms, shader issues, culling, bad vertices, bad indices, etc.) why your triangle won't render. Once you can see something, you can fix what is wrong. When you can't see anything you don't have much to go on.

After getting my first rendering working, the next step was sprite batching. PlayStation Mobile provides a batching implementation, but it is integrated with a higher-level scene interface. That is a great help to people who are doing new game development, but for someone like me who already has a game engine that I'm trying to put on top of PSM it doesn't work. Fortunately, I've written sprite batching systems before, so it wasn't too much of an obstacle.

Then it was off to the races. Input was easy. I've already integrated with multiple touch systems, so PSM touch input went in smoothly. I haven't done buttons/thumbsticks yet, but I don't anticipate too much of a challenge. Sound was easy - the PSM audio interface is clean and exactly what you look for.

I started working with PSM yesterday, and I had my first game (my ubiquitous test game "Sokoban for Beginners") running in the simulator this afternoon. With that validation, I pulled the trigger on a PlayStation Mobile publishing license. After a few hours and a bit of messing about with publishing and application keys, I had a game running perfectly on my Vita.

Look for some "Ascent of Kings", "Quiet, Please!", "Kung Fu FIGHT!" - and just maybe a bit of "Tunescape" and more speculatively some "Block Zombies" on a PlayStation Mobile device near you.

Ascent of Kings Update

2013-01-11T16:56:00.000-08:00

"Ascent of Kings", the game I made for Ludum Dare #20, is now back on the top of my development stack. I've been making great progress and have added a bunch of new content. I'm hoping to finish things up over the next couple of weeks.

Since I snubbed the Xbox with "Quiet Christmas" (I ran out of time before the holiday) my current plan is to release Ascent there first, with mobile versions soon thereafter.

Quiet Christmas

2012-12-14T09:08:00.002-08:00

I came up with the idea of making a Christmas episode of "Quiet, Please!" about a week ago, and I've been madly working on it ever since. It is almost finished now, and I should be submitting it to the various mobile app stores soon.

Maybe an Xbox version, too, if I can think of a good way to make a trial work.

"Quiet, Please!" Released for iOS

2012-08-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

"Quiet, Please!" is now available as a universal app for iPhone/iPad. You can find it here in the App Store.

Unfortunately, because Apple's policies prevent me from doing a free trial of the game, only a paid version ($.99) is available. I plan to do a web-playable trial at some point to work around this limitation.

iOS Releases Coming Soon

2012-08-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

The lack of apple dev hardware is the only thing that has been holding me back from being able to develop for iOS. I finally took the plunge last week and bought the cheapest refurbished MacBook Pro and iPod Touch 4 that I could.

Given that I was already using Unity to deploy for Android, the additional work to get it running for iOS was pretty minimal. It took me a while to get used to working on a Mac for the first time in about 20 years, though. The verdict - I'm not a big fan. Usability is very much in the eye of the beholder...

Anyway, I've got my games mostly up and running. Ironically, it took me more time to figure out how to publish to the App Store than it did to get iOS ports running in the first place. I've got that pretty much sorted out now though, so expect to see my games on an iOS device near you soon.

"Quiet, Please!" Out Now For Android

2012-06-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce that "Quiet, Please!" is now available for Android devices.

You can get it from either the Amazon Appstore (US only) or Google Play.

Here are the marketplace links:

Amazon: Full Game or Free Trial

Google Play: Full Game or Free Trial

I also made a little trailer for the game. It is a mashup of clips from youtube videos people posted of themselves playing the Xbox version. The Android version is identical except for the addition of touch controls.

Potential New Game

2012-05-22T11:50:00.001-07:00

So, the idea is to make an economic simulation and exploration game in the style of the Settlers or Anno games, but set in space.

I'm keeping the graphics simple - 2D with a pixelized style. I'm also focusing on a touch-friendly interface from the start, rather than adapting to it later.

It seems promising so far. We'll see...

"Quiet, Please!" Released on Xbox Indie Games

2012-04-12T08:41:00.001-07:00

After an annoying day at school, you just want some peace and quiet.

But everything at home is so noisy!

Explore, interact with your environment and solve puzzles. 3 kittens included with every purchase!

"Quiet, Please!" is now available on here in the Xbox Marketplace.

Android, cross-platform development and touch controls

2012-04-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been working on getting my 2D game engine running in Android. I had been planning on giving Android a try for a while now, so when Unity released a free version for Android and iOS it got me to finally take the plunge.

I picked up a Kindle Fire, and had things mostly working after about a day. It helped a lot that I had already ported my engine to Unity. I did this mostly to use their web browser deployment for Ludum Dare releases - people are much more likely to play a game if they can run it in a browser rather than downloading an XNA binary. It also really helped that I had already done touch controls for Windows Phone versions of my games. Aside from getting the build and deployment process set up, porting to Android didn't really add many platform-specific development challenges.

"Quiet, Please!" is now running pretty well on the Kindle Fire. I have a few more little things to do, and then I'll release it on the Amazon Marketplace and Google Play.

I've also been working on a mobile version of "Ascent of Kings", a little platformer I made for Ludum Dare a while back. Good platforming touch controls are notoriously difficult to do. While I wouldn't say my controls are great, I now have a touch D-Pad that feels pretty good to use. The gameplay in "Ascent of Kings" isn't very twitch, so I think it will work well enough.

Overall, I'm pretty happy right now with the state of my 2D game engine. With virtually no platform-specific game code, I can now deploy for Xbox, Windows Phone and Android. iOS should be an easy next step - except for the fact that I need to buy a Mac...

"Quiet, Please!" now available for Windows Phone

2012-03-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

"Quiet, Please!" is now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Everything in the house is so noisy! You just want to be alone and go to bed.

Explore, interact with your environment and solve puzzles.

3 kittens included with every purchase!

Playing with Deferred Rendering in XNA

2012-02-22T10:53:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to do a deferred rendering of my graphics pipeline for a while, but hadn't gotten around to it until recently.

In standard forward rendering, your geometry shaders directly output the image that the user sees. In deferred rendering, they output an intermediate buffer (called a "G-Buffer") that contains more information for each pixel - generally color, normal and depth. The advantage to this is that it allows you to do various processing (most notably lighting) on the scene as a whole after all of the geometry has been rendered.

The simplifies the shaders significantly. In Block Zombies, for example, I have three main geometry shaders - one for the terrain, one for models and one for particles. In forward rendering, each shader needs to independently handle lighting, fog and shadowing. With deferred rendering, they don't need to do any of this - it gets done once on the entire scene.

Another huge benefit is the ability to have more lights in the scene. Block Zombies only has a single, directional light source. I would have loved to have more lighting - muzzle flashes, glow from flares, flashes from explosions - but it just wasn't practical in the forward rendering model. With deferred rendering, I can have pretty much as may lights as I want.

In the screenshot above, I have a very subtle directional light, a spotlight from a flashlight and point lights for all of the windows in all of the houses.

Overall, moving to deferred rendering is a big win for me and I think I'll use it as my primary rendering model going forward.

"Quiet, Please!" Almost Finished

2012-02-20T10:21:00.000-08:00

I'm getting close to completion on my little adventure game, "Quiet, Please!". Above is an overview shot of the current gameplay area.

I'm aggressively trying to control the scope on this project - my goal is to keep development time under a month (time actually spent on it - not calendar time). So far, I'm in pretty good shape.

The resulting game will, as a consequence, be fairly short. Hopefully it will still be enough to convince people to part with one of their precious dollars. We'll see.

Block Zombies Review Round-up

2012-01-26T09:59:00.000-08:00

Block Zombies has been out for a week now, and a number of reviews have popped up around the internet. The verdict? They like it!

Trendy Gamers gave it a 9/10, saying it "may just be the most outrageously fun and charming game a single dollar can buy".

Armless Octopus gave it 4/5 stars, saying "the game’s carefree visual style and upbeat tempo makes Block Zombies! an absolute delight to play". They also awarded it their "Bloody Tentacle" of the week.

Did Not Finish says "Block Zombies is the embodiment of everything that is right with Xbox Live Independent Games".

OtakuDante's Gaming says it offers "escape from the normal zombie titles that plague the video game marketplace".

Dealspwn calls Block Zombies "a damn fine shooter".

Block Zombies Released!

2012-01-18T19:01:00.000-08:00

I did up a little release trailer for Block Zombies, which is now available on the Indie Games section of the Xbox marketplace.

The marketplace game page is here.

Now on to the next game... :-)

Quiet, Please! Post Compo Version

2012-01-04T13:40:00.001-08:00

Since making "Quiet, Please!" for Ludum Dare 22, I've taken some time to improve on it and add additional content. I was really happy with what I was able to accomplish in the 48hr time period, but I had a lot of ideas that I was not able to get to.

The biggest criticism of the compo version was its length. This updated version has new areas, new and improved puzzles, an intro and a lot more sound and art assets.

The new version of "Quiet, Please!" can be played in a web browser (Unity) here:

Quiet, Please! Post Compo Version

The original, 48hr entry is here.

Here are a few screenshots from the new version of the game:

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T09:06:00.001-08:00

Quiet, Please!

2011-12-19T11:10:00.001-08:00

This past weekend, I made a little adventure game for the Ludum Dare 48-hour competition.

Whenever I do something like this, I'm amazed at how much it is possible to accomplish in two short days when you really focus. I'm also reminded how hard it is to complete a game in a short period of time...

Anyway, have a go at the game. It is called "Quiet, Please!" and it is about a girl who just wants to be alone (the theme for the competition was "Alone").

Play it on the web here.

Ludum Dare entry page here.

Title Screen Sequence for Block Zombies

2011-10-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

I added a bit of violence to the title screen sequence in Block Zombies.

First stab at box art for Block Zombies

2011-10-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

As part of putting together a playtest build of Block Zombies I took an initial shot at doing some box art. I'm going for something simple, but (hopefully) eye-catching.

Flamethrower and RPG in Block Zombies

2011-10-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

I've added a flamethrower and an RPG to round out the array of weapons in Block Zombies. I think that should just about do it for the core combat mechanics.

Block Zombies Playable Credits

2011-09-09T11:57:00.001-07:00

Block Zombies will carry on my tradition of having playable credits in my games. This is what I have so far.

I haven't decided exactly what the "game" will be yet. Maybe you get a trophy if you manage to take out all of the zombies.

Block Zombies: Aerial News Footage of the Infected Zone

2011-09-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a video using the CRT screen effect I mentioned in my last blog post.

I'm planning on using something like this as an intro scene, or perhaps as the backdrop for my game menus.

Using shaders to create an old CRT TV screen effect

2011-08-30T15:08:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with adding an effect to make Block Zombies look like it is playing on an old, crappy TV. It still needs tweaking, but it is starting to get close to what I want.

Using a couple of screen-space shaders, I'm blurring, adding scanlines, desaturating and adding darkened corners.

I'm not planning on using this effect in-game, but I'm thinking that the intro will be some sort of news-ticker with footage of the scene of the zombie outbreak.

Block Zombies: Dark and Stormy Gameplay

2011-08-26T12:22:00.001-07:00

I've been working on adding darkness, thunder and lightning to Block Zombies.

I used a modified version of the technique I used for Kung Fu FIGHT! - tweaking parameters in my bloom shader to do most of the work. Because Block Zombies is 3D, I also mess with the light direction, which does fun things with the shadows when lightning strikes.

Because the effect is just manipulating lighting and bloom parameters, it is basically cost-free. I haven't added in actual rain yet, since that definitely wouldn't be cost-free, and I'm not sure I can afford the extra overhead.

The glowy zombie eyes, windows and sparks are done by reserving a section of my color palette that my shaders recognize and treat as being self-lit.