Photon Storm

No more cheese Gromit: The future of Photon Storm

Rich — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:50:37 +0000

So the cat was let out of the bag today and it’s true: I’m leaving my very good friends at Aardman Digital and heading for pastures new. Giving up the “day job” and becoming a freelancer / indie dev hybrid. As you can appreciate this is both an exciting and somewhat scary move, especially being [...]

What if your game characters had children?

Rich — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:15:37 +0000

Very often as indie developers we’re responsible for both the game build and game story. And that’s assuming there even is a story in the first place. We don’t typically create “game bibles”, meticulously planned out for months in advance. And other than perhaps doing a sequel, nearly every game we make is treated as [...]

30 years of being a game developer in 3000 words

Rich — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:22:01 +0000

I borrowed the majority of this text from a great private forum I’m on, where everyone gave a potted biography of who they are and how they got to where they are today as a means to introduce themselves. I wrote my introduction 3 years ago and have toyed many times with the idea of [...]

Flod 4 Released for JS and AS3 – New tracker module formats supported

Rich — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:26:48 +0000

For those unfamiliar with Flod, it is a set of JavaScript and AS3 libraries written by Christian Corti, that can accurately playback lots of different Amiga, PC and Atari ST music formats natively. It supports all of the common formats: FastTracker II, Ultimate Soundtracker, ProTracker, NoiseTracker and lots more including DeltaMusic, David Whittaker, FredEd and Jochen [...]

Nutmeg: Our HTML5 Mobile Browser platformer game is looking for sponsors

Rich — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:19:35 +0000

We put the finishing touches to our first HTML5 Mobile Browser game tonight and it’s now ready to find a home with a sponsor. Called Nutmeg, the game is a single “button” platformer set over 5 challenging levels. An increasing variety of baddies, spikes, traps and tricky jumps to negotiate stand between you and rescuing [...]

Veracode Defender – from concept art to final game

Rich — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:08:49 +0000

I’m pleased to say that our latest game is released. Veracode Defender is a Flash retro-styled tower defence game. It was a departure from our normal titles in that we made it specifically for a client, something we’ve never done before. It all came about via a casual tweet between ourselves and Melissa, a chiptune composer [...]

The one in which we do a podcast interview, VJ at Blip Fest and tech edit an HTML5 book

Rich — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:02:40 +0000

It’s been a busy few weeks for both Ilija and I. He has been off in Melbourne VJing at the Blip Festival. It was the biggest chip music event to hit Australia and had a formidable line-up including Bit Shifter, Nullsleep and my personal favourites Trash80. There are various videos and pictures of the show, all [...]

Flash Gaming Summit 2012 – 15% discount and 2 free tickets giveaway

Rich — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:33:59 +0000

If you’re able to get to San Francisco on March 4th 2012 (the day before GDC) then I’d strongly recommend attending the Flash Gaming Summit. This is the 4th year it has been running and it’s a great place to meet pretty much everyone of any importance in the Flash gaming world. Sponsors, [...]

Indie Game Music Bundle 2 is here including the Cat Astro Phi soundtrack

Rich — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:12:28 +0000

The Indie Game Music Bundle 2 is here. You can pay what you want for 5 indie game soundtracks including Aquaria, Sword and Sworcery, To the Moon, Jamestown and Machinarium. But if you pay $10 or more you’ll also get the complete soundtracks for another 9 games (so far!) one of which is the superb [...]

The Reality of HTML5 Game Development and making money from it

Rich — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:44:10 +0000

Note: This was written near the end of January 2012 and as such reflects the state of the technology and markets at the time. Everything is moving so fast a lot of the information below is subject to change, so bear that in mind. HTML5 game development and indeed the abilities of web browsers are [...]

HTML5 Game Devs.com is Live

Rich — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:46:53 +0000

As I mentioned in my New Year post I am focusing a lot on HTML5 / JavaScript game development at the moment. I’ve been investigating the scene for a while and there seemed to be a real lack of game developer specific sites. So I created one. HTML5 Game Devs.com is now live in its [...]

A quick glance back and a long look forward

Rich — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:54:52 +0000

Happy New Year! 2011 was certainly eventful. While I won’t dwell too long on the past I will pick out a few key moments and drop my 2012 thoughts into the mix. 2011 was the busiest year yet in terms of blog posts. As well as a new redesign we published 104 articles. Everything from [...]

Play Jingle Balls – Our Christmas gift to you all :)

Rich — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:39:47 +0000

I felt like making a “Game in a Day” and this little Christmas mini-game pinged out the other end as the result. 6 hours last night, about the same again tonight and we’re done. And putting me to shame Ilija did the graphics in just 1 hour, on a lunch break at work. Damn his [...]

Amiga Demo Gallery and JavaScript MOD/XM Replay Source

Rich — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:43:53 +0000

I’m a massive fan of demos, both old-school and new. There’s just something elegant, creative and raw about them. A while ago I downloaded the complete Break’s Amiga Demo Scene Collection. And I’ve been pouring through them file by file, taking screen grabs of the bits that caught my eye! I’m not very far through [...]

Home Sheep Home 2 is out! Developer insights into the cross-platform build process

Rich — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:26:59 +0000

This has been a long time coming. Nearly a years worth of puzzle boarding, planning, animating, development, testing and packaging. But it’s finally out! Home Sheep Home 2: A Little Epic landed today across multiple platforms: Web (Flash), iOS (iPhone and iPad HD) and PC Download and is sitting happily on homesheephome2.com waiting for you to [...]

A year in Pixels and Paint (2007)

iLKke — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:18:36 +0000

A collection of 48 pieces of artwork created during 2007, spanning pixel, pencil and paintbrush styles. Full gallery after the jump! Let us know your favourite in the comments

MojoCreatives talk about the making of Car Games in Flash

Rich — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:22:06 +0000

The “car” and “racing” genre is heavily catered for in the Flash gaming space. But it’s also large enough that there are companies dedicated just to producing these sorts of games. MojoCreatives is one such company and in this short interview I caught up with their CEO Michael Ojo about this unique space in the gaming spectrum: [...]

Croco Magnet – HTML5 Retro Game Remake

Rich — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:39:09 +0000

Denathorn Games have released this sweet little retro-remake: Croco Magnet. Based on an Amstrad CPC original you control a blue ball that bounces left/right (rebounding off any wall it hits) and must clear the level of radiation, while avoiding the “nasty green blob things”. I really like the fact that the game flip-screens when you [...]

Flash Game Dev Tip #15 – Collectable Particles

Rich — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:02:34 +0000

Tip #15 - Collectable Particles in Flixel This tip was born from a question I see raised in the Flixel forums often: How do you use an FlxEmitter to emit more complex particles. I.e. ones that are animated or have their own logic, and how could a player interact with those particles? We'll solve this [...]

Outpost: Haven – Alien Breed for the Web generation. Screen shots and trailer video.

Rich — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:00:03 +0000

"The owl men are here, and they're so very hungry." - Gary Mason, former head of security. A distress call wakes you and your crew mate from C-Sleep. A suspected rad leak at the nearby Outpost space station needs investigating. Don't worry, it should just be a quick jump in, jump out job... This is [...]