Basically I’ve mostly been doing one thing since the last update. It’s just that it’s quite a complicated thing

Here’s what I’ve done:

- Read in the xml animation file for Earth and got it working. The original game has a complex animation system that can handle way more than most normal animation systems. I’ve had to write code to read and interpret the xml file and make it work with my sprite engine. This was not easy and there’s still a lot to do.

- Read in the xml sprite files for Earth and got it working. Each sprite, which I’m calling a “game object”, can be made up of several animated sprites, or even several other game objects. This was also pretty complex especially when some parts of a game object control other parts of a game object!

- I made a test screen to show the animations and sprites that I’ve read in. This has proved very useful and I’ve made a video about it (see below).

- Finally I made code to create individual “instances” (that’s a programming term) of a game object using a template that has been read in from the sprite xml file. The in-game aliens are now instances based on a template and you can see that they animate and blink in the video I made.

Video!

This is my first developer video diary. In it I show of the game a little bit and then talk about the test screen I made to test animations and game objects (sprites).

I Hope you enjoy it!

Next up

- Keep going with the xml interpretation code. There’s still a lot to do such as making the aliens move around, making them fire, making the player ship animate as it moves, making particle effects for firing etc. All of this is controlled via the vast xml files that Cas and Chaz (the original developers) made. So I’ve got my work cut out for me!

For my January #onegameamonth I was making a game called Techno Zombies that turned out to be way too complex and I was rapidly running out of time to hit the Janurary deadline. So I decided to make an online version of my original Math Forever game instead.

The original Math Forever game was programmed in BlitzMax and is a downloadable executable for PC/Mac. People seemed to like it and so I thought it would be a good idea to bring it to a wider audience by making an online version. This time I used Monkey because it’s a cross-platform language that can output Flash builds, which is perfect for Math Forever 2.

Anyway you can play it here. Can you beat level 10? It gets pretty hard around that level.

Here’s a video of me losing on level 10:

Once again, it’s been a while since my last Titan Attacks mobile developer diary – 3 months in fact! That’s due to a bunch of things such as:

- Re-launching Spring Bonus on mobile.
- Overseeing the mobile port of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (it’s shipping soon.)
- Starting Techno Zombies as my January #onegameamonth but going way overboard and deciding to put it on the backburner for when Titan Attacks mobile is done.
- Making two other #onegameamonth games.
- Family illness (February was pretty much a write off due to colds/flus.)
- Going to GDC and having a week of unproductive jetlag when I got back.

At least when I was working on other games my Monkey game framework has improved a lot (Monkey is the programming language I use) as well as my knowledge of the language as a whole, which benefits Titan Attacks mobile.

Now I have an empty schedule, which feels nice, and have began working on Titan Attacks in earnest.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Controls

- Added a second finger to fire in easy mode but after showing it to Cas (designer of original Titan Attacks) we decided to make the alien parachute immune to your bullets so that we can stick with a single finger in “easy mode” instead.
- Tweaked the placement of the slider and fire button and their hit boxes to make it easier to move the ship right to the edge of the screen and to not clash with the fire button. This mode is still a bit awkward on iPhone so it’s likely that it’ll only be available on iPad, or if it is on iPhone, it will be an option only and “easy mode” will be the default.
- Fixed a bug where I couldn’t tap fire faster than the auto-fire. When I first saw this I got paranoid the game wasn’t receiving input fast enough and boosted the update rate to 120FPS instead of 60FPS, but was worried this could be really slow on old devices. Luckily now I’ve fixed it, I can safely go back to 60FPS.
- Had a meeting with Cas and decided to only support portrait on iPhone as there’s no where to put the slider under the game screen in landscape mode. iPad can support both orientations though.
- Made it so that you the slide range for easy mode (single finger) is smaller than the screen width so it’s easier to drag the tank right to the edge on phones.
- Made sure any finger can be used for positioning in easy mode and that the finger must be below the HUD to fire so it doesn’t clash with HUD button presses. Multi-touch controls are complex btw!
- Added device detection to framework and different default controls based on device.
- Added ability to flip the slider controls for left-handed people.

Testing

- Did a bunch of testing on iphone and verified that there’s no memory leak when changing screens. Pretty important as the iDevices have low memory and just bomb out if you use too much.
- Added an FPS Counter. Runs at 60FPS no problems at the moment, yay!
- Showed the game to some press and a bunch of indie friends at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco. They seemed to agree with our control choices and commented that the game felt smooth.
- Looked into why touching a finger onto the iPhone doesn’t show the ship right above it. It goes to the right with a right hand finger and left with a left hand finger! Can’t do anything about it as it just seems to be the way iDevices detect your finger. It’s not a big deal though, I was just being perfectionist and wanted it to detect the exact middle of my finger.

GUI

- Added button hover and click sounds.
- Add clicked and mouse over graphic for buttons.
- Added the ability to transistion screens on/off in sequence or at the same time. The transition state is exposed to the screen to do whatever it wants with such as slide on/off, fade in/out, alpha fade over another screen, zoom in/out etc. It’s pretty cool.
- Added ability to slide screens on/off and used it on the in-game menu and options menu.
- Added screen fade out/in including the music.
- Added word-wrapping to my framework. Had to learn how Monkey handles string functions differently from BlitzMax.
- Made game detect device orientation change and reconfigure GUI to either portrait or landscape mode based on device size. This looks pretty cool and people seem to be impressed when they see it in action.
- Zoomed out the game screen for iPad Landscape mode and placed controls underneath. Works well, although we may have the game screen full size and integrate the controls with the ground somehow instead.
- Increased hit box for in-game buttons and title screen buttons/URL on iPhone.

Engine

- Added floating text particle support to my framework and made aliens give out a floating “10″
- Made sure all images and sounds are properly discarded instead of relying on Garbage Collection. I did this because I read that GC can’t be trusted on all devices and I need to make sure I’m not wasting any previous Megabytes of memory on iDevices.
- Coded AnimdDef and Animator classes and applied to Sprite class. Supports Once, Loop (several or infinite), Ping Pong. Also supports reverse and a non-zero starting position (can be randomised).
- Coded Animation class which is an array of AnimFrames so that animations can come from a collection of randomly placed images on a texture atlas. This means I can use TexturePacker and create 2048×2048 optimised textures with whitespace (alpha) removed so that I consume as least memory as possible on iDevices.
- Coded AnimationBank class to hold animations.

Game

- Added in a wall of aliens to test collision, particle effects and animation.
- Added some placeholder particle effects for when the aliens explode.

Next Up

My framework is pretty much done now and I need to focus on getting the game content added and working. That’s quite a big task because there are 100 levels spread over 5 worlds with many different aliens (and bosses!) all with different behaviours and special effects. I also have to add a shop and do more GUI work. So there’s still a lot to do.

Here’s what I’m planning on doing next:

- Make a loader that works with TexturePacker’s output format. Should be easy.
- Read in the animation xml files from the original game and make sure they pick the correct images from the texture atlases.
- Animate tank when moving.
- Make all different tank sizes, add ons and bullet sizes work.
- Read in the level files and display the correct aliens. (They won’t be using their correct behaviours as that is a whole load more code to be done later.)

Well hopefully the next developer diary will be pretty soon as I need to get this game done and out by the summer.

So what have I been up to since my return to the UK in August 2012 and what is coming next?

Holiday Bonus GOLD

In December 2012 I released Holiday Bonus GOLD on PC/Mac/iPad/Android. I added 55 new levels and made some technical tweaks and released as a new game on some portals and as an update on others.

Sturdy Games also updated the iOS/Android version that they ported to mobile for me last year and we released Holiday Bonus GOLD as a new iPad/Android game.

Overall it did pretty well and has got me thinking about doing a GOLD version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Titan Attacks Mobile

In November 2012 I agreed to port Titan Attacks, by Puppy Games, to mobile. I’ve been working on this off and on due to other projects.

I’m using the Monkey coding language for the project and this means writing a whole new framework to support mobile games. The framework is basically done now though and I’ve had a basic test version of the game on mobile devices for a couple of months, which went down well when I showed it to people at the Game Developer Conference in March.

This is my main project and I’m working on it every day at the moment so expect to see another Developer Diary soon. I aim to release it in the early summer.

Artwork

I used to draw a lot in my youth but that fell to the wayside for many years. This year I decided to practice doing some digital art and I made a few quick “paintings”, first with a mouse, and then with a graphics tablet. You can see them here.

I’ve never done digital art like this and I was quite surprised and encouraged by the results. Since I made these paintings I’ve become a bit busy with other things but hope to get back to it soon!

One Game a Month

I signed up to the One Game a Month thing that lots of indie developers are doing. The aim is to release one game a month in 2013. You don’t have to spend a whole month on each game, just release a game a month.

My January game is an online remake of a math game I made back in 2010. You can play it here. Try to beat level 10!

My February game is called Cyber Citadel, but I cheated a bit and uploaded a shell game that I’ve since done a bit more work on. I’ll finish it and put it online soon.

My March game is a relaunch of Spring Bonus on mobile (more on this below). I’d have preferred to make a brand new game for my March game, but I just didn’t have time, especially as the Game Developer Conference consumed a week in March.

I haven’t started my April game yet and time is rapidly running out! However, I plan to make it during the Ludum Dare competition at the end of April.

In truth I’m finding it quite hard to do this alongside my main projects which pay the bills, and many of my indie developer friends question why I’m doing it instead of just focusing on some cool larger indie game, or more casual games. They do have a good point, but I feel a deep need to create a bunch of small games like I used to play and program as kid and I’m determined to complete this challenge.

Spring Bonus mobile re-release

Last year Sturdy Games ported Spring Bonus to mobile for me and Hothead Games published it on iPhone/iPad/Android/Kindle. It did OK but not great and they gave us back the rights to self-publish it this year.

This time I had to set up the In App Purchase items myself so that players could buy level packs, which I’d never done before. However, after a bit of wrangling we got it to work properly. Sturdy Games also fixed a couple of bugs and improved the image quality on some screens.

Then we worked with Appy Nation to get it promoted. They also asked us to add Chartboost to the game so that players of the free version see adverts in between levels, and that has worked out pretty well revenue-wise.

The game even got featured in “New and Noteworthy” in Europe which boosted it into the top 10 in the iPad Board Games category in many countries. Ultimately though, it’s not a big earner, which is a shame. Still it’s good to have it out there again and players seem to love it which is why it has so many 5 star reviews.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz mobile

Lemon Moose Games have ported this game to mobile for me and it’s already been released for Blackberry.

I tried to get Big Fish Games to publish it but they only seem interested in Hidden Object Adventure games on mobile, which is a shame. However I’m in talks with a publisher at the moment about releasing it for iOS and Android, and it will also be coming to Windows Phone and Windows 8 soon too.

Techno Zombies

Techno Zombies was going to be my January “One Game a Month” but I got carried away making it and it was also pretty complex. So I decided to stop work on it whilst I get some other things out the way first, then after Titan Attacks mobile has shipped I’ll probably turn it into a Flash game that is more like a demo. Then I’ll put it on Kongregate and see what kind of reactions it gets and decide if it’s worth turning into a larger “indie game”.

I’ve put a few videos online such as this one that show early gameplay footage. People seem to really love the atmosphere even though I haven’t gotten round to adding techno zombies (think “cyborgs gone wrong”) yet!

Also I took it to GDC on my iPad and it went down well. It was good to see how people tried to play it on iPad and has given me several ideas for how to revise the controls.

I definitely think there’s a hardcore market of Dungeon Master fans out there who would play it if I finished it. However some developer friends have suggested that I should make better graphics for it instead of using my minimalist placeholder art so that it appeals to wider audience such as people who liked Legend of Grimrock, and this could be wise.

Anyway watch this space!

What’s Next in 2013?

First up I must finish Titan Attacks mobile, and ship Oz on mobile. Then I can decide what to do next.

If Titan Attacks mobile does well and generates enough money for me to keep going for a few more months, then I’ll either work on Techno Zombies or a new “indie” game for about 6 months and then release it on my site and also try to get it on Steam via my various contacts.

If Titan Attacks doesn’t generate enough money for me to keep going then I’ll make another casual game. I already have designs for at least two match-3s ready to roll. I know how to make these pretty well know and know they will make me money. This will then free me up to work on an “indie” game which is a bit more risky.

I’m also helping a casual game developer friend with the design of a new game which hopefully will come out before the end of 2013. I’m quite excited about the design of this game and I think it could do pretty well in the casual game space.

Naturally I’ll keep trying to bang out One Game a Month and it’ll be interesting to see what I’ve produced at the end of the year.

I’d also like to finish off my Dying To Live platformer at some point so that I can have a reusable platform game engine in my Monkey code framework.

Well it’s been a busy time since I’ve returned to the UK (I’ve counted 8 different projects in this post!) and it certainly looks busy ahead too.

Good luck with your own projects and wish me luck with mine! Thanks

I could never go and work in an office for a corporation again whilst my kids still live at home, and probably just never again anyway.

Working in an office

The relationship I had with my family (wife and two boys) whilst working in an office doing game dev was the worst it’s ever been. I basically saw them at breakfast and then went to the office and maybe saw them just before they went to bed depending on how late I worked (plus travel time). Occasionally I got to meet my wife for lunch because both my boys were at school and my wife is self-employed. Of course I got the weekends with my family but I was often tired and unmotivated to do much.

Also my wife was left basically bringing the boys up on her own during the week and I began to realise that they desperately needed me around more as a dad for a different perspective on things, plus I wanted to see them of course – something that amplified after my father passed away.

I’m sure that if you are not a parent then working in an office is probably fine as long as you can still find time to spend with your partner and to do your hobbies. If the company you work for is progressive enough to allow you to work at home sometimes/quite often and allows you to have some flexibility in your schedule to deal with family-related issues that regularly crop up then that would of course be great, but I wasn’t in such a company/culture (although they did help me out when my dad died.)

It can also be awkward working with people who don’t have kids who just don’t understand that your family comes before your work and what responsibilities you have outside of the office. Plus, and this is sad, I’m sure many dads think it’s normal and acceptable to go to work all day and hardly ever see their kids…Some would say they have no choice, but I disagree, there is always choice of some kind if you look hard enough. [EDIT] A friend has reminded me that in the US if you work for a company you’ll get health insurance and that without it you are screwed. This is certainly huge bummer and no doubt would put many parents off going indie as paying for your family’s insurance costs a fortune. Not so in Canada or the UK or many other countries fortunately.

TL;DR If you are a parent, working away from home sucks. Don’t do it!

Working at home as an indie

Before I worked in an office I worked at home as an indie. That was a conscious decision that I made when my first son was 3 and my second son was 6 months old (before that I was an IT consultant and spent lots of time at home as well). Whilst working in the office I remembered the good times of being able to see my kids, help my wife with stuff, and just generally being around. So eventually I left that company and went back to being indie again and it’s just so much better!

However, of course the flip side is that:

a) I get interrupted at home a lot
b) Income is variable and there is no certainty etc.
c) I seem to work best in the afternoons and evenings which is when my family wants to see me.

I’ve gone through indie crunches where I’ve hardly seen anyone, and I often work at weekends (due to being busy and also because I enjoy it), but then other times when my family really needs my help, like if they are all ill with the flu or something, I can be there for them.

It’s definitely not a good idea to set up hard deadlines as an indie parent because some poop will mostly likely hit the fan and force you to make tough decisions. For example: on the day I was supposed to be shipping Spring Bonus for PC/Mac (it had to come out by Easter Sunday) I’d had 1 hour sleep the night before due to testing and then my wife got super-ill and I had to rush her to hospital (it turned out to be cancer) and then go and get the kids from school etc. It was one of the most horrible and stressful days of my life trying to balance everything. Luckily she is fine now and the game shipped and has done well, but it was not easy at all.

I also like doing the school run. If you are a dad and have not dropped your kids off or picked them up from playgroup/school on then you are missing out on something really important. Don’t let your wife hog this cool thing that will give you memories you’ll never forgot.

Also my wife works at home and so we get to go out to lunch, for romantic walks, and to Ikea when we feel like it. This is obviously good for our relationship

Btw, sorry that I’m just writing from a male/dad perspective – I would love to hear more indie mums/moms posting their thoughts too!

TL;DR You still have to balance your work/home life when working at home as an indie, but it’s definitely better for parents.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments, thanks!

(click to enlarge)

It’s been a while since my last Titan Attacks developer diary and that’s due to two things:

1) I spent a couple of weeks banging out a new version of one of my games called Holiday Bonus GOLD and it launched on iPad/Android/PC/Mac in December. It was a spur of the moment thing to make that game but it should generate some good money (it got to no.2 on iWin.com!) and give me more indie “runway”, which is always a good thing.

2) I had a couple of weeks of lounging around, playing games and doing family stuff over Christmas

Anyway, here’s what’s new since the last update:

- I finished ripping out all old code and media from the project which I’d copied from another of my games. It always feels good to have this step done so that your new game is 100% “clean”.

- Added a tank that can fire multiple bullets and a basic background.

- Added a control method where you can move your finger anywhere to position the tank instantly and it autofires on finger down. However, it turns out this method won’t work because you sometimes need to be able to position the tank under a parachuting alien and catch it without shooting it. So I’m tweaking this control method to require a second finger to fire.

- I’ve been doing a ton of GUI code and that started with a new TVisualComponent class that I then extended other classes from. For some reason I never did this in previous frameworks (this one is technically my 5th framework and it’s shaping up to be the best one yet).

- Created a TSliderControl class and hooked it up to the player as another control method along with a fire button. See the image below (click to enlarge). As you slide your finger around in the rectangle the tank moves the full distance across the screen. This will be really useful on iPad. It feels smooth and good to use.

- Made an options screen so I could change control method on the device and then test it and get other people to test it. The final game will also allow you to change control method.

- Made the controls and buttons work with multi-touch on phone. This took quite a lot of fiddling to get right, but I properly understand the “problem space’ now.

- Got basic settings data saving/loading so that the game can remember the last control method you used.

- Improved my Screen Manager system to handle modal screens and multiple screens active and/or visible at once (e.g. show in-game menu over game-screen and call another dialog from that). I already had something basic that worked but this is a lot more flexible for the future and will require less code to add pop-up dialogs.

- Added a button down state and a bunch of other mini GUI tweaks/fixes that seemed to take forever as every time I changed something I spotted something else.

- Made mouse/finger up operate buttons instead of mouse/finger down. This turned out to be pretty complicated, especially on iOS as I’ve made it keep track of which finger first presses down on the button so that it can still activate it even when it moves away (but is not lifted up) and comes back to the button. In all my previous games the buttons activate on mouse/finger down which feels snappy but it’s not how OSes do it and nor how most decent games on iOS do it, so I changed my framework finally to handle this.

Next up

- Changing layout based on device orientation. Already components spread out and centre based on different aspect ratios but I want it to be dynamic.
- Tilt control method
- Finish tweaking/testing “easy” control method of placing finger where you want the tank to be.
- Add in first enemy.

OK that’s it for now. I’m going to meet Cas (from Puppy Games) and Cliffski (Positech games) on Wednesday, so I’m aiming to get more stuff to show them such as the game changing layout based on device orientation. All this GUI/framework stuff doesn’t move the game forward gameplay-wise but it’s a solid base for me to build this game, and future games, on.

At last! I finally beat the FTL boss ship on Normal mode

This time I had a better equipped ship with a cloak and a teleport, both of which came in very handy during the boss fight as well as earlier in the game.

The main weapon I had was the Glave beam which takes a long time to charge and consumes a lot of power but is hugely effective if the enemy has low shields and you can make the beam go over 3 or 4 rooms.

The first two boss fights went pretty well except I lost 3 of my key crew members during the second fight and then the 3rd fight went poorly but I just managed to clinch it before I died. I made a few mistakes of course – sometimes I just miss things because there is so much going on. Anyway, I’m pleased with the win and I hope that you can learn a new strategy that works for you from watching the video.

Here’s a video with commentary. Enjoy!

I was sooooo close to beating the game on Normal. The boss ship had hardly any hull left on the 3rd fight but in the end it just pummeled me with lasers and missiles.

I had won the previous two boss fights pretty easily with my full power shield, epic evasion capability and serious firepower. Also all my key crew members were fully leveled up in their skills. However 4 of my crew got wiped out so I only had 3 people left to run around and put out fires and repair things, which meant my mega ship wasn’t fully operational.

I also had the following Augmentations:
- Long Range Scanners (helped me pick a decent path though the sectors)
- Automated Re-loader (made my weaponry even more deadly)
- Advanced FTL Navigation (I used this on the final level to get to a repair base before the 3rd fight)

Well my adrenaline was high on that last fight I can tell you. I really thought I was going to make it, but then it all fell apart. Gah! So disappointing.

Anyway, if it isn’t already clear, I 100% recommend this game. It’s brilliant but super-addictive so watch out!

I was recently interviewed along with the other Full Indie team members about how Full Indie was created and other interesting indie-related stuff.

You can read the full 3 page interview here.

Enjoy!

Inspired by Noel Berry’s Art A Day I thought I’d try to make a few pieces of art this year as it’s been *way* too long since I did anything like that, plus I’d like to improve my skills at making digital art so I can make some half-decent stuff for my One Game A Month titles (I’d still hire a pro for anything commercial).

I’ve even ordered a fancy new Wacom tablet which should arrive in a couple of days. Meanwhile the first few images are made with a mouse, which really isn’t the best method, but I’m still having great fun. It feels great to be creating even little pieces of art like these.

I’ll update this blog post with more pictures as I create them.

Here are some more (click to enlarge):