What’s been happening?
In a nutshell we’ve been making a big push for the mobile version of Captain Skyro.
A lot of time and effort has gone into the teampokpok blog and a sneak peek trailer of the game so be sure to check it all out.
What’s cooking?… Here’s a hint
Here’s a hint on my next gaming project with a familiar character.
With a girlfriend who cooks and is into games, I’ve truly hit the jackpot. Thanks Sion.
Going mobile: Rabbit Revenge
The latest offering from Brian and myself is called Rabbit Revenge.
Inspired by Adobe’s Flash Player release for the Android mobile phones, we’ve turned this game around in about two months.
Fueled by some creativity-inducing Thai food, the idea of the game is to control the track rather than the main character in order to guide the magician over obstacles and collect rewards. The storyline follows the unicycle-riding magician’s frightful dream where some of his stage props have taken their revenge. To survive you must drag his friendly companions to use them as jumps and bombs.
On desktop the game is controlled completely by the mouse which ports nicely over for the touchscreen, tapping and dragging to control the placement of the bunnies.
A special thanks to our friend Christophe who didn’t get to use his Nexus One Android phone for the past 2 months!
New game: Burney
The new game from Brian and myself is called Burney.
A relatively short turn around for this one, only 4 weeks, forcing us to stick to a simpler idea and building it the best we could.
The gameplay based on the notion of burning things to gain points but in a very non-serious manner. With a simple idea we also kept the controls simple, using just the space bar to jump. Some of our previous games have been faulted for being difficult or frustrating to control, so I pushed the concept of a single action key that has proved successful for a few other games out there. There’s also no way to ‘die’ in this game so it’s accessible for anyone to play and allows them to run right through the level and improve on their score.
Limiting the game time to 60 seconds was in line with the MochiAds 60 Seconds to Fame competition, which requires a limit of 1 minute of game time.
Anyway, enough with the words, Play Burney now.
Switching it up
I haven’t forgotten Grande but we’ve put it aside for a minute. We’re trying to spark some inspiration from a quick little turn-around prototype.
I’ve been developing my own basic platformer engine which is more lightweight than Box2D and it also means I’m not fighting the engine as much to do simple things. It only has the bare basic stuff for block-shaped tracks, but it does the job. I’ve learned quite a bit about using the hitTest() method in Flash through hours of debugging. Odd things like easing the virtual camera can cause the player to go from ‘grounded’ to ‘airborne’ without moving its x and y coordinates. Probably something to do with shape testing against fractions of pixels.
We’re still working out the core story behind the game, but the mechanic is almost done with some placeholder graphics. Hopefully I’ll be able to update soon.
Grande Episode 02 - 1 month in
One month in and ’some’ progress has been made. A fulltime job and no set due date means things are being developed rather slowly.
Our concept is now well rounded and we’re in the stage of prototyping the various types of effect we wish the throw in. I’ve got a fairly solid physics sandbox setup with a character running and jumping around, and B is scribbling away with more character designs and environment designs within the technical constraints of Flash. I suppose that is a mantra that we’re strongly adopting for this project… “embrace the constraints”
Nothing that we’re ready to reveal yet, as things could still backflip from here.