Archive for the ‘iPhone’ Category
Posted on October 18, 2009 - by Eric
Virtual Game Development pt. 1 – People
Here at Cavalcade Games we create games in a virtual office setup. Both me and Shikii, live in the same city but create games virtually. With games being a highly collaborative and creative product, this setup has molded our output in more ways than one. In the next year, we will be moving into a physical office. This makes for a good time to conduct a roundup of what we learned during our time with virtual game development. Part 1 – will be about the people component of a virtual game developments setup, part 2 will be about the tools and part 3 will be about everything else.
As a background, virtual office is defined as replicating a working environment – online. This mostly involves substituting concepts and tools found in a physical environment with web or desktop applications. The substitutions starts from the very act of talking to emulating office fixtures such as whiteboards and the conference room.
Virtual Game Development is defined as creating games in a virtual office setup. Virtually creating games is a special case in the sense that, first, the discipline is a creative endeavor in nature; second, it requires participants to be constantly in-step (requiring varied types of communication) and third, game development is known as a huge hard slog to the playable part, much more so when done with less human interaction. So with these characteristics, Virtual game development is much more under duress than the typical virtual office setup. Hopefully, with these tips, other game developers planning to go virtual can get off to a good start. First up! – the people.
Posted on September 30, 2009 - by Eric
Ftanks and Pushbutton Engine
Our next big release is codenamed Ftanks. Its a ‘refinement’ of the classic Worms formula featuring tanks (or Scorched Earth for the older readers) . It is funded by come2play to showcase their very groovy API. It is also being built with the Pushbutton Engine. PBE is a game engine for the Flash platform which by itself is great enough. But what made us jump into using it is the fact that its open-source, comes with a marketplace to buy/sell components and is made by Torque alumni. We knew it was gonna be much tougher than building our custom engine but we figured it will be good for us in the long run.
Posted on September 16, 2009 - by Eric
Concept Art for Project FvsW
Fun stuff are still being brewed here within the confines of our virtual office. With Word Mansion delayed yet again and our next project still ways off (1.5 months at least), i thought a nice tease would be in order. So, here is a concept art for one our early 2010 project, codename FvsW. Enjoy!
Posted on September 9, 2009 - by Eric
Social Platforms Revisited *Updated
Over the last few weeks, the Social Platform segment for the iPhone exploded! New developments and some hands-on experience have changed the valuation of the providers drastically that it merits a re-examination. Without further ado here is our opinion, as well as suggestions for each of these providers.
Update (Sept 09) – re-evaluation based on the OF 2.5, Scoreloop ver. 7195, Agon Online 1.2.5
Posted on September 7, 2009 - by Eric
Rock Paper Laser FREE! is out!
Rock Paper Laser! Free is now available on the app store after 10 days in the queue. The approach we did for this one is to retain all the core functionality and modes but stripped away everything that is not essential. 90% of the sound effects are gone, the tattoo help are always activated (discarded the 2nd spritesheet), and the backgrounds are whittled down to one. The cuts resulted in a reduction of the app size by 24%. But with the Unity3d, Agon Online and other 3rd party stuff in it, it just wasn’t possible to go below the desired 10mb.
Posted on September 4, 2009 - by Eric
Sound Assets Providers for Game Developers
Being a two-man operation (soon to be 3!), I have to wear a lot of hats for our projects. One of my responsibility is sound design and editing. I recently just done this on our iPhone game, Rock Paper Laser and what I am doing with our current project Word Mansion. My tasks entails imagining the perfect sounds, comb through the local collection of free sound effect (10 Gbs!) and also from websites of sound providers, tweak the sounds (normalize, trim, change bitrates, etc), then test it inside the game – rinse and repeat. This job can be tedious but essential to making a polished product. Alternatively, if you have a couple hundred quid lying around you can outsource it to a professional studio and get a better result.
Posted on August 29, 2009 - by Eric
Rock Paper Laser Promo Codes!
Rock Paper Laser! is now two weeks old in the app store and the good news is that we have cornered the “amputees with iphone” niche. The bad news is that niche only has 3 people in it. Fortunately, a number of people (with hands) bought our app about a new spin on the rock, paper game and left some glowing reviews ( Four 5 stars and one 4 star reviews) on iTunes. For all the people, thank you for buying our app. We got to inside the Italy charts for a day but got pushed out of that exclusive club.
We need more reviews of our app on the iTunes store so we will give out a few more codes in exchange for some honest reviews from our readership here. Here are 7 more promo codes. Use them if you havent bought our 99c app. or if you’ve already bought it (God bless you) give them to some nice kids you know and tell them to write their honest review up on iTunes.
1. ) 33PHLAWTJY4X
2. ) N3FFFX6YR97W
3. ) NXKRMK693467
4. ) 7ARXR4XJ6K64
5. ) 94F6EMKJTX4R
6. ) TRFFRLWAJPTW
7. ) AKR7Y6XE4WAW
Enjoy the game!
We have submitted the lite version and should be out next week. Rock paper Laser Free packs a lot of gameplay in it but its ad supported with Mobclix.
Posted on August 25, 2009 - by Eric
Unity iPhone 1.5 released!
Significant Performance Boosts
- Up to 3x faster than 1.0.3.
- Performance critical paths rewritten to take advantage of VFP coprocessor, animation skinning is up to 4x faster.
- Automatic batching of meshes to reduce draw calls.
Built-in Anti-piracy Protection
- Identify if Apple DRM was removed from the application bundle and modify application behaviour accordingly.
More Power
- Full support for native Objective C and C++ code opens full access to the iPhone 3.x APIs and custom plugins.
- Access to video-playback, on screen keyboard support, and GPS/location services.
- Support for 8-texture shading on iPhone 3GS with automatic fallbacks for iPhone 3G.
Better Docs
- Detailed instructions on iphone-specific optimizations.
- New 150 page tutorial to get you up to speed with iPhone game making.
Posted on August 19, 2009 - by Eric
Fixing the App Store
The runaway success of the iPhone finds Apple in new and unexplored territories. With it comes new and interesting challenges, including a big one concerning its innovative app store. Much has been said regarding the app store and how its utterly broken. Interestingly, its only broken for developers. The other participants on the platform, namely Apple and the device owners are in a state of contentment. But its not rocket science to know that for a platform to have long term sustainability, it has to maintain equilibrium – meaning each of the participants need to be equally benefiting from each other. This equilibrium is threatening to disappear with the ‘broken’ app store. While the approval fiasco sparked by the Google Voice rejection has garnered more column inches, it’s the app store issue that is most crucial and relevant to us developers.
Posted on August 15, 2009 - by Eric
Rock Paper Laser! Teaser Trailer and Promo Video
Rock Paper Laser! is based on the Rock-Paper-Scissors game, as such, its easy to dismiss as something flimsy and shallow. Well, here are two videos that shows why Rock Paper Laser! is jam-packed with features and full of value. Make no mistake people Rock Paper Laser! is THE Rock, paper, scissors game to beat. 
TEASER TRAILER
60 SECONDS
Software used in the video production: Flash CS4, Soundbooth, Camstudio, Digital Media Converter