Santa vs the Evil Gnomes 1.0 release

At last my Christmas game is finished. Sure, I would have liked to do a few more passes but as always time is the enemy. I think the game is pretty good but I am biased. I have been thinking a lot about what I am going to do in 2010 and the best words to describe my plans are icing. I will be posting my plans for all 9 projects that make up the Blazing Games site on New Years Day. There are some big changes that are going to be happening which will hopefully turn out to be positive and result in BlazingGames.com being a much better site.

Plans altered

I was originally planning on releasing the final version of Santa vs the Evil Gnomes this week and releasing the Christmas Edition of Dungeon Romp 3D for Christmas but with the passing-away of my Grandmother and lack of time due to family being down my plans are being altered. While I am very tempted to delay Santa vs the Evil Gnomes until next year and add a lot more features, I have delayed the game enough as it is so it will be Dungeon Romp 3D Christmas Edition that gets delayed and Santa being released on Christmas Eve.

Santa vs the Evil Gnomes beta release

I was going to have the first two maps of the Santa vs the Evil Gnomes game, but as there is no save feature so players would have to replay the whole thing so I just left the first level in there. The full game, which I hope to finish this weekend, will have 3 maps. The story is not as good as I hoped due to time limitations and what could be done with the rpg/3D engine that I am using. That is why I was glad that most people who answered my poll voted for a longer release between games as that will allow me to make better games. I am also planning on enhancing some of my older games so if there is a particular game you like that you think deserves some enhancements email me (webmaster at blazinggames dot com works). There was only one vote for never updating the site. In the unlikely event that the person who made that vote is reading this, I would love to hear your reasoning.

A Cold Poll

My plans for this weeks site release were derailed when I came down with a cold. I usually don't get sick, at least not this bad, but I have been dieting which is probably not helping my immune system. I still have a lot of weight to lose, but I have made great progress this year. Still, my planned release for this week is not as far along as I would like so I am having a poll instead. After all, 2010 is closing in fast and I have to make my 2010 site plans so why not get a little help from people who actually visit Blazing Games?

Wasn't Halloween a month ago?

Vampire Attack release 1.01 was posted with a strategy guide. The big feature that was added was a scoring system. I was also going to add more sound effects, but figured that there are some sounds that are going to have to be changed when I release the game as open source next year so I will just wait for the open source version to add more sound.

Santa vs the Evil Gnomes alpha release

While I really don't like releasing Alpha versions of my software, I think the game is far enough along to give the players a sneak preview of my Christmas game. The new RPG core that the game is going to use is not yet finished so the game is currently using my CQ4 core. The rendering engine is my Dungeon Romp 3D raycaster with some modifications. The Beta version will be released next month, and before Christmas the final version will be released. I am also going to be releasing the 3D version of the Christmas edition of Dungeon Romp so next month will be fun for people who like short RPGs.

.8 Unlimited Spikes

My Thirteen Spikes Unlimited (TSU) game has reached the age of 0.8 which means that it is getting close to be complete. This release adds a construction set. Any levels you create in the construction set are saved using "Flash Cookies" but I haven't figured out a way of transferring the levels. I am honestly thinking that the only way sharable levels will be doable will be to create an air version of TSU. Version 1.0 will allow selectable skins, have multiple campaigns that the player can choose from, and the high score will be campaign dependent. If anybody has other ideas for features, email me and I will consider them.

In other news, Google has released their Go programming language. It is still in very early stages but seems interesting. Of course, there is an obscure programming language named Go already, so the name may be temporary. Go2 is not likely as the goto statement is considered to be evil by language purists as programs that make extensive use of that statement are messy and resulted in the term spaghetti code.

Making One of those Weeks Chapter 36

Chapter 36 of Making One of those Weeks has been posted. For people who are interested in developing games, it has been fairly interesting as of late. First, the Unity engine (http://unity3d.com/company/news/unity2.6-press.html)has been released for free for independent development. Now the Unreal engine (http://www.udk.com/) has been released for free software. Sadly the UDK is Windows only and crashed when I ran it under parallels. Still, this has me again thinking of developing using a real game engine.  

Vampire Attack 2 Release 1.0

While I would have liked to do a bit more fine tuning, Vampire Attack 2 is now finished. At least until next year when I open up the source. I might do a fine tuning pass for the open source release. I will release a strategy guide probably next month. While I would like to provide more details, my copy of Windows 7 has finally arrived and Ubuntu 9.10 was released today so I have a lot of installing to do.

One of those Weeks episode 36 Open Source Release

The open source release of OotW 36 has been released.  This means that October will not be having an episode of Dozen Days of Words. I haven't even started it, though have a good idea about what will be done. I am focusing on my Christmas game which will be 3 episodes and will probably start being released in November with a new episode every other week just like Vampire Attack 2.

Vampire Attack 2 Beta 2

The second beta version of Vampire Attack 2 has been posted to the Blazing Games site. I still have a level to complete and a lot of fine tuning to do to the game but there are two weeks before it is going to be released so hopefully the final version will meet my original goals for this game. To be honest, the second episode was created twice since the original map didn't work well with the simple AI that the bats and skeletons have. Sometimes it is far easier to re-design the level than to make the AI better.

Making One of those Weeks Chapter 35 posted

The arcade based dream sequence that makes up One of those Weeks episode 35 is covered in this weeks posting of Chapter 35 of One of those Weeks. This is the episode where you dream of being in a space ship surrounded by blue screens of death. When you blast them with your laser, they divide into four smaller blue screens. If you blast them until they are small enough, you can destroy them. While the source code was opened up last month, I have had too many other good things to release so the chapter has been delayed quite a while. The open source releases and making of chapters are being used as filler which I will release when nothing more substantial is ready.

It is Thanksgiving this weekend. At least in Canada. While I have plans, I still hope to have enough time to do episode 10 of Dozen Days of Words. If I do finish it, then it will be the game released after part two of Vampire Attack next week. If it is not finished then expect the open source release of One of those Weeks episode 36.

Vampires attack again

The original Vampire Attack game was released a few years ago for Halloween. When it was released I asked people on the game page to let me know if they would like to see an extended version of the game. While the game was going to be called Vampire Attack Deluxe, the new version of the game has substantially been re-written so I decided that it really was a new game. I still have work to do on the game, but felt that the game was far enough along that I could release the first episode of the game as a beta. I will be releasing the second episode (probably also a beta) on the 16th and will be releasing the final episode just before Halloween.

Deadly Dungeon now in 3D

Sorry for the delay in posting this. Yesterday the deadly version of Dungeon Romp 3D was posted. This is actually built on top of 1.0.1 of the Dungeon Romp game as during the testing of the game I uncovered a bug that was not reported to me. When you die on a dungeon level that is different from the level that the last marker is on then the level being rendered is different from the level the player is on. While this could have been fixed with a single line of code, the single line fix resulted in the animation of returning to the marker being lost. This was fixed with only a few lines of code where the player is transported to the proper level but at the same x,y coordinates and then the animation effect is applied.

As for what I am going to be releasing next week, I can't really say. I am hoping to have a 3-part Halloween game and hope to have the first part released next week. Depending on how far along in development I get over this weekend, that may not be possible. If development on my Halloween game is not far enough along to release the first part, then I will probably release Making One of those Weeks episode 35.

Dungeon Romp 3D 1.0

Dungeon Romp 3d is now released. I discovered that the sound problem was a hardware issue. Normally a programmer should assume any problems are a result of their code because it almost always is. While I waisted time trying to figure out a bug that wasn't really a bug, the other 99% of the time it would have been my code so I don't feel too bad. The deadly edition will be released next week, and I will probably release the 3D version of the Christmas edition in December.

You can't get more open than space but watch out for the BSoDs

It has been quite a while since I last posted. I meant to post last week when Crystal Skull was released on Blazing Games, but I forgot. If you missed the release, you can get to it through the archive page or by going to http://blazinggames.com/table/dozenDays/words/crystalSkull.php to see the game. I am going to be updating Blazing Games weekly again, using open source releases and articles as filler, though will be releasing my One of those Weeks source/articles at least once a month even if I have better material ready to post. The open source release of episode 35, where you get to fight BSoDs in space, is the release for this week.

Next week I hope to have the final build of Dungeon Romp 3D. A bunch of new features have been added, though the sound effects don't quite seem to be working right. If I can find the problem there, it will be my next release. As I have talked about before, multiple releases of games, adding features with each new release, is something that I plan on doing. If there is a particular game on Blazing Games that you would like to see overhauled, feel free to let me know and I will consider it.

Trivia Bomb Sneak Preview

Over the long weekend (in Canada, at least) I managed to finish my Trivia Bomb game so today I posted a sneak preview at http://blazinggames.com/table/dozenDays/words/triviaBomb.php so readers can see the game early. It took me longer to finish this game than I anticipated with a final time of almost 20 hours. I actually like the game so may do additional episodes in the future, possibly adding more features.

In Android news, my entry is in a releasable state though I may add more game play modes before the deadline. I have some really neat ideas fore some of the game modes but finding the time to implement them is the key factor. For my first Android project I think it turned out good but prize winning is unlikely.

Crossword officially released

I have released the final version of crossword. The game is very flexible so I may create additional puzzles once I return to a weekly release schedule in September. The next episode of Dozen Days of Words is going to be a trivia game with a game-show like theme to it.

Crossword sneak preview posted

While I still have some fine tuning to do, the hint mode is not using the correct colors yet, and the final data for the game are not ready yet, a sneak preview of my crossword game is located at http://blazinggames.com/table/dozenDays/words/crossword.php for those of you who want to see it early. By the end of tonight (or this weekend if more than 12 hours of development time is needed) the final version that will appear next week will be ready.

My Android development is proving to be quite interesting and I have learned quite a bit about the Android operating system. While I doubt that my game has any chance of placing in the Google contest, I plan on entering it anyway if it is finished in time. I plan on also releasing the game on my site once the contest is over as well as porting the game to Flash for my website.

Dungeon Romp 3D beta released.

Work on my Android game is going well so I am continuing my 3 week site updates until after the Google Android Contest deadline at which point I will go back to either a fortnight release schedule or a weekly schedule with open source releases and articles being releases on odd weeks. Still, today is the beta version of Dungeon Romp 3D, which is a 3D version of Ultimate Retro Project episode 60. There are a few additional features that I am thinking about adding so there will probably be another release of the game.

Word Slide Official

The Word Slide game has now officially been posted. Bigger news, at least for those of you who are interested in RPGs, is the next game that will be posted July 3rd. My Dungeon Romp game is going from 2D to 3D. Of course, it is just a beta but I think it is fairly stable. I am sure a lot of you noticed that again I am going 3 weeks between releases, but this time it is Google's fault :-). Their second android application contest is starting and I am considering entering something into the contest so want to actually have some time to properly develop my android game. Sadly, their rules forbid releasing the applications that are being entered into the contest until after the contest is over so my game will not be released until after the contest is over if I actually finish it and enter it into the contest. I know my chance of winning anything is very low, but I think it may still be worthwhile to enter.

The Final Fantasy IV after-effect

I probably should have posted the sneak preview to Dozen Days of Words episode 6 on Thursday, but I was busy playing Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on my Wii. While I would not call myself a big Final Fantasy fan, the game has been eating up my evenings. Now that I have finished the main quest and the first optional quest, I am finished until the next downloadable chapter is released. So I have gotten around to posting a sneak preview of Word Slide which is located at http://blazinggames.com/table/dozenDays/words/wordSlide.php . This game will not have an offical link to it until friday, but if you cut and paste the above URL into your browser address bar then you can play the game early.

Now, back to Final Fantasy and my thoughts. The biggest problem I have with console role-playing games is that there are way too many encounters. In fact, saying that there is way to many encounters is probably a gross understatement. The game is episodal which is kind of a neat idea as instead of paying for the whole game, you only pay for the episodes that you want to play through so if you can't stand a particular character then you can skip their story. Of course, each of the chapters is a separate purchase though 300 points is relatively cheap. Because the game is episodal, most of the chapters are not initially available though will be released over the summer. This is kind of annoying as I have to wait until more chapters are released before continuing the game but is also kind of good as I would still be playing the game if all the chapters were available right now. Spreading the game out over a few months will keep the gameplay more interesting as you probably won't get sick of the game before you finish a chapter or two but would if you played through 8 chapters at once.

Official Word Shift

The word shift game is now officially released on the Blazing Games site. As readers of this blog have had the link for a week this is not that big of news. The sixth episode of Dozen Days of Words has also been finished. I have set the official release date for June 12th so that I have a bit of time to get ahead of schedule again. That said, I will probably provide an early link to the game in a couple of weeks. The seventh episode has been started, but there are a couple of other games that I am also working on so those of you who are getting sick of word games may get a nice role-playing game shortly, though I am not putting an official release date on anything unless it is done (or at least close enough to done that it is releasable).

Sneak Preview of Word Shift

My Word Shift game was finished earlier this week, so I am posting a sneak preview of the game early. While the game is posted on the Blazing Games site, none of the Blazing Games links have been enabled so the only way to see the game until May 22nd is to go to http://blazinggames.com/table/dozenDays/words/wordShift.php by typing in the url (or using copy and paste if you are lazy).

Is Forever Delayed or Never?

Dozen Days of Words episode 5 is in a functional state though is not finished. I could probably finish the game for release next week if necessary but with my nephew in town I decided that an extra week before the official release date was a good idea. If I do finish it early I may post the game a week early and link to it from here so readers get a week of early access to the game. I'll let you know my decision next week.

The big news today (well, last night if you want to get technical about it) is the fact that 3D Realms is closing it's doors. They are the company that is developing Duke Nukem Forever, which will now probably never see the light of day. While Take 2 still holds the publishing rights, they are not funding the game. It is still possible that another company will purchase the rights to the game from 3D Realms but with existing distribution rights, this is less likely. Most likely the game is dead. When you think about it, the fact that the game was so long in development made it unlikely that it would live up to the hype. Even though a lot of the delay was probably caused by the game developers continually playing catch-up with the rest of the industry, too many people figure that such a long development time must mean that the game should be really good. These unrealistic expectations means that no matter how good the game was it would never be good enough.

I suppose it is also possible that the opposite would happen and that the majority of people expect the game to be bad. While the game being better than expected could be good, if nobody bothers to try the game because they expect it to be junk then you still end up losing. Either way, DNF was in a pretty bad spot.

Making Coffee chapters 4 and 5 released

The making of Coffee Quest eBook has finally been updated after a few years hiatus. I have added chapters 4 and 5 which finishes the creation of Coffee Quest 1 and the Coffee Quest GL experiment. I am deeply considering doing another 3D experiment using a new web technology that Google is testing. This would be done by porting Coffee Quest 2 to the javascript-based technology.

I was also hoping to have a pull down menu based poll for selecting which game my visitors most wanted to see enhanced. I never got around to writing the code earlier and as it is getting late I figured I would hold off on the official pull-down version of the poll (which I may make a permanent part of the home page) in the future. Still, email opinions are welcome.

Growing Words

I was planning on having a sneak preview of this release last week but I ended up taking the Easter long weekend off for a much needed recharge. I do hope to have a sneak preview of the next Dozen Days of Words game if it is in a playable state early enough. Growing Words is a semi-original game were you have a list of words that you have to build and a board containing some letters. Each turn you can move a letter. If you fail to form a word with your move, new letters sprout up. The number of new letters is dependent on the difficulty level.

I really like this game and wish that I had a lot more time to add a bunch of new features and play modes. For that reason, I am going to develop a deluxe version of this game. This development is kind of unique as it is the test project for a non-browser platform that I am experimenting with. While this means that many of the people who visit my site will not be able to play the deluxe version when it is done, it is always possible that I will port the deluxe version to other platforms if the experiment proves successful. More details on this when I am close to being done, assuming the project ever gets that far along.

Hanging things up

Episode 3 of Dozen Days of Words is finally released. While this game is a fairly traditional game and was easily finished in under 16 hours, finding those hours to work on the game was a lot bigger challenge than I anticipated. The next episode, Growing Words, will hopefully be put together a lot smoother than the previous episode.

Still sick but Dozen Days of Words episode 3 is done

Episode 3 is finally finished, though my cold still lingers. Normally I recover very quickly from colds but this one does not want to let up. Perhaps it is a sign that I am getting old. Perhaps the diet I am currently on is taking more out of me than I realized. Perhaps I happened to have caught a very strong strain of whatever it is that infected me. This means that I didn't get as much work done as I wanted to. That said, the planning and skeleton for episode 4 has been completed. The fourth episode is a semi-original game and as such means that the results are not predictable but the idea seems like it should be fun so hopefully the results will be a fun game.

Sick

It turns out that my decision to delay Episode 3 was the correct one. Last night other obligations showed up. To make matters worse, I had a sore throat which as I feared turned into a full-blown cold. By cold I really mean that I really am cold and just hope all my shivering actually is burning off calories. Not much work on Episode 3 is going to be done today but if the weekend finds me feeling better then you can be sure that a large block of time will be devoted to both Episode 3 and Episode 4.

Delay confirmed.

While a lot of progress was made on Dozen Days of Words episode 3 today, and if I work on it in the evenings before the initial release date it is likely that it could be finished on time, I have decided that I will officially delay the game a week. While I do intend to try and still get the game done before Friday, it will not be released until April 3rd no matter when it is finished. The fourth episode will start development immediately after the third episode is finished. It is tentatively scheduled for release on April 17th and will hopefully not be delayed.

Falling behind schedule

A funeral occupied a good chunk of my day and progress on the third episode of Dozen Days of Words is not as far along as I would like. I plan on hopefully finishing the game tomorrow, assuming nothing comes up. I do hope that I will not have to delay next week's game but if worst comes to worst then I may do so.

March has spikes too

It has been a month since the last time I had the chance to post an entry to the Blog. Since that time I have finished posting all 13 parts of the Thirteen Days of Releases on Blazing Games. For those of you who haven't checked out Blazing Games lately, these releases consist of Day 5 of One of those Weeks (all 6 episodes that make up the day being releases as Open Source and the making of chapters for those 6 episodes being released) as well as the campaign mode version of Thirteen Spikes Unlimited.

The next Friday the Thirteenth is quite a while away and will feature a construction set. I will probably do another 13 days of releases that month as well with Day 6 of One of those Weeks being the other 12 releases. This plan is not set in stone and if things continue to be as hectic for me as they have been then this may not happen. It is just sad that so much of the things that are stealing my time are not money making ventures.

I am going to try to get back to posting an entry here at least once a week but can not make any guarantees.

Friday February 13, 2009

I have posted the Blazing Games game for tomorrow. While Mary Caton did send me some potential themes for thirteen spikes, I did not have time to incorporate them into the game so there is only one skin in the 0.4 build of the game. It is, however, animated and rather interesting. That being said, next month also has a Friday the Thirteenth. I will probably add more skins in addition to the campaign mode for the next release of Thirteen Spikes Unlimited that will happen 28 days from now.

February plans

After examining the calendar trying to figure out what exactly my plans are, I realized that my current release plans means that I do not have to worry about starting on Episode 3 of Dozen Days of Words until the end of the month. The third episode of Dozen Days of Words will not be released until the end of March due to some special plans that I have for the first thirteen days of March. While I will not go into details about what exactly I had planned to do, in case I am forced to change my plans, I will say that it will involve thirteen days worth of releases.

Work on next week's release is well underway. The next version of Thirteen Spikes Unlimited has a skin feature for which I have developed a rather interesting theme. I kind of want to have more than one new skin for the game but don't think that I will for version 0.4. With that said, there is always version 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 so by the time this project is finished next year (remember I am only releasing builds on Friday the 13th) there should be a variety of skins.

Alphabet Points 1.0.1

The bugs that I found after posting Alphabet Points bothered me a bit too much so I spent about half an hour or so finding and fixing them and have posted the 1.0.1 version of Alphabet Points. If anybody else noticed the bugs, they never bothered to email me a bug report.

Aphabet Points released

The finished version of Alphabet Points has been released on Blazing Games. While testing the site today, I did notice that there was some issues so I may do a 1.1 release to fix those issues. I haven't decided on this yet.

For episode 3 I have decided that I will simply track the hours and once a week post the latest functional build to the site with the work notes up to that point. While I will still be limiting myself to under 24 (preferably under 16) hours, I am hoping that working in smaller chunks when I am in the mood to work on that project will result in higher productivity and better episodes. The games will still technically be created in under a days worth of hours, just that day is broken up into more convenient chunks. No idea yet what that game is going to be, but I will probably start on it this weekend.

Making Alphabet Points sneak preview

Making Alphabet Points has been posted. At least the first four pages. The final page will be posted with the final game on Thursday evening (PST). I am finding that I am having problems with the block system that I switched to. While it is easier to attempt to set aside a block of 4 hours then an entire day, the big problem I am still having is getting into the flow of development. With a whole day this is not too much of a problem as a few hours into the work I am getting into the flow of development and able to get a lot done. With shorter blocks, I am finding that my initial productivity is slow and by the time I get to the point where I am getting into the flow, the block of time I have allocated has been used up. I am also running into the problem of things popping up causing me to have to change my schedule, but that was an even worse problem with the single day method.

The question then becomes what the solution to this is. I am not entirely sure. Perhaps I should allow myself to break the work down into smaller blocks which can be spread out even more with the theory being that I would only do the work when I was in the right state of mind to do it and if something does come up then I can stop the partial block and pick it up later. I will decide what I will be doing with episode 3 after I have posted episode 2 Thursday evening.

Alphabet Points

Something came up on Sunday so I delayed the third work block until today and just finished it. I was going to post it but as it is getting late I will do that tomorrow.

Knights Tour released

Knights Tour has been posted on Blazing Games. This is an interesting puzzle game in which you have to move a knight over all the squares of a chess board touching each square only once. I have also, since the last time I posted here, finished two blocks of the second installment of Dozen Days of Words. I have not posted the journal or episodes yet, but will probably do so on Sunday when I finish the third block of the episode. I know I should be posting updates to the development on this blog but simply have forgotten. One thing I am thinking of doing to solve this problem is to shift the date that I do the blocks of work to Thursday evening and do the site update (if there is one that week) at the same time I create the block.

Happy New Year

Just a quick update to let you know that I have finally finished posting the first game of the new year. Of course, I could not resist starting off the year with the first episode of the second season of the Dozen Days Pentalogy, Dozen Days of Words. Even though the year has just started, I am thinking of altering my plans for the year. That would require me finishing Coffee Quest 5 first, so the every other week schedule will continue as planned for a while. I am hoping to prove all of you who are thinking "Yea, like that's likely to happen" wrong, but only time will tell.