Thirteen Spikes Unlimited 1.0

Thirteen Spikes Unlimited is now finished and has been on the Blazing Games site since Friday the 13th. As I have mentioned before, there was some plans to port the game over to HTML 5. ActionScript and JavaScript are very close as they are both variations of ECMAScript. This makes the game logic very quick to port, even if JavaScript does not have as nice of class or variable support as ActionScript. The other thing that ActionScript has that JavaScript lacks is the Flash library. Because Flash was created as a streaming vector animation system, this library is greatly tied to graphics and animation. The HTML 5 Canvas simply does not have these classes, but there would be very little stopping someone from writing them. In fact, to implement Thirteen Spikes Unlimited, only a small subset of the class library would be needed.

This would require a bit more time than I have, so the port to HTML 5 didn't happen and instead themes, campaigns, and sound were added to finish off the 1.0 version. This does not mean that the next Friday the 13th won't have a HTML 5 version of this game. That would be May of 2011, so depending what is happening with my current projects (one which may be doomed) this might be an interesting project. So, while Thirteen Spikes is finished for now, it may resurface in the future.

.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.

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.

Thirteen Spikes and the Flex decision

One of the nice things about this year's site format is the simple fact that most of the posting work for the weekly update is done on the first post of each month. This means that posting Thirteen Spikes Unlimited, which has just been posted, doesn't take too long. This is a good thing as this is one of the rare occasions when I was taken out for supper so I was late posting the site today. Because everything was ready to go, however, it only took minutes when I got home to post the update for this week.

While I know that you should never drink and blog, I am going to make an exception today as I do want to explain my Flex decision and think that since Thirteen Spikes Unlimited was created using only the freely available Flex3SDK and jEdit for editing. While the remainder of One of those Weeks will be created in Flash CS3 and the remainder of the Ultimate Retro Project will be finished using Java, future projects will be created using Flex. Flash will be used for asset creation but the projects themselves will be compilable using the freely available Flex3SDK. In a couple of years I will take another look at the browser landscape and possibly change my development direction, but right now I am going to be focusing on Flex development.

I have been playing around with a number of different languages and quite frankly am sick of having to shift my gears when switching between projects that are in different languages. Having all my work done in a single language makes my work easier. If a paying client wanted me to do some C++ or Java work for them then I would certainly do so but for Blazing Games and other programming I am doing in my spare time then the work will be done in Flex unless there is a very compelling reason to use a different language.

I really do not trust Microsoft, so even though Silverlight 2 has some really nice aspects to it unless I am being paid to use their platform I am not going to do so. Java still has a place in my heart but I feel that Sun just dropped the applet ball and FX is too little too late. Still, this is one case where I would like to be proven wrong. HTML 5 is no where near being a finalized standard so I might as well focus on Flex while I wait for it. Other browser based game development plug-ins simply do not have the installed base.

I have already pointed out numerous times that Flash CS3 is expensive, while Flex has a freely available SDK. Flex produces Flash output and I can still use Flash for the creation of assets and animation.

Spiking a Path

I have posted the release candidate for Classic Monster Hunter on the Ultimate Retro Project repository so anybody who can compile Java can try it out. Those of you who don't know how to compile programs or just don't want to put the effort in will have to wait until June. I have still been thinking about what I am going to do with the site and my thoughts have started forming a series of plans. One of these plans directly relates to this development blog so I will outline it first.

Right now I have a separate RSS feed for Blazing Games announcements and the feed that Blogger automatically handles for this blog. I am thinking that I may drop the sites feed and simply have all my announcements here. I would also probably cut back on my posting to every Thursday with the only other posts being shorter announcements for things such as the repository update above and industry news that I think the people who read this would care about.

I have a bunch of thoughts on how to better monetize the site which I will be trying to test out over the next year. If I am lucky one of my plans will actually pan out and I will be able to turn Blazing Games into a real company.

One of the things that I have been trying to do in the past but never quite got working was the idea of releasing early builds of games. Making a game is a lot of work, with a weekly release schedule being a heavy burden, so if I can take a game and slowly build it out to what I want it to be over a number of revisions then visitors will still be able to play new material every week even if it is just new enhancements to an existing game. The first game to get this multi-release treatment is Thirteen Spikes Unlimited. Here is the revision and release roadmap for Thirteen Spikes Unlimited:

• 0.1.0 internal development release
• 0.2.0 First official release on June 13, 2008
• 0.3.0 Development build for Skinning support
• 0.4.0 Official build supporting skinning targeted for February 13, 2009
• 0.5.0 Development build where campaigns are tested
• 0.6.0 Official build supporting campaigns targeted for March 13, 2009
• 0.7.0 Development build for built in campaign editor
• 0.8.0 Official build supporting campaign editor targeted for November 13, 2009
• 0.9.0 Development build for 1.0 version
• 1.0.0 Targeted for August 13, 2010
  

More details on my other plans will be posted when I am closer to actually implementing them.

Game page look results

Regular visitors to the Blazing Games site will know that I had a poll about the new look of game pages. A couple of weeks ago I posted an updated version of the 13 Spikes game that had a tabbed format breaking different parts of the old game page into separate pages. There is an overview page, an instructions page, a game page, a downloads page, and an articles page. I was thinking about slowly transitioning all the game pages to the new format. Still, being the way I am, I figured that I would ask the site visitors for their opinions. I got very little feedback, so figuring that people don't like emailing me they might respond better to a very convenient poll. I was right.

There were a lot of votes, with most of the votes being the neutral "either" choice. In fact, only three votes were for something other than either. Two of those votes were for the new format. Certainly, the voting results explain why no one emailed me. I suppose this means the change isn't as drastic as I thought it was.

In the future, all the game posts will be using the new format. It will take quite a while for this transition to be completed, though I don't think the transition will be that noticeable as all the more popular projects will transition fairly quickly. I should have started the transition tonight with One of those Weeks tonight, but was already really late posting the site so didn't have the necessary time.

Changing the Game

The Friday update to Blazing Games has been posted early, though the "official" announcement will not be made until late this evening. For the few of you who actually subscribe to my blog, you can look at the changes by going to Thirteen Spikes. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I am doing something different with game pages, or at least will be if the Blazing Games visitors don't hate the change. I will explain my rational for the change in the remainder of this entry. Feel free to post a comment or email me.

I am making the change due to the basic fact that the game pages were getting awfully cluttered. By breaking the game page into five logical sections and having tabs leading to each section makes it easier to actually find what you want.

The overview section of the page is the landing point. Here there will be a summary of the game so people can quickly decide if the game is what they are looking for. This page will also have revision history for the game and a road map for future releases.

The Instruction section holds the actual instructions for the game. I am going to try and be more thorough with the instructions. I suspect that despite the extra effort I will be putting into the instructions, these pages will be the least viewed pages for the game.

The Play tab will actually hold the game. In cases where there is more than one episode of a game, this page will act like a list of episodes (with icons for each episode) so that people can select the particular episode that they wish to play. Games will now start appearing within the same browser tab instead of opening a pop up window. With multi-episode games, I will make pop up windows a separate launch option.

The article tab will be for articles that have been written for the game. For instance, Thirteen Spikes has a strategy guide that was released today, which is what appears in the article tab. As is the case with multiple episodes, if there are multiple articles then the page will be a list of the articles with summaries so people can find the article they are interested in reading.

Finally, the download tab. As you can see, any tab that is not being used is greyed out. When the tab is not greyed out, it will be used for downloads. These are mainly Open Source Release zip files, but could also be level sets. If in the future I start releasing Apollo (not the official Adobe name, but as the official name is not yet announced, I am using the code name) versions of my Flash games, they will be located here.

That covers the new format I am thinking about using for the game pages, but it is conceivable that my visitors will not like the new changes as much as I do.