42games

X’mas Chicken Rain, soon

Makzan — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:20:35 +0000

We have redrawn all graphics in Chicken Rain to celebrate the christmas.

What’s more?

We enhanced the instructions so you do not get lost again.
We added a leveling system so your chickens do not work for nothing.
We got new and cute animals so you don’t have excuse to own them anymore.

Any more? Stay tuned, it is around the corner now.

How we hack and prototype our games before jumping into coding

Makzan — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:20:41 +0000

Tonight I read an article about the difference between hackers and coders. The author told a story on how a team surpasses the others by hacking the ideas and building prototypes.

The hacking mindset can also apply to game designing too. There are many, many articles showing how to do game prototyping in board, paper and pencil. For video game development, having a playable prototype in paper sure helps. This allows us to do some hackings and validate the ideas before writing any code, which costs a lot.

Now more game designers are building web and mobile games, which often have a lower scale than traditional video game. I believe that is true especially for HTML5 games development. Technically the games are some markups, styling and scripts when we build HTML5 games. Thanks to the nature of web technology, we can not only build prototype fast in paper but also build it fast with HTML. 37signals is known as building HTML prototype directly from idea. They also mentioned why HTML prototyping is better than Photoshop mockup. I believe it is true for HTML5 games development.

This is why I am now building a browser-based HTML5 editor. It allows us to prototype game ideas fast. We do not even need to create a single file and choose a temporary directory to start our prototype. No need to launch any editor, CoffeeScript compiler. What we need to do is just type in some code in Chrome, which is always launched and ready, and play the game ideas. Then we can easily fine tune the prototype or send out to friends to gather some early feedbacks. The process is so easy that we can just put the prototype aside if it is not good. The point here is that we can use minimal cost to validate and hack the game ideas in HTML5.

Side note:
5 months ago, we started building the Chicken Rain iOS game. It took us 2 weeks to setup the physics model and get it run on iOS. Not until then can we start testing and tuning the game. Now we are building HTML5 version of the game and we can have a playable prototype of Chicken Rain is just 3 days.

Prototyping a tiny game, Count 99, directly on browser

Makzan — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:41:03 +0000

In this weekend I used some leisure time to start a browser-based code editor project. Currently it allows user to create files, previewing any HTML files, loading the related CSS, JS, CoffeeScript for preview. And it uses local storage to store files. This noon I used an hour to try building a tiny game prototype from scratch by using this editor and I recoded the process.

Now the editor is a little bit similar to jsdo.it, jsFiddle and Play My Code. But it will be specific for HTML5 games prototyping. In my planning, there are many differences than those two online JS editors. (Otherwise it does not make sense to reinvent the wheel)

What do you think about this?

Updated: I explained why I’m creating this online editor.

Chicken Rain is top 1 the App Store with over 240 full stars review

Makzan — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:42:29 +0000

Thanks all for playing Chicken Rain. It has been rank #1 in Hong Kong App Store for 48 hours. As a bonus, we get over 240 full stars till now. Thanks everyone for supporting us and writing reviews.

Finally, Chicken Rain is available on the App Store

Makzan — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:56:26 +0000

After 5 months of development, we are proud to announce that our next game title, Chicken Rain, is on the App Store now. Your mission is to drop your chicken into slots, make them connected in series and sell them when you think the profit is high enough. There are enormous challenges waiting for you, leveling-up the nails, triggering the slot machine, getting different unique items.

We moved to new place.

Makzan — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 04:27:53 +0000

Last week we were busying on the upcoming Chicken Drop game and also moving our studio to a new place.

Here is the photo of our tables, with 3 Macbooks, 1 m-audio keystation and tons of books (most of them are related to game design and 3 copies of my books)

Background Music Sound Track for Chicken Drop

Makzan — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:46:41 +0000

Thanks Charlie for the BGM of the Chicken Drop iOS game BGM.

Chicken Drop iOS game BGM by Charlie

Previewing the Chicken Drop

Makzan — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:15:52 +0000

This is a preview video on our next game title, Chicken Drop.

It is another game based on the Pixelwave framework which goes public just few weeks ago.

HTML5 Games Development Tutorial Coming

Makzan — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 08:47:05 +0000

We are going to post a series of tutorials on how to build games with latest HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. We will also cover the CoffeeScript that provides an elegant way to code JavaScript. These tutorials will help you to build a playable HTML5 games from scratch. Meanwhile, please take a look at our new book, HTML5 Games Development by Example: Beginner’s Guide.

Quote on staying motivated to launch your product

Makzan — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 08:13:52 +0000

Today I read a post by RUBEN about how we should stay motivated and focus on our product to get it launch.

Realize you’re going to screw up. You’ll procrastinate, slack off, and miss deadlines. You know what? It’s ok. Just keep moving forward like it never happened. Be relentless; don’t let a bad day yesterday affect what you’re doing today. This is the most effective method I know for building (and keeping) momentum.