TestFlight is a great testing tool for iOS apps. I’ve used it a lot at work to distribute builds to multiple devices around the company. It prompts the tester when there is a new update and tracks analytics with checkpoints and crash logs. The only issue is you need to have the SDK installed to get all those goodies.

Since I use Haxe a lot and have been working diligently on the HaxePunk library I knew having TestFlight integration would be a huge benefit. So I finally got the code to a point where it is ready for release and am hoping it proves useful to other people.

The code is located on GitHub at https://github.com/MattTuttle/nme-testflight. You can also get it through haxelib by typing the following in your command prompt.

haxelib install testflight

I participated in Ludum Dare #23 this past weekend with over 1000 others. It was a fun experience and I was able to chat with some great guys on the HaxePunk forums/IRC. Unfortunately my time was divided between LD and several other events over the weekend but I’m happy with what I ended up with. Check it out!

What went right

• Built on a simple concept
• Used tools I was familiar with (HaxePunk, MilkyTracker, Sublime Text 2)
• Had a working game with objective in the first few hours
• Used a real mouse for drawing instead of a touchpad

What could have been better

• My power was out for 2 hours
• I had several other events to attend over the weekend (besides church)
• The sound effects were last minute

Next time

• Have a laptop with a good battery (mine lasts 20 minutes…)
• Participate more in topic selection and blog posts

I came into possession of an Apple IIc that was in great condition this past year. It has several programs and a bunch of games with it. Having grown up with a DOS computer as a kid I wasn’t entirely familiar with the Apple II but it was simple enough to boot up. The screen flickered and gave off a green tint, no color, but I realized quickly there wasn’t an operating system… So I started sifting through the stack of 5 1/2″ floppy disks to find the game I wanted to play, Zork.

In terms of quality, Zork is not the best text adventure, but it is probably the most well known. This was the first time I had played the game and what better way to experience it than on an old piece of hardware. You start out in front of a house and have the options of going several directions. I type in the direction I want to go, and within a few turns find myself lost. I’m in a forest somewhere and start to think the house has vanished. I guess it’s time to practice my cartography skills.

Grabbing a fresh sheet of paper I start drawing boxes with the names of each location in them. There are lines shooting out of each rectangle in all directions and it looks more like a plate of spaghetti than a map. So I pull out another sheet of paper and clean up the lines. Now it’s starting to make more sense… and I found the house!!

I open the side window and climb through to the kitchen. Hopefully no one cares that I’m breaking in. I go up to the attic to look around but there isn’t much to see because it is dark and I don’t have a light. A couple more turns and I end up dead, eaten by a grue if you want to get specific. Death is a bit strange in Zork because you can still explore but there is no way to interact with the world. So I restart the game and find myself in front of the house again. At least I know where it is now.

Back in the house I reveal a trap door under a rug. Of course it takes several minutes to move the rug by typing every verb I can think of. After opening the trap door I descend into a cavern and turn my light on to begin exploring. There are a ton of rooms and a thief frequently pops his head in a room from time to time. He doesn’t seem to bother me much but he did nick a painting from under my nose. I wander around for a bit before confronting a troll. He takes a couple swings at me and BAM! I’m dead again.

This time I was smart enough to save so I manage somehow to defeat the troll, by typing attack repeatedly, and make my way into a maze. After a bit of walking around I realize I am really lost and start dropping my stuff in each room to try and figure out where I’m at. The only problem with that plan is the thief has the bright idea to pick up my stuff. Isn’t he lost too? I think I’d better reload and go down a different path.

Several hours later I end up draining a body of water, stop myself from exploding, and find myself in front of the house again. This game is like a really big loop. I sweep through a couple of time to grab stuff I missed and end up finishing the game. I’m not sure I actually won but there isn’t much else to do at the end.

I feel quite satisfied with my experience and I am fascinated by how rich the world seemed when in reality it was just a bunch of text on a screen. Most modern games fail to provide this deep of an experience although I would say Bioware and a few other companies have come a long way in telling rich stories. Why don’t text adventures exist today?

The first thing I changed was how the project was structured. It used to be where you had to clone the repository from GitHub, install SamHaxe and Haxe, and use the FlashDevelop project. This worked for Windows developers but since I like working on my Mac I wanted a different process. Now you get the engine through haxelib and can use any editor you want.

Secondly there was an issue with the way assets were handled. Last year the best asset embedding tool was SamHaxe but since then NME has gained traction and become a decent platform. I switched everything over to NME (still supporting SamHaxe and SwfMill) and haven’t looked back.

Screen resizing is now supported which is useful for fullscreen flash games and games that run on different device resolutions. It’s not perfect but in the coming weeks there should be some improvements made to it.

Instead of boring you with more details, go check out Haxepunk now.

Last year I made a video game for my family to play on Christmas. I didn’t have much money at the time so it was part of my gift to everyone. It ended up being a simple board game where tokens moved forward on a timeline, the past year, and the goal was to reach the end. Once everyone made it to the end of the game it would tally up memory points and determine the winner.

The memory points were gained by landing on event spaces. There were 10 major event spaces and 15 minor event spaces. The major events had something to do with our family in the past year like when someone got a new job. The events were placed in the timeline in the month it occurred in (each month having 10 spaces). Minor events were just generic things like buying a cup of coffee or having to shovel snow. They could add or subtract to your score while the major events only added.

Other spaces included move ahead/backward squares and lose a turn. It’s generic to most board games but added enough variety to make the game fun. It was all done on the computer so I stored the board layout in a file and loaded it at the beginning of the game. That made it easier to test different layouts.

To move our tokens I decided to use physical dice instead of randomly generating numbers on a computer. This allowed me something to give my family before showing the game to pique their interest. I also did it this way so that my parents felt they had control. After each turn, I simply input the die roll into the computer to advance the game.

Overall it might have taken me a week or so to get the game done in my free time. The result was something that my entire family enjoyed and let us reminisce the past year. If enough people are interested in the project I might consider putting it up on GitHub.

A few months ago I took part in a speed-game contest for the Christian Developers Network. The game ended up having exploration style gameplay with power ups much like Metroid. You can actually play Current if you want to check it out. There isn’t a preloader so give it a minute or two to load up. Or read on for my post-mortem…

I was working together with an artist, Brenton, and we found that it was best to prototype how the gameplay would work at the beginning of the contest. We went through a couple of iterations and finally ended up with a game where you play as a bubble and can collect other bubbles. Believe it or not the first prototype involved men taking baths in clouds… don’t ask.

Since we were doing complex levels involving rocks and underwater flora/fauna we needed something to define collision areas easily. I used an ogmo project to draw small squares over the main collision image. While we could have used pixel perfect collision it would have slowed down the game due to the size of each area.

The first 10 rooms are hand drawn levels which look very beautiful but we knew that it was going to take too long to finish the game if we kept going down that route. So we switched to using tiles and creating levels that still look decent but were a lot faster to create. Meanwhile I was adding things like enemy fish and power ups.

The first thing I had to figure out was how the small bubbles would float around the main bubble. I tried it with the bubbles free floating around the main one but it felt loose and fish could easily pop the followers. So after several attempts I finally got it right. The small bubbles would spin around the main one and quickly catch up if they got behind. If bubbles were popped the others would file into place to fill the gaps.

Once accumulation was working we decided it made sense to have some way to consume bubbles. Since your followers protected you from other fish you had to decide whether to use your bubbles for armor or skills. The first skill we added was a grab mechanic because we planned to throw rocks around.

After that we decided to put in gems that unlock doors. It added a puzzle element to the game instead of just exploring. Gems couldn’t be dragged to different rooms though so later we decided to add in keys. It’s cliche but we were running out of time at the point.

Save points were another thing that went in early in the game. I had been playing VVVVVV and loved that save points were in almost every room so we decided to go with that concept. All you have to do is hover over them and they activate. It allowed us to be less forgiving because you didn’t lose much progress when you died.

Finally I decided to put shooting in the game. In the beginning of development we didn’t want to put shooting in. There wasn’t a purpose to do so and we felt it made the game like any other shooter. Halfway through the contest we figured out a reason to fire bubbles, sea urchins. There are several areas in the game that you have to shoot stationary fish to continue. It also gives the player something to do as they are floating through the game.

I’ve been a fan of Bethesda games since Morrowind came out. The combat in Morrowind always felt weird to me. You could attack something and miss even though it was staring you in the face. It was like mmo games where your character flails around for a while and eventually hits the monster, unless you die. Then Oblivion came out and had much better combat but still had the weird dialogue options.

I loved the Elder Scrolls up to that point but Fallout 3 made me fall head over heels in love with Bethesda’s games. I could finally have a conversation with an NPC without needing to hunt through a list of dictionary words. The VATS system was cool but it slowed down the game a bit, making my shooting skills feel inadequate. Recently Skyrim came out…

I don’t usually get excited about the release of new games but Skyrim was a different story. The past week I’ve been playing it every chance I get and the game keeps getting better. It’s packed full of interesting characters, useful items, and how can I not mention… dragons.

They got it right this time. The combat is much more believable and includes things like shouts, blocking, and shield bashing. The dialogue is excellent, showing what you have already said and what new options have opened up. And not only did they learn from their past games but they made further improvements to the user interface (at least on consoles).

The ability to favorite a spell, weapon, potion, or clothing item is awesome. You can also quickly get to all of your items with a limited number of button pushes and flicks of the control stick. The waypoints now show if you are expected to walk through a door or if it is located in the area you are searching. It’s a much less intimidating ui than the previous iterations.

My only complaint so far is that the dragon battles tend to get repetitive after the first few. Typically they land for a moment, breath fire/ice/etc and then take to the skies just to repeat the pattern again. When health gets low they stay on the ground and try to kill you quickly with their breath or by attacking you directly. As a magic user I found if I stayed at a decent distance the battles were relatively easy and I’m playing on master.

To anyone that enjoys action RPG games I highly suggest Skyrim. You should plan to spend a lot of time with it though because you’ll get sucked into the atmosphere.

Bethesda, I look forward to your next game but feel free to take your time because clearly your games keep getting better when you do.

I’ve been working off and on with HaxePunk and finally put two of my prototypes up. The framework should be working almost exactly like FlashPunk and with some loving will work with NME.

Want the source code? Get it on GitHub and post about how you are using it in the community forums.

The second thing I updated was adding some of my more recent flash games. I might even consider putting up some prototypes I’ve done if people are interested.

The final update is about the game I’m working on. I’ve got about 100 different rooms to explore and added a bunch of enemies. Just need to work up some bosses and spend a bunch of time polishing the game but it is looking great. I’ll probably post up a YouTube video by the end of the week.

I’ve finally finished up my game Pounce and created a video on YouTube. The game is being reviewed but hopefully will get sponsored for a website soon. I’ll post up details later.

If you absolutely can’t wait to play the game feel free to contact me and I’ll make it happen.