Make sure to purchase your AG Coffee Mug during our Memorial weekend sale. Mugs are regularly $9.99 and are currently on sale for $.99. This is a opportunity you don’t want to miss out on. The sale ends Tuesday morning, May 29th.

This is your chance to get Armor Game swag at a unbelievable price! All of our selected sale items will be on sale for over 50% off! Our memorial day weekend sale will last until Tuesday morning, May 29th. Also, our offices will be closed during the holiday which means all order placed during the holiday weekend will not be shipped out until next week. Thanks to all of our loyal fans for their support over the years. This sale is for you! Get yours now!

Tanks, planes, missiles, oh my!

Do you want to be King? There is a free kingdom to conquer! Destroy all the evil towers and save the queen. Destroy all evil!

So, today, out of the blue, I receive two (one for Steve and one for me) packages in the mail. Inside each is a very nicely framed copy of the front cover of our HTML5 Canvas Book on O'Reilly Press.

Maybe they sent them because it is selling well (it is),or  maybe they do this for all of  their authors, but no matter the reason, I just have to say (and repeat) the O'Reilly is a class act and has been absolutely the best publisher we have ever worked with.

Last time I posted, I was wrapping up some of the fight sequence animations…

The game will be localized in 4 languages: English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish. Many thanks to my homies with language skills that were willing to throw down. So far most of the Chinese is complete, Russian is almost halfway.

I’ve been doing a monthly show during the Downtown Los Angeles art walk for a while now, Sokay Play. On May 10th we had the 7th show, I share a gallery space with artists and show my games. Here’s the flyer from last one…

During Downtown LA Art Walk, every 2nd Thursday

I added a coffee power-up to the game, temporarily increases your speed and jump height. I need to take another pass or 10 at the donut drop patterns since it’s still super temporary. The power-up makes it a lot more fun though, aiming to make it so that there will be a flow to collecting the donuts and coffee powerups, while avoiding falling debris and hazardous NPCs.

Sound is another area I tend to neglect. Thankfully we’ve got a dedicated sound guy. Cryptic Circuitry has made some awesome tunes for the ending, fight scenes and cinemas that I recently got into the game. When integrated, it helped the game a lot!

I finally got in David’s Fighting Game animation in the game! I should’ve really done this a long time ago but I wanted it as finished as possible before I integrated it. I tried to give him a “template” to animate from early on, like over a year ago. But over time he slowly strayed from that, we weren’t meeting up regularly for a while so I wasn’t over his shoulder nitpicking him. But anyway, I had to reorganize things a bit, give things proper frame names and instance names. And also figure out all of the new animations and states he added in the process. The animation is great and he acted as a game designer in the process, now I’m taking passes at making the animation work with the gameplay. Tweaking things to make them fun as possible without reworking it too much.

This stuff is looking sweet!

Soon!

More info on the game at http://www.donutget.com

Peace!

A combination of strategy, tactics and a trio of mini-games about the war between medieval factions(Normans, Vikings, English) in the 1066. Fortify your walls!

Destroy a serie of bosses as fast as you can and save the Earth in this Retro Bullet Hell. Keep upgrading the ship to get awesome firepower.

Blast your way through the legions of robots to liberate your home planet. Check it out!

Redono Beach Fun Factory

Atari Pong In The Wild

The machine was standing in cluster of vintage and vintage inspired machines.  However, in the position you can see just how small the machine looks next to a relative giant like Asteroids Deluxe.   I got closer to the machine because I wanted to see if it had the original instruction of "Avoid Missing Ball For High Score" and in fact, it did.

Avoid Missing Ball For High Score

I also noticed the original Atari logo etched into the metal control plate.  I had forgotten about this early version of the logo.  I think I need to incorporate it somehow into our Atari Pong Developer Challenge Entry

Vintage Atari Logo

I realize that people who go to vintage gaming shows see these machines all the time, but not me.  I've never been to any kind of classic gaming show, so for me this was quite a sight to see.  At the same time, this machine was in the wild.  It's not the kind of machine that is kept in bubble wrap and cleaned with baby diaper on Sunday afternoons.   The Redondo Beach Fun Factory is not exactly a museum.    It caters to hardcore  "L.A."crowd that does not exactly treat these games like antiques or collectibles.   For instance, the vintage Space Invaders machine had some nastly grafitti scratched into the front glass:

Grafitti Scratched into Space Invaders (click to see a bigger version)

So seeing a working, vintage Pong machine  at this place was kind of shocking.  Since the original Pong is a two player game only, I challenged my daughter to a game. This was the first time I actually put a quarter into a real Atari pong machine.  I've played Pong ion the past, but always knockoffs, never the original Atari version.

Atari Pong Game In Action

The controls were not very responsive (the original knobs were missing), and there was a video glitch on the screen (visible above), but it was still thrilling to play an original Atari Pong machine in a setting that has changed very little since the game was first released.   It came at a perfect time, and it gave me a couple ideas for our Pong game entry.

Where we are today

Over the past three years, we have been working hard to improve in-game ads monetization for not only US and UK based audiences, but for other global markets as well. During that time we’ve developed partnerships in strategic regions, ranging from Canada to Western Europe to China, to better monetize our Mochi Ads inventory (and therefore, developer revenues in these markets). The net result is that we’ve been able to grow our global net eCPM by 177% since January 2009. But we still have more that we want to do…

Where the market is going

Online Video is HOT! According to a recent study by eMarketer, online advertisers will be increasing their budgets for online video ads 400% by 2015. Currently, online video takes up 63% of advertisers’ online budgets. Online video is also eating into more traditional TV ad budgets. The percentage of online, as a percentage of both TV and online, is expected to increase 46% by 2015- in other words, the bites online video is taking from TV will keep getting bigger. Why am I mentioning all of this? Because Mochi Media already has a premium ad product that shows video ads, so we are in a good spot.

The online ads market has been growing in size and evolving in complexity. New industry standards, such as VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) and VPAID (Video Player Ad Interface Definition), are helping bring uniformity and greater flexibility to the marketplace. Those who cannot support these new standards are not being considered as highly by advertisers & marketers for their future ad buys.

Where we’re going

In order to stay competitive and to continue to increase revenue for developers and publishers, we’ve worked to adopt these new technologies (VAST and VPAID). These standards help us grab more deals at better rates, because it unlocks more inventory and gives advertisers more flexibility as well as better reporting. We’re also pursuing partnerships with market leaders in strategic regions to better monetize global traffic. In fact, we have just created a strategic partnership to focus on selling Mochi Ads in Brazil! Other markets of interest for us include the Far East and Eastern Europe.
As we continue on in 2012, Mochi is redoubling its efforts to get back to our ‘core’ business: ad-serving and distribution. We’re confident that both developers and partners will benefit from this renewed focus from Mochi Media.

Thank you for reading my post. Please feel free to comment if you have any questions or suggestions.

- Joe

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We’re looking for an environmental artist to help us out on a side-scrolling shooter.  We’re also looking for a medieval/fantasy artist for a larger project.

If you are interested or know someone who is interested, check us out!

Here is an crossed-post article about the third character class in my Action-RPG Sinjid:

Behold the mighty Warrior - Click here to check out the video preview!

As you would expect, the Warrior is a heavy melee fighter, with very strong attacks. This comes at a cost – they lack the mobility of Assassins and the control of Priests. But that doesn’t matter, because the defensive capabilities of a Warrior are unparalleled – they are very hard to kill. That’s why a Warrior never runs. That, and also because their heavy armor really slows them down :3

The playing style of a Warrior is very dependant on timing. You will have way less ‘active’ skills than the other classes – but your ‘passive’ skills are a lot more meaningful. Whilst the Assassin and Priests are designed to hit hard then get away, Warriors are designed to stay engaged. To help with this, Warriors have a chained Kunai attack which can pull enemies towards you (the “GET OVER HERE!” spell). They also have some of the best defensive spells in the whole game.

Here are some examples of the Warrior skills:

Shockwave
Release a powerful shockwave that damages all enemies near you, and causes them to deal 75% less damage for 4 seconds.

Kunai Sting
A ranged attack that hooks and pulls the target towards you.

Brutal Advantage (Passive)
Every 10 seconds, you gain “Brutal Advantage” – causing your next attack to be critical, and to also stun the target.

Avenger (Passive)
Every hit you take has a 10% chance to cause your next attack to deal double damage.

Blade Storm
Rapidly strike the enemy 3 times in a row.

Move your guys, then watch them come alive and fight in this action/strategy mashup! Try it for yourself!

Atari announced that tomorrow, a free iOS app named Circus Atari" will be available in the App Store. The original Circus Atari for the Atari 2600 was compelling game that blended physics and Breakout.  It was one of the best 2600 games of all time.

The new Circus Atari looks different, but still like a cool little game.  We are very happy to see Atari continue to mine their back cataloge for gaming goodness.

One day, back in 1978 my dad came home with this:

A Radio Shack, TV Scoreboard console.   We had been begging my dad to let us play the Atari 2600 console in the TV department at Fedmart on every visit, so he knew we liked video games.  However my dad, a notorious cheapskate, was not about to plunk down $169.99 on anything.  $19.99 price-point of the TV Scoreboard was more his speed.  However, even $19.99 was probably too much.  i'm sure this came from the dirt-cheap bargain bin from Radio Shack.

At first, my 8 year old twin brother brother and I were really excited.    The idea of having a video game of my own to play was enough to rocket me out of bed in the morning and into the living room to try it out.

Of course, this taught me my first lesson about video games.  If no one else was awake, there was no one to play with.   The TV Scoreboard had a "Squash" option that let a single player hit a ball against the wall, but I never found that game very interesting.  I wanted to play "pong", and if no one was around, no dice.

When my brother was awake, and we actually played the unit, the second major issue reared its' head: sound.  Like most dedicated "pong" consoles, the limited sound of the TV Scoreboard   came from the unit itself, not from the TV.  This made the already lo-fi beeps and boops even more annoying than I thought possible.  We very quickly learned to shut the sound off, and play in silence.   While the "pong" style game play of the unit was solid, nuances (like bad sound) ruined the experience.

The third thing I learned from the TV scoreboard was that "ping pong" games were not really all that much fun.  Maybe six years earlier, when Pong first arrived, the game was thrilling, but in 1978, with Space Invaders filling the local arcades, the "ping pong" game play of the "TV Score-bored" (as it came to be known) was just not compelling enough.

Those three lessons: the need for  compelling single player game play, the importance of nuances in games, and the need for evolving game play, have colored the design for the Pong game we are making for the Atari Pong Developer Challenge.  I hope we can do those hard learned rules some justice with our entry.

By the way, the "TV Score-bored" stopped displaying video after a few weeks, but since the sound came out of the unit and not the TV,  I could still "play" it by starting a game and listening for the sounds and moving the paddles.  If I managed to "hit" a ball,a distinctive beep would sound, and I felt totally victorious for few seconds.  On the other hand, my dad felt "taken" by the "cheap-o" device after it failed do quickly.   It would be several years before another video game system entered our house.

This week’s Flash Game Friday winner is Pixle by Stellar-0!

Pixle is a creative take on the classic running genre, where your skill ultimately decides how far you go (and how high your score is).

You begin as a small and slow ink-blob pixel creature. The goal is to go as far as you can, but you have a limited amount of energy and obstacles to oversome. You can collect energy, but it is spread out so you need to increase your speed to get to them in time. How do you increase your speed? Why, by breaking crystals, of course!

Pixle is a fun short-form runnin-style game with great animation, sound, and enough intrigue to keep you playing. Congratulations Stellar-0!

Get To Know Stellar-0

Tell me about yourself- how many people are on your team? Where are you based?

We are a small team of game lovers, who end up making our own games with original graphic and audio. The location spans from Jakarta, Bandung, and Jogjakarta, all 3 cities are in Java island of Indonesia, and we work and connect thru internet only. For more complete info of our positions, names and skills please visit our site.

How long have you been making games? What did you do before?

We started out with game development at around early 2008 under a different name and team (Blue Destiny Arts, trimutation) and started doing paid commissions of ingame graphics and music around mid 2009.

What was your inspiration for “Pixle”?

I think it’s NiGHTS : Journey of Dreams, Sonic, and Cannabalt. Before we started developing PIXLE, we were talking about NiGHTS alot, and then we came up with the game idea of “an endless run while collecting rings”, but in the end it turned out to be a really different game :) We have blogged about how we came up with this game though.

Did you encounter any major challenges or hurdles during development?

There were a few minor obstacles like number related balancing and formula, but no major problems.

What types of games do you like to create the most? What types of games do you like to play the most?

Mix of Strategy/Sim/RPG. Something like Brigandine, Metal Marines, Yuyu Hakusho Tokubetsuhen, etc.

The genres I enjoy most are Strategy, Sim, RPG, and Versus, with nice graphic and audio.

How long is your game creation cycle? What is your process?

From 2 years to 2-3 weeks only. As for PIXLE it was approx. 1 month.

Our process is usually like this:

1. Brainstorm ideas.

2. Create working/playable prototype.

3. Discussion and creation of GDD and the data tables, plus the resource list and schedule.

4. Implementation of new ideas, updates, or balance value.

5. Thorough testing and balancing, minor polishing and bug fixes.

6. Release alpha/beta to be tested by fellow gamedevs.

7. Final release.

Are there any game developers that you admire or consider “rock stars”?

Each team member has their own “rock stars”, such as: KOEI for its deep simulation game, Treasure for its level design, Megaten for its myth/demonology and new age themed games, and Nintendo for its simplicity.

What is it about making a new game that you enjoy most?

Like any other art form, we can inject our ideas, personality and taste into our creation. Whether it’s the story, gameplay, graphic or audio. With each creation of new games, we learn new things and enjoy great amount of creative ideas transformation.

Do you have any hot projects you’re working on right now?

Yes, it’s an arena hack n’ slash/RPG mix called Grand Steam. The details of this project can be viewed here. It will be our biggest and most experimental game to date. Don’t miss out on this one lol! ;)

Thanks Stellar-0, good luck with Grand Steam!

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More than two years ago we started taking a close look at the HTML5.  To us, the  HTML5 features like <canvas>, <audio>, and <video> were the most compelling part of the HTML5 spec because they were poised to be a true replacements for Flash.   Flash had been our tool of choice for over a decade because it worked....most of the time.   For the corporate web, 'entertainment, media, gaming web sites, it was second to none.  Sure, it had issues: security flaws, proprietary API walls, performance hang-ups, etc. but it was also a simple platform.  Write your AS3, marry it to assets created by designers in .fla, export .swf, done.    A simple process for a powerful technology.

All was right with the world.

Up until last November, it is our firm belief that most Flash Web developers were holding out for Flash support on mobile iOS browsers.     "Apple will come around" we thought, "Flash will run in the iPad 3 and the iPhone 5" we fantasized.  Not because we thought Flash was perfect, or because we did not like the idea of HTML5, but because, for more than decade we had tasted what a real "standard" might be like.    We've heard about "web standards" for years, and they are a beautiful,  poetic, amazing concept that never quite came to fruition because OS, browser and platform companies had their own ideas on what was standard and what was not.  However, with Flash, we truly had ate from the "write once, run nearly everywhere" table we had been hearing about for so many years.

Then last October, Abobe gave up the mobile web, and all hell broke loose.

Web standard guys applauded it, and Flash guys continued the hand wringing operations they started back in 2010 when Apple announced the iPad would not have Flash support.    Not too long after, It seemed, all at once, the rush was on for HTML5.   Flash developers knew they needed to move on, and web standards people had their last stumbling block removed.  The plug-in-less HTML Renaissance had begun.

But then something weird happened.  Even though, when we said the phrase  "HTML5" we were talking about <canvas>,<audio><video>, local storage, geolocation, and new mark-up standards,   we noticed that when customers asked for HTML5, they had no idea what was part of the actual HTML5 spec.  When we talked to other game developers about HTML5, some had never used any specific HTML5 features.   They were using traditional web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, DOM, CSS.   In fact, in many cases the only true "HTML5" they were incorporating was the <audio> tag, and most of the time, it wasn't doing what they wanted it to do.   While features like the HTML5 Canvas are growing in use as mobile browsers get more powerful, it turned out that HTML5 meant many things  to many developers, and that did not always include the actual features of HTML5 once outlined by the W3C.

So then what *is* HTML5?  The W3C HTML5 FAQ  says this about HTML5:

HTML5 is an open platform developed under royalty free licensing terms. People use the term HTML5 in two ways:

• to refer to a set of technologies that together form the future Open Web Platform. These technologies includeHTML5 specification, CSS3, SVG, MathML, Geolocation, XmlHttpRequest, Context 2D, Web Fonts (WOFF) and others. The boundary of this set of technologies is informal and changes over time.
• to refer to the HTML5 specification, which is, of course, also part of the Open Web Platform.

What we have learned through conversations and project work in the past few months is that, to the common person who does not follow this closely, (or more likely, the common customer who needs something done right away) it's all HTML5, and therefore they are really referring to the "Open Web Platform".  In this way, HTML5 is just as much and "idea" as it  is a strict specification, and that "idea" of the "Open Web Platform"  has caught-on like wildfire, even if the borders that define what is actually included in "HTML5"  have never been fuzzier.  However, the one thing we do know is that at the kickoff party for the "Open Web Platform", the one technology that was definitely left of the invite list was Adobe Flash.

But who was invited to this "Open Web Platform Party?"  Well of course  HTML5,  CSS and DOM plus  SVG, Web Workers, Web Storage, Geolocation,  and Web Sockets.  Then experimental stuff like the  Web Audio API,  and Media Capture...and that just scratches the surface at the W3C.   We also need to add  JavaScript and WebGL, WebKit, which are run by other organizations but are just as important.  Then we have  Modernizr  and the king of JavaScript APIs, JQuery.  JQuery is so popular, in fact, there appear to be entire religions formed around it.  JQuery adds  JQuery UI and  JQuery Mobile . In fact, Some people have told us that we will never need any thing  else, if we just decide use the JQuery suite.    Really?  That would leave out  all these other technologies we keep hearing about like  MooTools, ExtJS, Sencha Touch, Ripple,  JQMobi, Jo JoshFire, Inuit,  LungoJS  and the Dojo toolkit.  Those seem pretty cool too and they all claim to solve the same  HTML5 cross-platform issues.   But then, so do  DOM/CSS tools and templates like   HTML5Boilerplate,  Initializr, Bootstrap, Crafty.DOM, LESS, 960, Blueprint, 52 Framework, Gravity,  Gridless, Skeleton, G5 and many others.    At the same time, if you want to make,  "HTML5 games" there are a whole different set of technologies to consider  like Construct 2, CreateJS (now with more Adobe), Game Maker, KineticJS, Processing.js, ImpactJS, LimeJS, Jaws, Box2SJS, CasualJS,  Cocos2D, EntityJS, GameJS, GMP, Isogenic, PlayN, PropulsionJS, Mibbu, Sprite.js and many more plus WebGL libraries like SpiderGL, GLGE, Copperlicht andSceneJS.   Then there are JavaScript media libraries like VideoJS, MediaElementJS,  Kaltura HTML5 Media Library, Jukebox,  Buzz audio library, and Popcorn.js,   Plus other tools like RGraph for graphing,  Mashi for timeline animation, BakerFramework for ebooks  or  Pixtastic for real-time image filters. And we can't forget the HTML5 app hosting and development platforms like AppMobi, Spaceport.io, FunSockets, Turbulenz and Pixie Engine or the fact that we can package up all this stuff and make them into mobile apps with  phoneGap,  or Appcelerator, or Apache Cordova.   And if you want to take your JavaScript all the way to the server-side, well then node.js  and Kinvey are just for you!  A lot of these technologies claim to be "only" way to go, so which do we choose?

And then we need to mention the platforms and devices.  Just a few years ago, we all wrote apps for Firefox, I.E. and maybe Safari, but only if you were a glutton for punishment.     Now we have to consider multiple versions of Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Mobile Safari, Firefox, Opera,Silk,  the 30 or so combinations of iOS devices and operating systems, and 1000's of Android device and OS combinations.   To further complicate matters the general consensus, at least among customers,  is  that web apps made with  "HTML5 open Web Platform"   should run perfectly across all of them.

In the past couple weeks, an angsty zeitgeist has appeared to form like a cloud around the "HTML5 Open Web Platform".    It's the feeling of technology burnout for developers, while at the same time they try to manage the expectations of customers who are clamoring for a one-size-fits-all solution to their web development needs. Our own cartoon on the subject was a minor hit for us:

And the feeling might be spreading. Just a couple days ago, the hilarious parody technology site HTML9ResponsiveBoilerStrapJS  appears to captures the feeling of HTML5 technology burnout perfectly and scored a sizable hit via twitter:

"H9RBS.js (v0.0001) is a flexible, dependency-free, lightweight, device-agnostic, modular, baked-in, component framework MVC library shoelacestrap to help you kickstart your responsive CSS-based app architecture backbone kitchensink tweetybirds."

To us, the buzzwords are flying left and right, and everyone seems to be trying to solve  similar problems by creating multiple new technologies and tools.    On one side, this is a very cool development.  It's a evolution and revolution, and we are happy to be part of this mini-tech bubble that has moved-in to fill the gulf left by Adobe when they abandoned the mobile web. On the other had,  the sheer amount of "new" around HTML5, be it ways to describe code, templates, technologies and platforms is dizzyingly overwhelming.  The situation is confusing at best, and confounding at the worst.   Furthermore, most " tech bubbles" are inevitably followed by a shake-out where dozens of also-rans fall by the way side (Remember when Flash put DHTML, Silverlight, Applets, JavaFX, VRML, Realplayer and Shockwave, off the map?). For developers, this means being very careful to choose technologies that we believe will be around for the long-haul, or we run the risk of investing our limited time and resources into something we will never use again.

All we really know right now, is that when people ask for "HTML5", they don't always have a specific technology in mind and they probably have not read the W3C spec of what is actually in "HTML5".   They might know a bit about things they perceive to be HTML5 like  CSS3 or Webkit,  Canvas or <video>, but that's not really important.  What's important is the translation of the question.  When they ask for HTML5, they are probably saying they want a single web site that runs on all devices, mobile or others and that then translates into:

"Not Flash"

And to developers who were once comfortable using Flash as a cross platform silver bullet, that could mean wading through a whole lot of specs, tools, APIs of the "Open Web Platform" before the proper solution is found for the project.

So when you call us now and ask for a game, site, app, etc. in HTML5, and there is slight pause in the conversation before we give you an answer, it's not because we are bored,  disinterested or distracted, it's because we have a few extra things to consider these days before we can  formulate a proper response.   If you give us a few minutes to catch our breath, we promise, the end result will be awesome. We appreciate your patience.

SOKAY PLAY 7
THURSDAY, MAY 10, 2012
FROM LIKE 8PM – MIDNIGHT
During the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk

@ The Medallion
334 S. Main St Unit #334-5012
Los Angeles, 90013

COME AND PLAY SOME GAMES!

If you still don’t know what I’m talking about, check out a video from a previous show: http://vimeo.com/33895049

Peace!

Hole - Pro 4

Help take the game out of judgement

Play it over at NEWGROUNDS!
Play it over at KONGREGATE!

Spoiler and a could be contest after…

Hole 18 - under par score! Guess how many shots it took?

Also, create, share and post your custom levels here or here, who knows I might put a small contest for submitted custom levels.

For sponsors/publishers, the game is available for site-locked non-exclusive licenses, contact me.

Here is a video we created to help inspire our team while we work on our entry for the semi-final round of the Atari Pong Developer Challenge.   We used a classic Atari color cycling Fuji symbol (of our own design) with images of some of Atari's early Pong coin operated games.  The music is a quick track made with Sony Acid.

By Steve Fulton

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about my efforts as complete "non-artist" to create funny, classic video game inspired photo-shopped images for Cracked.com "Photoplasty" weekly contests.   The gist of the story was that, even though cracked.com never features any of my images, the effort on my part to push my myself to "be creative" was still rewarding.  Afterwards,I quit making the images because it was taking too much of my time.

Well, last week when I saw they had posted a contest theme named "Video Game Plot Twists That Would Have Blown Your Mind" ,I decided to try again using a  "lessons learned" approach.  So instead of making images that feature games that are my favorites, I decided to instead, use games that Cracked.com seems to fall back upon when choosing images.  I threw out my standbys of Pitfall!, Asteroids, and  Food Fight, etc., I decided to pick from games that I see often used in these contests like Space Invaders, Frogger, Paperboy, Metroid, and Super Mario.  At the same time, I decided to create an animated .gif instead of still image, because those types of images seem to get chosen more often.

Anyway, of the three entries I created, Cracked.com chose my Space Invaders image as #16 for the week.   The image was inspired by the pilot episode of the The Twilight Zone.  To be honest, I don't even think the image is that funny.  I think they chose it because it did not look like any of the others.

So what did I learn form this?  I suppose the lesson is "know your audience", or "keep trying"  or something like that.   Or maybe there is no lesson to be learned at all.  I'm still trying to decide.

My recent focus was finishing up some fight scene cinematics. Last time I posted, David Rod had sketched out some storyboards to help me out, here’s what that turned out like…

Storyboard by David Rodriguez

I used most of the shots from this and drew them in Illustrator, and animated them in Flash. They turned out looking like this…

Cinema artwork by myself

Now these are animated and in the game. With this major task complete, that means one less major task to think about! We’re getting super close, just a few weeks left till we’ll be wrapping up.

Also, in the last few weeks I implemented a quick ‘n dirty localization system so the game will be able to be in multiple languages.

Next on my to-dos is to finish the NPC animation in the Donut Segment.

This week’s Flash Game Friday winner is Ivan Vs. Mutants by 3d4udovishe!

Ivan Vs. Mutants is a super-cool shooter (emphasis on the cool)!

You are Ivan, and you are surrounded by wintery mutant creatures. You have to take them out to pass each stage. As you progress, new gun types and baddies are introduced. They also get a little harder to kill.

As if blasting mutants weren’t enough, there is also a weapons store. You collect in-game currency and upgrade your weapons and armor so you can survive the stronger enemies.

Ivan Vs. Mutants is a great shooter with good polish, nice physics, deep gameplay, and good weapon variety. Congratulations 3d4udovishe!

Get To Know 3d4udovishe

Tell me about yourself- how many people are on your team? Where are you based?

We are based in the Ukraine, in the city of Kharkov. We are two brothers Denis and Silvester (Vyacheslav in russian) and we make up a developer team named 3d4udovishe. We also run a couple of portals: funnymonster.net & 3D4udovishe.com.

How long have you been making games? What did you do before?

We started developing games when we were in school. At 14 years old I (Denis) wrote code (asm) for a Mortal Kombat clone game for 8-bit zx-spectrum computer. Since it was a clone our only intention was to play it, but not one my friends had a computer better than zx-specturm :(

It was a good experience, though. I finished it with my brother in 1996. After that we tried many times to make something with directx for windows, but we haven’t yet finished a good project.

We used to make video ads and 3d animations for TV to help pay the bills, as well as help us create a little studio in the Ukraine. But game development still had a grip on us and we got back into making games through a referral where we made 3d buildings for a fly simulator game.

In 2007 we got the idea to try Flash, and our first game was “Bubuka vs Grizle: Ice Cream Wars”, which was a fail. :(

But we didn’t stop, and eventually made Armored Fighter. The inspiration for this game came from “Walker”, an old game on Amiga. We decided to make something like this game, but try to somehow make it better- I can’t say whether we accomplished that, but the game continues to be popular today. That was our first successful game. Since then we haven’t had another “fail”. :).

As of today we about 5 years total experience in Flash game development and 4 years experience as game portal owners.

Our developer home page is 3d4udovishe.info, which has all of our fresh projects and announcements. Also all our games possible to download right there.

What was your inspiration for “Ivan vs. Mutants”?

Ivan vs Mutants was powered by the IsoLand engine. The engine was originally made for the game Inglourious Soldiers, which is currently in beta and playable on our portal funnymonster.net.

The idea of the Ivan vs Mutants project was try to make a game very fast and release it in time for the xmas holidays. The basic idea was to just create an arena game that used our IsoLand engine, and has wave-based gameplay with only a few varieties of locations and monsters, but with a premium for Mochi Coins. But as usual our appetite came while we were eating. We ended up being too fancy with this game and development took about 4 months. In the end we created: 16 monsters, 8 locations, and about 24 hours of gameplay. Now we are still thinking about making a premium version.

We wanted to make an animation intro with a story, but our file got too big so maybe we’ll release it on youtube at some point in the future.

Base story is: Ivan is an ex russian army soldier, living in Siberia. One day he sees a very strong light in the sky, and his building is engulfed by a ray of light. After that he woke up on a chair near his table with a bottle of russian drink (siberian hot water ;) . He thinks it was just a dream. When he comes outside he finds alien monsters made from snow, stones, and branches. That is where the gameplay starts.

Did you encounter any major challenges or hurdles during development?

Sometimes we see how groups of people are cheating ratings on big portals, which is disappointing.

Another problem we have is finding good sponsors for our projects. Sometimes we don’t make “typical games” and sponsors don’t understand how the game will play. Distribution is also not a simple thing. But I think these are the same problems as the majority of game developers out there…

What types of games do you like to create the most? What types of games do you like to play the most?

We always make games that we would like to play. Sometimes this is a game from our childhood, but with our vision. We like to experiment with different types of gameplay and game mechanics. Most our games are action games or shooters, but we are open to trying to make a puzzle or something else. All of our games have 3d animated graphics, though sometimes we do pencil art for the game menus.

We are playing almost all new hits on PC, because don’t have Xbox or PS3. Sometimes we play Flash game hits and try to gain some experience from it. As publishers / portal owners we are monitoring all released games every day (30-60 sec per game).

These are some games we particularly enjoy: Witcher 2, NFS – the RUN, Warhammer 40000: March of Chaos, Stronghold 2, Battle Field 2-3, Call of Duty MW2-3, Dead Space 1-2….

How long is your game creation cycle? What is your process?

This always varies, because we work without any bosses so everything is up to us. When we don’t have any problems that take our attention away from game development we can make a good game in about 2-3 months. Usually we make a game skeleton with gameplay and the engine in about 1 month. After that we are just growing details and features to make it playable and polish it up. From idea to a completed game, for example, for Ivan vs Mutants development took about 4 months. The basic engine was done before we got the idea to make this game, but the engine kept growing as we built out more features and optimizations.

We plan to have the next installation of Ivan done in about 1-1.5 months, because we have finished the engine for this game. We don’t need to write additional fundamental code, maybe just simple modifications. We plan to make new monsters, make new weapons, change location to tropics, etc…

Our process of creation is parallel work. We are making code and graphics in parallel processes.

Are there any game developers that you admire or consider “rock stars”?

Of course, first of all Badim, Elite-games.net, gamenode.com (this is good portal and sponsor), armorgames.com (this might be the top level where we want to be, but it is a long way away…). Also many many developers from Russia and Ukraine who are making good games and were at Flashgamm 2011 in Kiev…

What is it about making a new game that you enjoy most?

We want to try our skill in games like: tycoon, many tower defense, good RPG like Diablo, 2.5D Fighting like a Final Fight,  racing, shooter etc…

Do you have any hot projects you’re working on right now?

Our hottest project right now is “Inglourious Soldiers”. This game is finished and has been posted on funnymonster.net (site-locked version). But this game is not released and the future of this game is not clear. Before we were thinking about launching this game to iOS and Android, but we haven’t found a good sponsor for it.

Originally, we wanted to launch a series of these games with one sponsor for Flash. We thought that once we created 6 or more versions, we could make one big game with 100+ levels for mobile. Now we are just making new levels for this game and have 35+ levels. We will decide what to do with it in near future.

Now in progress: Jungle Treasures 3, new Armored Fighter.

Thanks 3d4udovishe, and congratulations again on winning Flash Game Friday!

© Colin Cupp for MochiLand, 2012. | Permalink | No comment

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