You can find the new Squishy Bugs market page here. I don’t expect to ever have to change market urls again. And if I do, you can always get the proper url at WaggSoft.com.

With this update I reduced the number of rows of tiles since some players complained that toward the end of the level it seemed to take too long for the bullet to reach the top-most tiles. This allowed me to display the player’s score at the top of the page. Which brings me to the other update.

The scoring system has been revised. Previously you were awarded 1 point for every tile that was falling the moment you squished a tile. 3 tiles falling? Squish a tile for 3 points. Squish another tile for 2 points (since there would only be 2 tiles left falling). And so on. Squishy bugs were worth a 2 point multiplier. No longer! Each tile awards a ridiculous number of points following the same number-of-tiles-falling rule. However, now you lose points for not catching tiles. Each tile that drops off the bottom of the screen will cause you to lose the same number of points as you would have had you managed to squish the tile. This prevents players from exploiting the multiplicative nature of the scoring system.

Also, the groundwork for adding new power ups has been completed. It should be relatively straight forward to add new power ups in the future. So in addition to the bouncy ball power up that’s already present, there will be a “drop similar icons” power up and a “drop similar colors” power up. They will work similar to the way dropping groups works right now, which is that groups of the same color and icon fall together if one of them is hit.

Some update in the future will see the addition of accounts which will tie into a WaggSoft community page. This will allow for global high scores (another feature to add) and potentially allow for the addition of special events.

It’s an early release. I’m calling it version 0.0.1. It’s going to change a lot by the time it’s done. There are at least 3 powerups I can think of that need to be added to the game. The sound effects will be tweaked. I want to have global high scores, and I’ve already written most of the server code for that.

So if you have an Android device, please check it out. It installs to the SD card by default and it only takes up 1.9MB of data.

Also, if you have any issues to report or want to discuss the game or ask questions then you can do so at the forums. Or reach me over Twitter.

I’m just polishing up the last little bits I can in the time permitted. Just last night I started working on the tutorial. I would like to believe the game is simple enough to figure out without instructions, but it can’t hurt to be prepared.

I hope to have the tutorial finished tonight or tomorrow. Then I can go back to fixing the last couple (low priority) known issues. And then adding sound effects. And hiding the advertisement when not on the menu. And then tweaking the scoring system. And then… there’s a whole list of things left to do. Oh yeah, I kind of still need to add squishy bugs to the game. You know, the things that give the game its name? Yeah, they’re still not in here. And finish building the web site…

I’m still on schedule for a December 24 release. Progress will be posted here, as usual.

Humble Bundle 4 featuring Super Meat Boy.

Yes, that means Linux.

Now that a date is set, what do I do about the price?

I’ve been considering the following plan. First, the game gets posted to the Android market December 24 essentially as a fully featured demo. All power-ups and game-play elements are in place but users are restricted to a limited level set. And the game would be ad-supported.

Then I continue to polish the game. The December 24 demo would be considered the “first 90%” of the game. When the game is at a semi-polished level, somewhere in the last 10% of the development cycle (for those not in the know, the last 10% of development is the longest part of development) then I put a new build of the game up on the market with the lowest possible price point. $0.99. And I remove advertisements from the new build.

Early adopters get in at the low low price of $0.99 and get to play and suggest features as the game reaches completion. This could be a month, it could be half a year, but they get in at $0.99. And when that last 10% is done then the price raises to $1.99 (but not without a nice sale price for the first week or two to transition new purchasers into the product).

At least, that’s the thought right now. I’ll be continuing development on the game. I’m trying to post new screenshots every Saturday but there’s really not much new to show. It’s the same sort of screenshot every time. And I suppose I should get WaggSoft and the forums operational some time soon, too. I’ll need those forums to get feedback on demo.

The game that broke the resolution? The Binding of Isaac as part of the latest Humble (Voxatron) Bundle.

The toughest part of the resolution? Having to turn down $1.50 Rainslick Precipice games during Steam sales. Those Steam sales… so tempting all year long. Speaking of which, Steam should be doing a Black Friday week-long sale here soon. Just a guess.

Did I learn anything? Heck yes, I did. Right now the Magicka series is on sale at Steam for less than $7 and it seems like a heckuva deal. Last year I would have jumped all over that. Not now, no way. I learned to appreciate my current library of unplayed games. I look at Magicka (and also Oblivion currently on sale) and think to myself, “When will I play this game? Is it likely to go on sale again, perhaps even cheaper, before I actually have time to play this game?” and the answer is a most definite, “Yes, it’ll be cheaper and no I’m in the middle of 10 other games right now so I don’t need to add this one regardless of how affordable it seems to be.”

Speaking of Oblivion, I already own the game on DVDs. $6.49 for Steam cloud support (saved games stored online, accessible from any computer) sure is tempting, but what are the odds that I’ll play the game again in the near future? I’m playing the game right now using the physical media I own just so I can finish the expansion pack and the quests I had not yet finished. After that, it’s not likely I’ll want to continue by using the saved games I already have. Plus, I can just back up the saved games to a portable hard-drive.

So, yes I learned stuff. I appreciate my games. I’m not likely to add any new games to my library unless they’re games that don’t require a large time investment. In the foreseeable future I expect I’ll be “living” on a diet of quality indie titles while shunning the expensive triple-A titles that suck up too much time. I’ve got enough of those unplayed in my library already.

This is an initial screenshot of my current project. It’s a pretty rough “outline” of what the game will become.

I’m writing the game in libGDX so I can test the game natively on my workstation and compile it for Android at the same time.

Though I started the game just about a year ago, “Space Fight” development is on a bit of a break. It’s an ambitious project and for a guy like me who has never made a big ambitious project, it’s a lot of work. And since a lot of work takes a lot of time, my wife suggested maybe I should get something smaller out quicker (insert that’s what she said joke here). So in the meantime I’m learning how to develop for the Android platform with the book Beginning Android Games. My wife and I brainstormed what we think may be a fun little game for touch screens so I’ll be making a small game for Android before moving on to the bigger more ambitious projects.

Kev Glass has started to flip my world upside down now with his HTML5 version of Legends of Yore! He has written the game in Java and compiled it into Javascript using GWT and the canvas widget. How cool is that? It’s significant for me as I was going to look into HTML5 game development but it appears that now you can just code your game using Java2D and have it compiled into Javascript and runnable on all manner of platforms (iPhone, Android, WebOS, PC, etc) right away.

I suppose the best course of action may be to finish Space Fight in it’s current framework and worry about porting it over to Java2D later. But first I learn Android development!

import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.net.URLDecoder;
import java.net.URLEncoder;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;

public class GEncode {

	String serialize(List strings) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
		String serialized = "";
		for (String s : strings) {
			serialized += URLEncoder.encode(s, "UTF-8") + "&";
		}
		return serialized;
	}

	@SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
	List deserialize(String serialized) {
		String[] strings = serialized.split("&");
		for (int i = 0; i < strings.length; i++) {
			strings[i] = URLDecoder.decode(strings[i]);
		}
		List list = Arrays.asList(strings);
		return list;
	}

	public static void main(String[] args) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
		List strings = new LinkedList();
		strings.add("Old & New");
		strings.add("Once upon a time!");
		strings.add("Yes, there is a monster in the closet");
		strings.add("Another string? Why, I don't mind if I do!");
		strings.add("She said \"Yes\"");

		for (String s : strings) {
			System.out.println (s);
		}

		GEncode g = new GEncode();
		String s = g.serialize(strings);

		System.out.println ("\nSerialized:\n" + s + "\n\nDeserialized:");

		List newStrings = g.deserialize(s);

		int i = 1;
		for (String ns : newStrings) {
			System.out.println (i + ": " + ns);
			i++;
		}
	}
}

Output:

Old & New
Once upon a time!
Yes, there is a monster in the closet
Another string? Why, I don't mind if I do!
She said "Yes"

Serialized:
Old+%26+New&Once+upon+a+time%21&Yes%2C+there+is+a+monster+in+the+closet&Another+string%3F+Why%2C+I+don%27t+mind+if+I+do%21&She+said+%22Yes%22&

Deserialized:
1: Old & New
2: Once upon a time!
3: Yes, there is a monster in the closet
4: Another string? Why, I don't mind if I do!
5: She said "Yes"

Of course, it all worked out well in the end. Reid James Newton was born at 9:33pm last Friday. He suffered a little from bilateral pneumothorax, a condition where a pocket of air forms between the body wall and lungs. He was monitored over night, and again periodically throughout his stay at the hospital. We were home 3 nights later.

I’ve taken some time off work to get used to having a baby in the house. I’m trying to not worry about my work and I’ve managed to not check my work email since my wife and child came home from the hospital. That’s stressful in itself I don’t want anyone to break anything while I’m gone but at the same time I hate to think I’m holding anyone up.

Thinking that two weeks off work would be a sort of vacation was a mistake! Up to last week I had managed to read 5% of a book every day (the Kindle app shows percentages). I’m reading The Return of the King in preparation for the BluRay release at the end of June. It’s the 9th today (I think) so I should be at 45% completion. Nope, I’m 8% in. Reid is taking up a lot of time. When he’s awake, and he seems to be awake in the middle of the night, then I’m awake. When he’s sleeping I’m sleeping.

We’re learning. And I’m sure eventually things will be relatively back to normal.