• Add: music by Thibaut Faurie
• Fix: some minor map issues

Snorms will soon be available on Desura, Alien Blitz is already available on Google Play & microbasic.net

I’ve rebuild Snorms with the new music and also added support for music to Alien Blitz (there was no music at all).

Alien Blitz has already been published on Google Play and this website, and I will publish Snorms tomorrow (Snorms is a lot harder to publish). The free version of Alien Blitz does not include music (yet) to keep it small.

More updates soon…

• (add) Support for resolution < 800px, view will be shrunk
• (add) Added better control of zoom & controller size
• (add) View can now be shrunk even on higher resolution, you will see more far but will loose details

Support for resolution < 800px is not an “official” feature, it is available only as apk download (not on Google Play) as I don’t have any control on the screen resolution outside Google Play (when I give the game to people for example). It is just a way to make the game “playable” but it’s not perfect, and as I don’t have a small screen/low dpi device I can’t test it that much (that’s why it’s not official feature)

This update is not available on Google Play yet, as there is not enough new things in it.

This is Alien Blitz running on the iOs simulator! I don’t have an iOs device, so I can’t test on a real device, but I’m still very very happy with the result!
(shadows are not rendered in this version, that’s why it’s full bright)

It took me around 5 hours to get it running from scratch (I never did anything related to iOs yet), this is quite impressive, and it’s mainly thanks to LibGdx! This library is really awesome, and even with a very small documentation regarding iOs, I had all the information needed to work.

I had to do lots of dirty workarounds to make it work (on a temporary copy of Alien Blitz), but I know how to make all this a lot cleaner, and at the moment there’s no blocking point. Of course I did not do any full test, in fact this is the very first time I could enter the game, but I think it could work greatly.

Main problem now will be money:

• I use Xamarin to run c# on iOs (LibGdx uses ikvm to convert Java to c#), but license costs 300$ (the 30 day trial let you fully test the product)
• Apple fee are around 100$
• And the most problematic part will be than I need actual iOs devices (iPad & iPhone), and those are very expensive

So I will now continue playing with this, the iOs simulator is almost quick enough to play with the game. But at some point I will have to make a decision if I want to invest for iOs development (and I will have to find the money for it).

• fix: typo
• fix: player stuck in a wall
• add: virtual controller size can be changed from in-game option menu

A friend of mine has been working on music for Alien Blitz & Snorms last weeks, and it’s almost finished! I will soon have some personalized music for my games ^^

I recently bought a new phone, a Wiko Cink Peak, and I had some small troubles connecting it on Ubuntu. As it’s a phone imported by a French company and I don’t think it is sold anywhere else than in France (under this name/specs), the rest of this post will be in French.

J’ai acheté il y a quelques jours un téléphone Wiko Cink Peak, c’est un téléphone milieu de gamme à bas prix. J’en suis très content, mais j’ai juste eu quelques problèmes pour qu’il soit reconnu sous Ubuntu pour le débuguage USB (et donc pour le dev). Comme il y a peu d’information concernant ce téléphone sur Internet (en tout cas sous ce nom), j’ai décidé de faire ce post afin qu’il soit potentiellement référencé.

Bref, par défaut sous mon Ubuntu 12.10 le téléphone n’est pas bien reconnu, il suffit de l’ajouter à la liste des appareils autorisés, pour cela il faut éditer en root le fichier /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules, dans un terminal :

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

Puis rajoutez à la fin du fichier la ligne

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0bb4", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0c03", MODE="0666"

Enregistrez, quitter gedit, puis dans le terminal entrez la commande

sudo restart udev

Puis

adb kill-server
adb devices

La dernière commande devrait retourner quelque chose comme

* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
List of devices attached 
S9091    device

Et voilà ! Redémarrez eclipse et c’est bon, le téléphone est parfaitement reconnu.

• Corrected Vsync (for real this time, I found a PC where I had tearing, so I could more easily correct the bug)
• Added an option to delete save (Options > Misc > Delete save), it will remove all the data, use it with caution
• Added a running button (keyboard only) by using shift, it’s just a small boost (20%)

Running is only allowed while playing with keyboard/mouse because gamepad players already have a small advantage (locking system) that makes it easier to dodge bullets. With running players can more quickly run away from bullets, so it should make things fair enough.

Snorms has been uploaded on Desura it should be available within next days.

I slowed down work lately, I had a bad injury on my hand that forced me to stop using computer for some time. That was quite a good thing as it forced me to take a rest away from computer ^^ But now I’m back in business !

Tearing

I noticed I made a mistake on last release, and so the tearing problem should still be there, it’s now corrected and working nicely, I will re-release it next week end (I try not to build more than one release per week) maybe with some other stuff (such as easily reseting save games)

Maps

I’m currently working on a 5-maps pack, that I could give as a gift for special events, they won’t be included in regular builds. It’s good to do some maps again, it was a long time and I quite enjoy it.

New game

I’m also working on the Game Design Document for a new game that I’m working on with some friends. GDD is almost done, and development should begin soon. I will not speak that much about this game as I don’t want to spoil everything, but it will be a f2p casual game for mobiles and browser (mainly mobiles)

• (PC/Mac) Fix (minor): error while configuring keyboard
• (PC/Mac) Fix (minor): Vsync incorrect on some systems
• (PC/Mac) Fix (minor): Bad window title displayed
• (PC/Mac) Reverted to old camera, as the new one might increase tearing and is useless on PC (big screen size)
• (Android) Fix (minor): exiting game while loading a level (and relaunching it)
• Fix (minor): Forbid removing all weapons from weapon screen
• Fix (medium): player could get stuck into a wall
• Display Power Up/Down name when picking it up
• Updated automatic error reporting tool, in order to include game version & platform

The games have been uploaded on Google Play Store & Desura, they will be available shortly.

I have corrected the errors found this week, there wasn’t that much, but I got some problems reading some automatic bug reports (anonymous, sent whenever the game crashes on PC/Android), as the build number/platform were not specified, and due to obfuscation the file name are not the same on each build/platform.

Last days have been very stressful for me, when you work alone on a project, you can’t rely on someone else to make sure release is okay, that nothing was forgotten, etc… and you spend 100% of your time wondering what could have been forgotten and if the game will really please people.

And I tend not to trust friends/family when we are talking about my game, not that they would lie, but they might tend to embellish things, or not be very honest/frank.
So when a total stranger tells me he likes my game it really cheers me up, and I received quite a lot of comments like that lately, so even if I am stressed, I am quite happy ^^
Of course there are also people that will just be mean and say horrible things without arguing, haters are everywhere, it’s hard to not think about them, but it’s just the best thing to do.

As for promotion, I did just small things yet, I did not contact any game-news website yet, as I want to make sure the game is bug-free. So far it’s good, I just stumbled on a random/rare bug where the player could get stuck inside a wall, I’ve already corrected it, but I’m waiting to see if there is nothing else to be corrected before patching.

Greenlight

Greenlight feedbacks are pretty good, I have no idea how games are selected there so I have no idea if I could ever be selected, I know it can take months or just never happen. I’m quite pessimistic by nature, so I doubt I could get there, but… prove me wrong people ^^

Also, I made a promise on Greenlight, if I ever get selected I will add multiplayer to Snorms. It’s a good motivation for me because from a developer point of view it’s very interesting, and I had to work on some big network related stuffs in the past (for personal or professional projects) so I know quite a lot of things about that.
The networking part is not a problem in fact, the main issue will be to rewrite some engines stuffs that are not 100% network-compliant, I began working on that some months ago (it’s even visible in the actual release, there’s some unused files scattered around) but I would have to continue working on it.
From game-design point of view I have found solutions for the main problems concerning experience and weapons level, and I have some good ideas on ranking system, I will continue thinking about that, but there’s no blocking points there.

Future

For now Snorms/Alien Blitz code is frozen, I won’t change anything except for bug fixes, as I am alone on this project I can’t afford to work on two branches at the same time.

In the meantime I will start thinking/working on the next game I want to work on, this one will be completely different: it will be for browser/phones only, a lot more casual, and I will not be alone on this project. I will still be the only developer (except for some random helps from friends maybe) and the main game-designer, but I also have friends to help me: one community manager, one musician/sound designer, and one or two graphic designer. And all of them giving ideas and helping for game design. Not having to do the promotion on this game will be a relief for me.

That’s all for today ^^ We have a beautiful sunny afternoon here, I will try to get some fresh air ^^