Pigs Will Fly submitted

Pigs Will Fly has been submitted to the app stores! Hopefully on March 17, the Apple App Store, the Android Market, and the Amazon Appstore will all have the game available. I already submitted the binaries and chose a release date later in the month, just in case something unexpected occurs.

(one of the promo screenshots to be shown in the app stores)

The walkthrough video (linked in the game) shows how to beat every level in case the player gets stuck. It is continuous footage with flawless execution, yet is a whopping 36 minutes long! Therefore the average player probably will need to spend at least 1-2 hours to beat all 40 levels. Not bad for a dollar app.

Pigs Will Fly for iOS and Android

Pigs Will Fly has been fully ported to support iOS and Android devices using Corona!

In programming terms, this means I copied and pasted Flash ActionScript code and revised it into Lua, rewriting some parts completely where necessary. A function was written to iterate through each level and dump all the body and joint data into a giant Lua-formatted table. The only challenge was getting the physics to behave identically.

In the photo you can see the game running on an iPad, Android phone, and a Kindle Fire! The game automatically uses HD graphics settings for tablets, and standard resolution otherwise. I prefer to use letterbox scaling to maximize the screen space and maintain aspect ratios across all devices. The Kindle Fire has the strangest aspect ratio, so black borders are automatically drawn to cover up the unused space. Some would say that it's ugly, but I don't mind.

Pigs Will Fly will be released for the Apple App Store, Android Market, Amazon App Store, and probably the Nook App Store as well. A very tentative release date is March 1st.

The free-to-play Flash web version will be released at my own discretion. To be honest, currently there are no limitations on the web version, and on the contrary, is easier to play compared to handheld devices! However, it will not be primarily/exclusively sponsored, so the only advertisements will be buttons to purchase or gift the handheld version.

Pigs Will Fly! (beta)

The "Pigs Can Fly" sequel is now in beta! It is going to be titled "Pigs Will Fly" to avoid infringing on other IPs on the app store.

As you can see, I am reusing a lot of the original art assets like the backgrounds which are now overlaid with a placeholder crumpled paper texture (to be replaced with my own). I decided just to include 40 levels in the viral Flash version, and the dollar mobile app will include free updates. I am working on the port right now and it should take no more than a week.

It even takes me a while to beat all these levels. It definitely presents more of a challenge compared to the original game released almost one year ago.

Games under this physics-puzzle genre are unlike any other. Assuming the design is in place, it only takes a couple days to program the features necessary and the level creation phase can be shaped into a realistic schedule.

..It was possible for me to take my laptop to a coffee shop or local park, create a level or two, and then rinse and repeat the next day. Hiring online level designers crossed my mind multiple times, but that idea faded along with the level editor feature built into the game itself. I wanted to keep things simple. All the levels were created in Flash.

On a related note for other developers, the newer versions of FlashDevelop include a feature to create a "Flash IDE project". Now rather than wasting time exporting and importing swf and swc files from Adobe Flash to FlashDevelop, you can keep everything in single fla file and use FlashDevelop as a text editor and debugger. It works great for a single developer, but maybe not so well for a team of even two or more developers.

The feature uses Adobe Flash to compile and launch the game, while adhering to breakpoints and such in FlashDevelop. It brings the two programs together. Sure you could just use write and edit code in Adobe Flash, but for me it tends to have huge latency when it comes to just typing and scrolling. Yuck. You can still use the "Embed" keyword for external files like audio, but those files must be added to the library.

Pigs Will Fly currently is available on FlashGameLicense.com for previewing purposes. Feedback is welcome. You may need an account to view it.

Pigs Can Fly Sequel

At the start of this new year, I knew that I wanted to make a physics-puzzle game. I created some prototypes, but ultimately I chose to create a sequel for Pigs Can Fly instead. Already I have created 20 levels, so I am confident that 30 more will be finished soon. There is a great chance that everything will be finished and released by the end of February! The original was an exclusively sponsored Flash version that got over 15 million plays, so I am confident that this one will do well.

For this project, experience has taught me to design almost everything before working on the art. Here is a screenshot of one of the latest levels...

As you can see, there are are now six colors/cursors to use. The square boxes can be destroyed simply by clicking on them with its corresponding cursor based on color, and the green circles constantly spin in a particular direction. Of course none of this this is represented, but these new features will be clear and obvious once I spend a couple days on an art pass. In other levels I have introduced "dead regions" where cursors cannot interact with anything and it has opened up many level design possibilities.

It may not seem like it, but designing levels for these 2D games actually is very time consuming. It takes a lot of trial and error, and I have come up with the best levels by randomly placing objects until I see something that can be refined. It is similar to the challenges that writers and painters face when it comes to creating great composition. Fortunately it is a skill that can be improved through many hours of effort.

The bunny defense game will be continued immediately after finishing this sequel. All the features are finished, so it just needs some careful balancing and additional audio.

For what it's worth, here is an in-game screenshot of one of the prototypes from earlier this month. It functions just like Crayon Physics, but features chalk and strings.

And here is a different prototype that involved bouncing droplets into a flower vase using platforms, balloons, and umbrellas. Actually it played well, so I may come back to it.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone! I'd like to start this year by saying that the current Easter-themed game for Flash, iOS, and Android is in its beta stage. Though experience has taught me not to rush things.. I will need about one week in the coming months to balance and finish loose ends before I request play-testing. That way I can experience the project as an almost new experience and see flaws more easily. In the meantime, here are the opening comic panels for playing the story mode:

There are seven weapons and half a dozen specialty items. Along with three boss fights and many different enemies to be faced in four scenarios. There is an endless mode that unlocks everything so the player can compete for high-scores in a survival based showdown. The only real outstanding issue is adjusting the balance. Licensed audio and music, art, and feature implementation is all finished.

Yes, there is a cute bunny companion who can be hired to help protect the magical eggs.

Anyways, porting to iPad and Kindle Fire is fine, but may not play well on smaller devices. Memory usage is also a concern because the game now has over three hundred art assets. Most of these can be put into large sprite sheets, but then there are 70 audio files on top of it all. It is what it is.

While all of it is on the back burner, I have started a brand new project.

It was going to be a "find difference" game, where the objective is to find five differences between two similar photographs. Afterall, what could go wrong? GIMP is very capable free software to "Photoshop" many photos with the clone stamp tool, but actually the licensing of the photos themselves deterred me from continuing the project. I deem the usage of free-to-use photos in a game like this to be unwise, because either the quality is not there, or the coypright and licensing agreements are sketchy. For royalty-free photos, the cost is about two dollars for personal use, and over a hundred dollars for commercial use.. for each one! I would need at least a hundred, so investing over $10,000 in a project like is would not be a good idea at this time.

For what it's worth, this is a prototype using some watermarked placeholder art. There are no differences in the two images ;)

A Pigs Can Fly sequel was planned, but while thinking of new levels a better idea crossed my mind.

I am a fan of games like Crayon Physics and Magic Pen where you can draw lines and shapes that turn into physical objects. I have spent yesterday prototyping my own and it works very well. It is the kind of the game that is easy to understand, and easy to develop in pieces because most of the work is in creating the levels. Having the game update live with new levels created by the community is also a possibility, but we will see.

Here is a screenshot of some static blue boxes, and my own green convex boxes drawn in the game itself. They behave as physical objects as expected.

By no means will this be a clone of either game. I have some ideas that may work really well and help innovate the genre. This is going to be a great project as it will require me to focus on design and the fun factor over everything else.

Easter surprises

It is time to unveil what I have been working on in the past couple weeks! This project has undergone tremendous design changes and it has been no walk in the park. At last I have played it safe by making a game based on Defend Your Nuts. After all, defense games are still my specialty.

Below are some screenshots. Note that this is an early build:

(typo)

As you can see, you will play as a bunny rabbit with the quest of recovering large magical eggs using up to seven unique weapons and specialty items (walls, other bunnies, etc). Weapons and items are found inside the eggs themselves, which hatch successfully unless the enemies manage to destroy them beforehand.

There will be an optional gore mode, but either way this game is not for young children. I'd like to move away from violence next year.

I still plan to release this free-to-play Flash version for the web, and iOS and Android versions containing premium content. But due to the Easter theme, it will probably be released sometime in March.

In other news, The King's Path has just been announced as Ansca Mobile's App of the Week! I am flattered. Thank you! If any of you would like a free copy, then send me an email and I will give you a free promo code! In the meantime, I am working on putting together a small video to show some of the gameplay, as requested.

Game Kite

I am pleased to announce that The King's Path has been released for iPhone and iPad. Along with this announcement, I will now be doing business under the name Game Kite LLC. The name is short, simple, and meaningful to me because right before I quit my job in April to go independent full-time, my friends and I took a trip to the windy Rehoboth Beach in Delaware to visit the Dogfish Head Pub, where we the spent the next day shopping around in small stores - including a kite shop. It was perfect weather for kite flying. Additionally, we noticed a vendor that sold flying pig sculptures, and coincidentally this all happened the week after I released Pigs Can Fly. Whether or not we saw a squirrel loading up his hiding spot with acorns and bazookas is another question...

The website will evolve over time so what you see is mostly placeholder.

Although there are actually very few advantages of starting a limited liability company as an individual, I figured it would be best to start now than later. It is still just me, taxed personally, which by definition makes me the sole proprietor.

Already I have found a problem with The King's Path. The in-app purchases for the iPad HD version somehow got excluded from the app review process, but it's a minor problem because the actual game is still playable. I plan to release Android versions in January and finish up the current project in the meantime.