Defend Your Nuts 2 is in beta!

No matter how big or small a project is, the last 10% always is the most grueling. Everything breaks down into bug-fixing, and tiny tasks marked up on some never ending list. Fortunately, everything really is coming together; Defend Your Nuts 2 has reached beta status! This moment comes at a convenient time, because I am taking some time off to travel.

This sequel actually has taken the same amount of time to develop, but I would say there is at least twice as much content and art. Conservatively, it follows a very similar design and blends some of the features from Zombie Situation. For example, you can find allies along the way, to help defend your nuts...

Additionally, there is a boss fight on the last day of story-mode...

As I write this blog entry, I begin to notice how little sense the game makes. Well, when you have to do all the programming, art, and design, while taking advantage of assets left-over from previous projects, things can turn out a bit randomly at times. In fact, this project was not even supposed to be a sequel in the first place! Despite all this, the game is more fun than its predecessor, and could very well be my most successful Flash game to date.

Defend Your Nuts 2!

I am making Defend Your Nuts 2!

Okay, so it was not my initial intention to develop this sequel - things pretty much led up to this moment. Back in the middle of September, I started on a Flash game heavily inspired by a mix of games on iOS...

It was basically functional with special abilities and specific weapons all planned out. But I felt as though I was borrowing too much (environment art style and design) while only delivering a small fraction of what could otherwise be offered. With that said, I decided to scale back a bit, and develop a sequel for Defend Your Nuts.

This time you can hire bunny allies of five unique classes (healer, warrior, rogue, wizard, archer). I have removed the option of purchasing ammunition in the shop, instead replacing it with a shovel to dig up money and ammo each round. The ability to upgrade the wall will remain. Also I chose to remove the blend of modern weaponry and support a purely fantasy theme, so land mines will no longer be an option either.

Scratch Tickets for iOS and Android!

I am happy to announce that my latest projects, Scratch Tickets, has been released for iOS and Android devices! It is a simple scratch-off ticket app with many tickets to unlock.

Click the buttons below to navigate to the online mobile iOS and Android app stores. There was very little play-testing, but the conversion rate of downloads to purchases is strong enough to convince me that everything should be in working order.

Scratch Off Tickets

Recently I received an email that my Corona membership will soon expire. Corona is the technology I used to develop my mobile games: The King's Path and Pigs Will Fly, for iOS and Android. Earlier this year, I chose not to develop mobile apps anymore, but I did have one idea that I have always wanted to try out. Better now than later!

It is a scratch off ticket app! The final touches are being made for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. Then, it's back to Flash games, probably from now until the end of 2013. I change my mind so frequently, so no promises on that notion :)

To be honest, I really did come up with this idea while playing Slotomania, so I was disheartened upon discovering that it that it has already been done before. However, an important difference compared to the other apps is that the prize areas are revealed uniformly and there is no "Redeem" button. It is obvious when a prize is won, because the scratched area reveals a simple icon while yellow star tokens pop out and fly to the top left corner. Consequently, this feels much more interactive.

There are also instant-scratch tokens that do as the name suggests. Simply click the button to use one, and the current ticket instantly gets scratched to reveal any prizes.

The star tokens to buy tickets are redeemed for free every few hours, or can be purchased immediately through micro transactions. There are 10 tickets, where 8 need to be unlocked by scratching tickets to fill the "New Ticket" progress bar repeatedly.

The game will be released within a couple weeks.

Hotel management

It is moments like this, I wonder why I did not pursue games in the simulation and tycoon genre earlier. Perhaps seeing the success of Zombie Situation has given me the audacity to try something new and interesting. Or maybe I just got burnt out of action oriented defense games, where I noticed myself going into autopilot mode during development of Bunny Tactics. Either way, I have taken a very strong liking to this kind of design...

 

There is definitely a lot of temporary placeholder art being used (some borrowed from the Internet), so try to see through all that. The hotel guests can path-find to a room, or simply wander around for something interesting to buy. I am using the A* algorithm for path-finding and amazingly it works without any problems.

The overall objective is build a hotel and satisfy guests to reach a five star rating. Stars unlock additional shops and services, but also attracts guests with picky tastes and high expectations. There will be plenty of surprises along the way to break up the repetition.

Each room can be upgraded to support up to four amenities, purchased with the secondary heart currency. The quality of a room gives a greater chance to receive a heart, while popularity increases the chance that a guest will enter the room to spend money. Rooms are more pleasant if they have a good cleanliness ratio, so maids and janitors need to be hired. Also, building rooms beside one another can create beneficial combos, such as a vending machine room beside a lost-cost bedroom, or a hot tub room beside an expensive suite.

Isometric vector art

Lately I have had a burning desire to seek out new technology and art styles. Bunny Tactics hit alpha, and I really cannot see myself making another defense game for a long time.

It all started with a quick dip into multiplayer land using Player.IO for Flash..

The API comes with many examples and I was amazed at how easy it is to work with! Basically you write the server side code in C#, save it as a DLL, and then upload it to the server. Meanwhile, the Flash version (the client) sends and receives messages to the server. Despite how easy the API is to work with, I began to see how complicated a simple action oriented game could be, due to sync issues that can riddle a game with bugs.

I also realized of course that throwing more technology at my work is not necessarily going to improve the end experience. My real focus is now on the simulation genre that can easily support tremendous depth, without necessarily adding complexity if executed correctly.

I started with prototyping a SimTower inspired game that focuses on micromanagement. In the prototype you can build condos, where the owners buy goods from nearby shops to furnish their rooms. For example, you can see two televisions in the apartment that were purchased elsewhere in the tower. Something about it just did not click; it all felt a bit gimmicky without any clear focus. With that said, I was not sold on this idea.

Afterwards I tried out isometric art using some online tutorials. I actually am amazed at how easy it is to create simple shapes and buildings in a program like Paint, but scaling is difficult at the pixel level so I returned to vector art in Flash. I created some basic furniture using reference pictures and figured out an optimal way to draw rooms similar to The Sims.

The programming is fairly straight forward. I am using the "diamond method", which intuitively allows me to work in a grid coordinate system and then transform everything into isometric space later. Moving people around in the world is a cinch.

It is likely I will create some hotel management game featuring many types of rooms and amenities, like arcades, laundry rooms, swimming pools, etc. The guest rooms can be visually upgraded with things like TVs, desks, framed pictures, refrigerators, and so on. The real challenge will be in programming decent AI and balancing the never-ending list of game variables. If I continue with this idea, it will be a fresh new experience on all aspects of development.

Bunny tactics

Progress on the unnamed bunny tactics game has been going very well. At this rate, things may be wrapped up within the next couple weeks. It features melee weapons used by clicking the mouse, and range weapons used by charging up a small meter. Typical WASD is for movement. The hats give some kind of perk or attribute bonus.

This defense game is not progressive - there are no days or rounds that get incrementally more difficult. Instead, there is one long battle that requires multiple retries. Money and gear (seen above) is randomly obtained over time. The player's score in general is determined by how few retries it took to defeat all 100 enemies. This whole setup makes it so much easier to balance on my end.

Unfortunately the game does not make a whole lot of sense. For starters, why are orcs and the undead attacking this bunny? And what is with the goofy hats? I admire good story lines and strong character development, but it was just not my focus this time. Actually, I am attempting to make use of a lot of art that got shelved last year, so the overall theme of this game was not very selective.

As usual, I am always excited about future plans and ideas. Basically, I am feeling confident to pursue multiplayer Flash games next on my agenda. It may sound outrageous, but apparently is very feasible with modern APIs and tools, like Player.IO and SmartFoxServer. It does cost money, but seems very affordable.

Additionally, I want to find a simple way to host player-made content on a server, and have the core feature of the game be some kind of level editor. One of my own dot com domains offers unlimited hosting and bandwidth. A naively insecure approach to host player-made content is to send the data to a PHP page with parameters that save data entries into some SQL database.