• Mar30

  Bunkers Game Nearly Done

  Flash News 14 Comments

  

  Bunkers is almost done.  We have yet to reveal a name for it but it’ll be announced within the coming days.  In fact we’re just polishing it up, and it should be out probably this week.  There is so much testing to be done.  It’s my first real strategy game so it’s a careful process of building up the game and making it not broken.  You can view more screenshots over at the Armor Blog (I really need to find a way to syndicate what I write here and there).

  After that I have a minigame to-do.  It involves traffic lights.  I hate traffic lights.  More about that later.

  And there’s a game somewhere in there about Giraffes too.  More about that later.

  And the RPG!  Man there’s a lot of projects.  More about those too later.

  As for site news goes, excuse my rant yesterday, I was rather frustrated over “muted gameplay” comments last night.  I watch other developers get picked on for not having a mute button, and to me the relevence of muting inside a game seemed so trivial compared to things like core gameplay, graphics, etc.  I thought I needed to bring it up.  And luckily I had the opportunity to listen to all of you, so all said and done it was interesting to get that feedback and I find myself on the short end of that stick.  What a humbling experience as a developer.  Anyway…

  Tags: bunkers, muting

• Mar29

  The Mighty Mute Button

  Flash Notes 22 Comments

  

  “9/10 I removed a point because there was no mute button”

  Okay, I think we need to take a step back here and take a look at this.  Sorry for blowing steam here but I think this needs to be addressed.

  Muting is not my job.  It’s yours.

  I put a mute button in a majority of the games I make.  I only do it because I get a lot of flak for not doing it.  Besides the mute I usually put in a quality toggle too, even though most people won’t actually use it.

  When people complain about mute buttons they are telling me they are too lazy to actually adjust their computer’s audio.  According to my calculations, it takes all but a couple seconds to change the audio settings on a personal computer.  Even faster is to turn off the speakers directly.  Nonetheless, I still get tons of complaints about audio.  On my keyboard (and a lot of modern keyboards) there’s even a mute button there!

  It might be just me, but it’s much easier for me to locate a mute button on my own computer settings then it is for me to hunt for a mute button in a Flash game I’ve never played before.  Is it in the game settings?  Is it on the navigation bar?  The process of finding a mute button is already set, so why set it again?

  “BUT JOHN!  I’m at work or school.  I might get in trouble!”

  I understand people play at work and school.  In that case if they are gaming they should have turned off the speakers or computer audio to begin with!

  “BUT JOHN.  Big name computer games put mute in their games!”

  I can handle that.  Most big computer and console games take up the entire screen so there is no real good way to get back to your system settings.  But Flash is an in-browser experience; your access to audio is super close to wherever you are.

  “But John!  What about the music?  I hate the music!  I want sound effects but not the music!”

  Very well.  Then instead I would love you to tell me, “John, your music sucks.  I hate it.  Techno makes my ears bleed!”  This means so much more to me than complaining about a mute button.  It means I’ll adjust the audio genres and music selections in future games.  I want people to enjoy my games and if I am making ears bleed I’ll find compromises to make people happier.

  I also think there is some integrity to being in an “experience” when playing a game, in that the music and sound is specifically chosen by the artist… but I won’t get into that.

  But anyway, I’ll give.  I’ll put in mute buttons.  But if I start seeing that you don’t like the colour orange or that elephants make you nervous then I’ll let it go.

  Tags: muting, production notes

• Mar27

  FGS + Poker Pictures

  Flash News, Flash Notes, Personal News 3 Comments

   

  Hi everyone!

  Been busy this week wrapping up a game, but finally had a night to dump some photos from FGS.

   

  Last Saturday I flew in with Joey from Armor Games into San Francisco.  We took the BART subway from SFO into Downtown San Francisco and met up with Dan (CEO of Armor).  We then took our poker chips and played in the first ever Armor Games Poker Tournament!  I ended up getting thumped out of the game pretty early but it was fun playing with the likes of Hero Interactive, Jay from Jay Is Games, and a few other family favourites.

   

  After poker we headed to bed, but the next day was Flash Gaming Summit!

   

  The venue was larger than I expected, and there were a ton of people.  While there was only one conference hall there was plenty of audience to fill the hall.

  

  I talked after a few other people, and boy was I nervous.  After a few questions on stage though I was fairly comfortable.  Apparently I don’t show nervousness on stage either, so I’m glad I can sell it.  I answered a few questions from the audience and after that it was smooth sailing through the rest of the conference.

  After the conference we head over the the FGS after party, complete with Guinness on-tap!  I got to hang out with some friends from Kongregate and meet up with a ton of people I haven’t had the pleasure of talking to outside of the internet.

   

  It was a fun little trip.  Totally tired afterwards (we left the following morning), and hoping that it isn’t a weekend venture next year.  Looking forward to future years of Flash Gaming Summits!

  Check out the album on my Pictures page.

  Tags: armor games, flash game license, flash gaming summit, kongregate, mochi media, poker, trips

• Mar27

  OGTDST: Gilligan’s Island

  Old Games That Don't Suck 1 Comment

  Welcome to Old Games That Don’t Suck Thursday. Each week I’ll write about a game that somehow influenced by life as a game developer and which I can totally recommend to you because the game is flippin’ sweet. It also has to be old or at least forgotten about until recently.

  I know I am against the grain here when I say that Gilligan’s Island for NES was NOT a bad game.  In fact it was a strangly amusing game, but for all the wrong reasons.

  I would equate it to watching a bad 50’s atomic era movie just so you can enjoy the nuttiness of the action, sets, and massive alien beings.  The same reason why movies become cult classics rather than lost in the sea of showbiz.  The game does suck, but that’s what makes it so good.  Okay, so OGTDST is all about games that don’t suck, but in a way this IS a game that doesn’t suck, but only because it does suck.

  If you’ve never seen Gilligan’s Island, the gist of the story is that there are several shipwrecked passengers trying to get off an island.  The game follows pretty close, going as far as to integrate all the characters somehow into each level.  The game has that “3d in a 2d game” effect like in Double Dragon and similar games, with movement extending upwards and downwards in addition to the normal left and right.  In the game you are trying to accomplish what is essentially an episode of the movie.  You must go visit points on the map in order by which the game designates and complete a bunch of mini missions.  All the while just trying to stay alive.

  The game is incredibly brutal to the player.  The game is not forgiving with it’s time limit, and you’ll find yourself playing the same first level at least 4-5 times before you can beat it.   Second, the game has these quicksand pits that require the player to mash the A button to get out of.  And third, every part of every level looks the same.  You’ll be lost before you even started.  And to top it off they skimp on the life, so you’ll probably be dead somewhere along the way too.

  But I love this sort of stuff.  It’s just raw video game flaws and it’s fun to play in.  It’s a fun challenge to beat the first level, and when you finally do you’ll just want to take away the experience.  No reason to play level 2… you’ve already gone and done what you sought out to do.

  I loved it, you probably won’t, but that doesn’t matter.  This game makes me happier than you’ll ever know.

  Tags: gilligans island, nes

• Mar24

  My Talk At Flash Game Summit

  Flash News, Personal News 6 Comments

  

  This weekend I had a chance to talk on a panel with a few other people about Flash Game distribution. Flash Game distribution is about getting your game out to the public.  It’s about deciding whether you should put your content on other sites, implement API’s (code that can hook your game up to high score and badge systems), and get licensing for your games!  It was a rather interesting talk, with most of the panel having interesting perspectives on Flash game distribution in-general.

  On the panel with me was Richard Fields of Mindjolt, Matt Spall of Gimme5games, and Chris Hughes of Flash Game License.  It was moderated by Jeremy Liew.

  Some of my major points about Flash game distribution were viral content and API implementation.  The first point I wanted to make was that it never hurts to get your content to as many eyes as possible.  The more you get your game around, the more can enjoy and come back to your site.  Another important point was API implementation, which I think is important for every developer to do but I had to stress that API’s needed to be made easy to the developer.  We get a lot of API’s which are poorly written and require us to do a lot of work just to report information for badges.

  The good news was that if you were not there you can watch the recorded live feed here!  I decided not to embed directly in case it was ever taken down and to save bandwidth for you and me.  Feel free to watch me say a really bad haiku and then talk about my experience in game development.

  More to follow on my experience at Flash Game Summit!  There’s so much to write about, I can’t just dump it into one post .

  Tags: flash gaming summit

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