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…

“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.