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The latest episode of Bytejacker did an awesome piece in to raise awareness of the Tumbledrop clone 'Blopo' that is currently being produced for iphone. I'm really appreciative of this support, especially as I've been watching Bytejacker for a long time.

The creator of Blopo has since taken down his video of the copyright infringing game, and has claimed to be changing the graphics. I've been in contact with Apple about this matter and the situation is currently in review.

Thanks again to the Bytejacker crew, and everyone on Tigsource for the support over this matter.

'Crabventure' is a game that I'm working on in my free time at the moment. It's an adventure game in the vein of the old Dizzy games.

It's still in a very early stage, and the graphics and text in this image are place holder. With this project I'm working on artwork and design entirely before I do any coding. Here's an example of one of my notebook pages:



Doing it this way gives me a similar sensation to when I was designing games as a child. It's very relaxing to sketch like this and plan out puzzles, especially as it gets me away from a computer!

Today I have plenty of other things to work on. It's very busy here, but I'm enjoying my work!

I just stumbled a super old comic page I drew about twelve years ago! XD;; I wonder what was going on in this scene, probably something very cheesy.

I have a fairly rigid morning routine. I eat cereal with my GF, I browse the internet for a while, and then I make a cafetiere of coffee. I sit down at my Mac and press 'cmd + space', and type coll and press enter. This loads up Colloquy, which is my IRC client of choice on the mac. I use the Unity3D IRC almost like a 'workplace', and there are people there every day too.

It's a good morning routine that really helps me get started. I know I have to get my affairs in order before "five to nine". Now it is five past nine, so I need to get busy!

It's big and clever too!

The iPhone 3GS was announced last week. It's pretty big news, and really shakes things up for iPhone developers like yours truly.

* New and shiny ARM Cortex-A8 as main CPU running at 600MHz. New chip maintains 100% backwards compatibility with older ARM1176 chips powering original iPhone family - so no worries here.
* New PowerVR SGX chip serving as GPU. SGX family is a huge leap over MBX Lite which we saw in original iPhone. It is faster, has pixel and vertex shaders and supports a bunch of features you would normally get only on your desktop GPUs. It comes with OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support too.
* New NEON™ SIMD unit which is a fantastic addition to help in number crunching operations such as mesh skinning.
* Double the L1 cache size and introduced L2 cache - this means speed.

So it seems that it has twice as much ram, a much faster and 'better' CPU, and a really fantastic GPU. We're probably looking at something comparable to the PS2 compared to something closer to the PSone or N64 with the iPhone 3G.

I've decided that, for the foreseeable future, I'm going to continue to target the iPhone 3G as my primary platform. However, it is fantastic to know that there /is/ a platform already distributing that has such great performance. It's also great to know that players will benefit from smoother frame-rates and faster loading in the games I make, so they'll be getting a nicer experience in general. However my games will be principally designed for the regular models.

In other news, I've been prototyping some new games! Some commercial and others not so commercial. Tumbledrop remains a priority though and I'm working hard on things like GUI at the moment. I'm looking forward to working on other projects though, and I'm finding these prototypes to be useful for learning a wider range of skills, especially with making 3D games. For now, however, it's time to work on GUI coding!

I was randomly inspired to draw a chibi Space Marine (ala Warhammer 40k). I haven't drawn any of this stuff in about 12 years. Maybe I should start playing again.

I bought 'The Sims 3' on a whim, because I've never played a Sims game before. I don't really seem to be enjoying it too much so far. I'm really bad at it and the user interface is a little more complex than I was expecting. It's pretty obvious that I haven't played a PC game in a long long time :)

I took a day off work recently, which has been a lot of fun. I managed to think of some new ideas and take some time to relax. I also recently made some new music. Please let me know what you think! Constructive criticism would be appreciated!

synthvoicetest
A bouncy partial melody, trying out integrating some voices into my music. :)

tumblejune
This music is something I made for use in Tumbledrop. It is presently unfinished, but I'm pretty pleased with how it sounds in general.

tumblebeats01
This is an unfinished tumbledrop piece. I think I probably went a bit too heavy on the drum beats, but otherwise I like the melody. I might see if I can ressurect this.

Today I received a USB adapter for 'atari joysticks'. For a few months I have owned a mini Competition Pro joystick that I bought on ebay, and I've been wanting to build an adapter for it (or mod it to USB). However I realised that I don't really have the time for the hassle involved and decided to buy one instead.

It makes a massive difference to be able to play computer games with a stick like this!! Just like playing an arcade game on a keyboard is a bit weird, it's also weird to play a computer game with a joypad. Not least of which because 'up = jump' was an acceptable method with sticks, but is horrible with a joypad.

So now I'm pretty happy to have a tiny USB capable joystick on my desk at all times. I might not play games with it very often, but's reassuring to know that it's there when I feel the need to play something on a ZX spectrum or Commodore 64 emulator.

Today I caused a bit of upset by saying that there were certain game creators that I now ignore because I find their work to be too derivative.

I find derivative works to be very hard to take seriously, be it games, comics or illustration. I find it even harder to take seriously when the creator denies any influence at all.

People will not take you seriously if they regard your work as a 'rip-off'.

On the other hand, I don't mind too much when people are transparent about their influences. If you're making a game based on Super Mario Brothers you might as well say so. Equally, if you have one specific artist's work propped open when you draw you might as well say so, and people will take you more seriously. That said, if you only have one influence then you're probably doing something wrong.

Recently I have come across two games that I feel are, what some might call, 'rip-offs' of Tumbledrop. They are games featuring a star shape, an island, and you have to remove the shapes to land on the island. I won't link to them but they both exist, and I have very little regard for the developers of these products.

So, in the interests of full disclosure I should explain my own influences. Tumbledrop was inspired by Totem Destroyer and Peggle. Totem Destroyer uses most of the same mechanics, but I was keen to use a star shape (to roll and catch on objects) as well as other concave interlocking shapes. I also wanted to change the goal and avoid using some of the mechanics from that title, focusing on different things instead. The graphics had some influence from Chocolate Castle (as well as some of the presentation), and a little of 'Sparkle Quest' (a game I made a while ago).

If you're making a derivative product then you have to respect the audience's right to regard it as such and dismiss it. Even if you're not violating copyright it can be pretty plain when something relies too much on an existing product or property. I usually feel that it's a discredit to the artist or creator that they allow themselves to be reduced to such an act.

So, c'mon everyone, put yourself into your works and be a bit more honest about what you're doing.

My friend Joseph White has made a physics based game called Cat Cat Watermelon, and I'm very flattered to have one of the Tumbledrop shapes show up during the game. :) There he is! If you've ever had even the slightest compulsion to put cats and fruit atop one another then you should check this out immediately. I'm stuck on level 16 at the moment though! :D

I'm a massive fan of Lexaloffle's games, after playing Zen Puzzle Garden a long time ago. I even took a stab at making custom levels for Chocolate Castle. I consider him one of my main inspirations for going indie, so it can't be overstated how delighted I am to have something like this in one of his games. :)

It's the weekend now, so it's time for a slight change of pace. I would like to try to do some music stuff, and maybe some other game development stuff this weekend. I shall keep you posted!

- ♫ mayagain.mp3
(1.7mb, 1:52 long)

I just finished a full length music track for the first time, after starting it this afternoon. It's 1:52 long, and whilst I'm sure there are areas that could be improved, I'm fairly pleased with how it came out. I would still appreciate feedback on this piece, and I hope to start making music more often.

Warning: contains synth music! Hehe.

I haven't drawn anything in ages, so it was fun to do this. I'm feeling a little rusty, I ought to doodle more often. I'm using Letraset Tria markers on this.

A few seconds of gameplay from my game! :) You can also get the video file with less compression.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish my ludum dare game on time. A few horrible crash-bugs towards the end really killed any chances I had of putting this out in a playable fashion.

It's a little disappointing that it has worked out this way, but I enjoyed the competition nevertheless. I feel like I've learned a lot about coding and making new game types.

I think I should commit to getting this game fixed up within the next couple of weeks, or else it mightl never see the light of day. :)

And with that, I'm off to bed. :)

My development has been going really badly today, and a few minutes ago I seriously considered giving up on my game and making something new. I went for a walk to think about it and instead decided to stick it out until the end. I think if I focus on the essentials I can get something playable ready to share by the deadline.

Ludumdare is going much slower than I had planned, although I'm not terribly surprised. Nevertheless I have recognised this fairly early and I'm already in 'damage control' mode for the project, cutting back as much as I can to bring the project together. :)

I haven't really got much in the way of screenshots to share, but I'll definitely have something to share tomorrow. :)

My gameplay mechanic just started working, so I thought I should share a screenshot. If you can imagine the white blob in the middle as a character, and the other white blobl as 'lava', you get some idea of where this is going. :)

Obligatory "working area during ludumdare" photo. The most important piece of equipment here is the cup of coffee. This is coffee number 2 of the competition. On my screen you can make out 'progress'! zomg!

I was inspired to make a stupid poster! XD

I have an idea for a game now! It doesn't involve Domokun, but it should still be awesome. I'm going to set up a game framework for it now and see how much I can get working. My goal is to finish the gameplay by bedtime tonight, and do graphics tomorrow.