Category: Space Age

Tower defense game in space.

Streamlining Operations

Unfortunately, developing casual games for mobile platforms has become quite a hassle.
There are millions of games and apps available because basically anyone with minimal knowledge can make one, thus, developing a new game makes no sense, markets prioritize the most popular games and don’t really promote new titles unless you have a big fat budget for marketing.
 
At the same time, there are these stupid new regulations, like GDPR and CPRA. Marketplaces have their own rules, which they change from time to time, like the Google Play Store, which requires updating the app at least once every 2 years, otherwise, it will be automatically removed.
Plus, sometimes I need to update games to fix my own bugs and add new features.
 
Anyway, keeping numerous games in compliance with all the new rules and regulations is quite a soul-sucking task, so I’ve decided to remove most games from markets except for the two most popular and profitable.
 
All-in-One Solitaire and All-in-One Mahjong are both available for Android, iOS, Windows 10+ and online.
I will keep updating those games and add new features.
 
All other games, All-Peaks Solitaire, Shadow Solitaire, Rainbow Lines and Match Jong are only available online at the Pozirk Games website.
 
At the same time, there is some good news! 🙂
Old Flash games, that stopped working after Adobe stopped distributing Flash plugin, are slowly coming back to life!
Thanks to Ruffle, a Flash Player emulator.
It is still in beta, but several games are working just fine already.
Balloon Express – works!
Feed The Furry – works!
Instant Football – works!
Mad Tanks – works, but there are some bugs and game doesn’t save the progress.
Total Construction – almost works, but not yet.
Resistance Is Useless – not yet.
Space Age – not yet.
Dolly The Sheep – not yet.
Charlie Likes Strawberries – not yet.
 
Mad Tanks, Space Age and Resistance Is Useless are still my 3 most favorite games.

 

 

Space Age. Report 6

I hope there will be no more than 100 reports. 🙂

Ok. I’ve made menu with all the required controls.
Also, there is one enemy(that green square) and satellites can shoot at him with bullets.
I’ve added new way of zooming, now it is possible to zoom with mouse down & move. When moving from the center it zooms in, to the center – zooms out. Works a bit glitchy so far.
And I’ve made my own mouse cursor.

I’ve decided to not use music in game (first time I came up with this idea when I was working on RiU game) and use internet radio instead, because even 1 small (3 minutes or so) well compressed song increase game size for ~1MB.
In Main Menu -> Options there is a Radio volume and a list of radio stations. User will also have an ability to add his own stations. Radio does not work at the moment, but all the required code is already written.

Space Age. Report 4

So, game menus are done. They look ugly at the moment, but working fine.
You can star researches and construct satellites.
I think I’ve finished around 25%-30% of the game, what is quite slow, as it is 4 weeks already in development.
I wish I have more time.

Here is what I have right now:

Things to do:
1. Units and enemies;
2. AI;
3. Bullets, rockets, lasers;
4. Explosions;
5. Timing and balance;
6. Some events on Earth with population;
7. Main menus, options, load games, etc.;
8. Intro;
9. Find artist;
10. Find sounds;
11. Translation to Russian, Belorussian, French. (maybe German and Spanish).

Space Age. Report 3

Ok. Nothing new to show this week.

What I’ve done:

  1. I have reconsidered Research(science) in game. Before it was a hierarchical with roots like Armor, Engine, Weapon and branches like “Steel Armor”, “Plasmagun”, etc. As it seems too difficult for casual players to decide what research they should choose, I have switch to linear Research. Now it’s just 14 positions, following one by one, player won’t choose which research to start first.
  2. Before I was planning to let player construct a spaceship like in Lego, so he chooses base of the ship, armor, weapon, etc. and construct the ship. But, as it also quite not casual and it definitely will be difficult for most players, I’ll just make predefined spaceships. Each new ship will appear after each finished research.
  3. I have redesigned menus in game. It gonna be floating panels, that will hide when you move out your mouse.

I’m working hard 🙂 on a new menu (coding and design) at the moment, because it’s an essential part of the game. Hope to show something new next week.

Space Age. Report 2

Report #2, and I have something to show.
While working on project I have discovered some problems.
1. Away3DLite is “too lite”. 🙂 It doesn’t not support a lot of features, that Away3D supports, like Sprites. Although Away3DLite version from SVN (http://away3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk) has Sprite3D, but it doesn’t work correctly with FastRenderer so far.
2. Away3DLite has horrible mouse behavior performance. FPS drops significantly on MouseEvent3D.MOUSE_DOWN event, so I’ve just turned it off for now. I still need to explore this problem.
3. Flash can’t draw dashed lines and circles. Fortunately there is a graphics.curveTo function.
Her is my code:

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graphics.lineStyle(2, 0x00FFFF);
graphics.moveTo(_midX+_radius, _midY);
for(_i = 6; _i <= 360; _i+=12)
{
  graphics.curveTo(_midX+(_radius)*Tools.cos(_i-3), _midY+(_radius)*Tools.sin(_i-3), _midX+(_radius)*Tools.cos(_i), _midY+(_radius)*Tools.sin(_i));
  graphics.moveTo(_midX+(_radius)*Tools.cos(_i+6), _midY+(_radius)*Tools.sin(_i+6));
}

It draws circle with dashes every 6 degrees.
_midX and _midY are the coordinates of the center of circle.
Tools.cos and Tools.sin are my own functions for cos and sin, they return values from a prefilled arrays.
4. Game is 800×600, but as I know that some sponsors don’t accept that.

Next week I’m planning to do a lot of coding and planning and game menus and logic.

Ok. Here is what I have for today:

Space Age. Report 1

Here are the things I did for the last week:
1. Found textures for Earth, Moon, Earth’s clouds and some others
2. Made notes (on paper :)) about gameplay, menu, game science and logic.
3. Took part of the core files from RiU, like input, audio, timers, etc. and started to add first classes to the new game.
4. Played a bit with Away3D and decided to use Away3DLite, which is smaller and works faster. (Good tutorials about Away3D are here.)

This is it. I hope to have something visual next week.

Space Age

Unfortunately, RiU development takes too much time, still no graphics, so I’ve decided to start new game under the “Space Age” name.
It should be some sort of space defense game with lots of new features, science and storyline.
I’m planning to make the engine myself and find artist on FGA website.
I will also use Away3D to render Earth, but everything else will be in 2D.

Unlike other projects, I will make a weekly reports to describe, what I’ve done for the last week.
I hope, it will help me to keep track of my progress, better control my time and stop being so lazy.

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