Author Archive

By Rich

Tags

nape, physics, pixel smash

Posted in

Experiments

5 comments

Pixel Smash Test 1 – Smash the heck out of some pixels

6th Jan 2011

5

I was chatting to Ilija tonight about doing a real fast turn-around game (1 week max). The projects we’ve got in build right now are really big, and I felt like I needed a “quick win” to kick-off the year good and proper. We bounced a couple of ideas around and stuck on the concept of basically blowing the crap out of over-sized sprites, pixel by pixel.

So I built a quick prototype just to see if this idea had wings, and here it is. There’s no “game” as such because this was a 1 hour proof of concept tech demo. It was to see if we could actually blow sprites up, and have it look nice. And I’m very happy with the result. Now we’ve confirmed that we’ll move onto the next stage.

Click the pic above or here to play. It is massively un-optimised. Those are just Sprites with drawRects in them! But I still get a solid 60fps in Release player, but it dips lower in Debug Player (and I’ve noticed on Macs). So your fps mileage will vary. But hey, it’s Flash, when doesn’t it? In talking to Adam he reckoned throwing a blitting engine behind it (ala Flixel) with baked sprite rots would speed it up massively. I’ll give it a bash and see. The slow-down might be my abuse of the physics engine rather than the rendering. But there is a definite overhead there we can eliminate too.

And no, it’s not Box2D. I’m using Nape which is the new darling physics engine on the block. It’s doing all the heavy lifting. And wow, does it do it well! It’s one killer physics library that I urge you all to check out. Simpler than Box2D and considerably faster. Use it, love it, support it 🙂

Also one final random bit: read this excellent blog post by Ben McGraw on the dynamics of Super Mario Brothers 3! Go enjoy.
By Rich

Tags

flashdevelop

Posted in

Software

5 comments
Colour your trace output with FlashDevelop

5th Jan 2011

5

This one surfaced on twitter today, and I thought it was so useful I’m blogging about it – for my own records as well as for the benefit of anyone else reading this.

When using FlashDevelop (and if on Windows, there’s really no reason to use anything else) you can colour the output of trace statements in the Results manager by using the following syntax:
```
trace("0:flash develop trace colour 0");
trace("1:flash develop trace colour 1");
trace("2:flash develop trace colour 2");
trace("3:flash develop trace colour 3");
trace("4:flash develop trace colour 4");
```
and it’ll look like this:

Obviously the important part is the number followed by the colon at the start of the trace.

Note that the above colours may be based on your FD colour settings. But it’s still superbly useful 🙂
By Rich

Tags

cat astro phi, newgrounds

Posted in

Games

6 comments

A quick update on Cat Astro Phi

12th Dec 2010

6

The past few days have been a whirlwind and a constant high. I remember reading a comment on twitter that said something like “being a developer is like being a manic depressive. Extreme highs and extreme lows”. The more I think about this, the more I agree with it! The lows of the crunch periods, and the highs of release. Finally having your game finished is a superb feeling (one I wish I could bottle to take a dose of during crunch!)

But even the high of release couldn’t have prepared me for the way Cat Astro Phi hit the interwebs. Quite honestly I’m used to taking a beating when it comes to reviews on NewGrounds. I just don’t make the sort of games that appeal over there, and I’m cool with that. But I really did hope that Cat Astro Phi would find favour with them (it had after-all with the site owner). They’re a notoriously tough crowd to please. But I can safely say that the reviews have blown me away. 10 after 10 after 10, and even those that pointed out the games flaws (for it certainly has some) did so graciously. Sure there were a few trolls, and some who just don’t dig the Gameboy vibe. But the overwhelming majority voted in their thousands, and reviewed in their hundreds, with positive feedback.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I read every one of them. I find it easy to laugh-off the zero scores and inane comments, but they are far and few between. What I didn’t expect was to read all these comments from people who had truly loved playing the game. It made me happy that the 4-colour exploits of Jonesy and the spaceman had in turn made them happy. It’s a hippy-good vibe.

We also seem to have wormed our way onto a few notable sites as well. Front-paged on 1up.com, covered well by IndieGames.com (even if they didn’t really dig it, the people who commented did!), a superb write-up over at Barts News and Screaming Falcon did a great review of the soundtrack! which was also heavily mentioned on other chip music sites. Someone even posted walk-thrus on YouTube within hours.

The Gameboy aspect of it seems to have really hit a note with a lot of people, taking them back to “better days”. Or perhaps just simpler days. When they could bum around all morning playing games, and not have to worry about kids, work, mortgages or deadlines. I can certainly relate to that 🙂

I’ll be keeping tabs on where-else this little game travels.
By Rich

Tags

cat astro phi, disasterpeace, gameboy, iLKke, released, Retro

Posted in

Games

4 comments

Cat Astro Phi is released!

8th Dec 2010

4

I am very pleased to announce that we have finally shipped our new game: Cat Astro Phi. This has been a long, drawn-out development process. Not so much because of the game itself. Although I did fall foul of constant feature-creep. But because so many other things interrupted it: My most insane period at work all year, the birth of my daughter, a huge 5-game release project for the BBC, and loads of other things. All fighting for a slice of my time.

But I finally battled through and got the game into a state where I felt it was nearly complete. Then I showed it to a few friends, and the reaction was awesome. Adam Atomic told me “I LOVE THIS GAME it is like sci-fi Link’s Awakening i am like enthralled by this“. Tom Fulp emailed and said “I just played through, killed the robot and got left behind on planet 4. It was mesmerizing!“, and people I work with and respect highly were also very enthusiastic. So I knew I had something good on the boil. It’s so easy to lose sight of that when you’re deep in the game. For you, you almost hate the sight of it, and it just doesn’t excite you any longer. Know what I mean? But to have people like Adam, Tom and Chris say really positive things gave me that belief in the game back again. Enough to fight through and finish.

And finish I did 🙂 The game is now up on NewGrounds (who also sponsored it) and will be front-paged today. There are 11 Medals for you to unlock, some of which are easier than others, and a host of easter eggs to find. Plus of course there is this amazing soundtrack too by Rich Vreeland! You just have to check it out, or buy the digital remix album. At $3 it’s a steal!

Right now I’m going to have a bit of a rest, and take in the feedback and comments the game receives. I may make a few tweaks based on them, but essentially I now consider this game finished. And that’s a wonderfully liberating feeling 🙂 Atari 16k contest here I come!
By Rich

Tags

CAP, cat astro phi, chickaboom, computer arts projects, droplet, interview, quartet

Posted in

In the Media

2 comments

Check us out in Computer Arts Projects Issue 144

2nd Dec 2010

2

I’m very pleased to announce that Issue 144 of Computer Arts Projects magazine went on sale today. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be anything I’d blog about, but this issue is a little bit special. It carries a full-page feature on Photon Storm.

Entitled “From online to mobile” it talks about 4 of our games, and how we approach game development with mobile in mind.

There are some lovely screen shots of the Droplet game sprite sheet, Quartet, our new game Cat Astro Phi (which will be front-paged on NewGrounds next Wednesday) and the coming-soon Chickaboom.

While the article itself is a bit tongue-in-cheek, some of it clearly made-up on my behalf, it’s still nice to be represented in the mainstream press.

And even nicer to see Ilija’s awesome artwork in full colour display.

Computer Arts Projects 144. You can buy the single issue (soon) from here.