Latest Posts

• By Rich

  Tags

  chop socky chooks

  Posted in

  Aardman

  1 comment

  Chop Socky Chooks launched

  30th Jun 2008

  1

  Last Friday the new Cartoon Network UK site for Chop Socky Chooks went live. This was a great feeling as we designed and built the site ourselves, put together all assets (wallpapers, clips, etc) and built a custom video player all in record time.

  

  You can visit the site at http://www.chopsockychooks.com

  I did all the xhtml/css/flash and our superb design team here did the graphics and assets. Believe me, IE6 testing was a joy… oh yes.

  The “Coming Soon” area you can see on the games page is my new project that started build today 🙂 It’s going to kick some! (quite literally)

• By Rich

  Tags

  abombinaball, atari, remake

  Posted in

  Games

  3 comments

  Abombinaball Level Editor 90% finished

  20th Jun 2008

  3

  Right now I’ve got 3 new Flash games in active development. Two of them are being developed at work because they tie-in with TV properties we own. The third is a remake of an Atari ST game called Abombinaball. This game is an arcade puzzler. You control a small bouncing ball that must bounce across a playfield to defuse bombs before they countdown to zero and explode. As you move across the playfield the grid blocks fall away behind you. So you have to plan your route carefully, but also quickly (because the bombs are constantly counting down).

  It’s a great game 🙂 So far I am about 3 days into development on it (that’s just working a few hours per evening). I have grabbed all the graphics from the original, resized them, played the whole game from start to end (grabbing each level) and have built a level editor in Flash. I’m really pleased with the level editor, it’s pretty easy to use and let me re-create the original levels with ease, but it also means I can create new ones too.

  I’m going to release this with both the original Atari ST graphics (doubled in size) and with a brand new graphic set to give it that shine and polish todays gamers expect. I’ve not yet decided if I will keep the name of the game the same or not. It’s quite a cool name, so probably 🙂 I’m trying to track down the original author (Martin Brownlow), but am not having much luck. I really want his blessing on this project before I release. Fun fact: He was the lead developer on Shiny classics such as MDK and Sacrifice. He’s released a book called Game Programming Golden Rules which is a good read and contains some great coding practises that apply well to Flash (such as BSP Trees and Hash functions). Anyway here are a couple of grabs from the original:

  

  

• By Rich

  Tags

  arcade, classic, msx, pixel, remake, Retro

  Posted in

  Games

  0 comments

  Cannon Fighter Released

  6th Jun 2008

  0

  Today I released my first ever true retro remake: Cannon Fighter. It’s a remake of an old 8-bit MSX computer game. A very rare game infact, so rare that the overwhelming majority of people will have never heard of it, or played it. But that’s no bad thing! Everyone wants to widen their gaming horizons, right? 😉

  You take on the role of a cannon protecting a supply dump in the desert, and must stave off the relentless tank attacks. You can retreat up to 3 times, but once you hit the base it’s all or nothing!

  This is a pixel perfect remake and bar a few exceptions it follows the original game to the core. I hope you enjoy it, and if not at least be pleased to know how much I used to love this game when I was a kid 🙂

• By Rich

  Tags

  alternativa 3d

  Posted in

  3D

  0 comments

  AlternativaPlatform Released

  3rd Jun 2008

  0

  

  The awesome Alternativa 3D demos released a while back blew the Flash blogosphere away. Now the company behind them have released the full AlternativaPlatform package as an SWC for you to play with. It supports Flash10 out of the box as well. This is great news if you’re after a monstrously fast 3D engine for Flash.

  The only downsides (and they are quite significant) at this moment in time are:

  1) If you don’t speak Russian, the documentation is non-existent. Even the ASDoc dumping is fully Russian, so unless you can figure out how the whole system works from a couple of demos and a huge list of method names, you’re going to have to do some SERIOUS trial and error!

  2) The Commercial use license costs thousands of Euros. If you can absorb this cost (or rather if your client can!) then it’s not an issue. But I wonder how things will fall with regard to people who make the games for free, then try to get them sponsored, or put adverts on the front via MochiBot / GameJacket. I’m guessing that would breach the current license policy.

  I’m also very interested in their GUI tools and the Multi-User system, both in development. It could turn out to be a seriously powerful all encompassing suite when complete.

  So, given these two things I won’t be jumping in just yet – but it’s certainly something to keep a VERY close eye on!

• By Rich

  Tags

  colour chain, stats

  Posted in

  Games

  0 comments

  Colour Chain Stats – Part Deux

  19th May 2008

  0

  Well for some reason AddictingGames didn’t consider Colour Chain “addicting” enough, and didn’t approve my upload. Oh well.

  On the plus side a few portals have started ripping off the GameJacketed version and posting it to their own sites. PuffGames gave me a respectable 4000+ plays in 24 hours.

  Best of all though are the stats from the site the game was actually created for – Shaun the Sheep.com – where the game has now topped 30,000 plays since its release a few weeks ago. I’m nearly finished on a new game for the site which will be released early June, so I’ll keep everyone posted.

  We’ve also picked up a contract from Cartoon Network to create a kick-ass game for a new show that debuts later this year. I can’t give any more details away other than the game will be a horizontally scrolling beat-em-up. Game design spec work starts this week, with a prototype shortly after. Definitely exciting stuff.