...Melody Maker and NME were essential reading ( Along with Viz ).

I thought the only time I'd get to see a news story on nme.co.uk involving something I'd done would be if I attacked a celebrity ( Stephen Hawkins would be my first choice as I'd fancy my chances, I mean that nurse had a good go, but not quite indie pop enough to make the pages of nme ), but thanks to the miracle of paid for placement advertising, the Invaders Must Die game is being pimped on there. Sweet.

Have a look here and see us move up in the world, in between stories about the Strokes and Babyshambles. Could we be any more rock 'n roll ?

Squize.

PS. We're on the nuts front-page right now too, but you're really not going to play my game there are you. Be honest. No, I didn't think so.

So I have rencently finished a bigger update on a client's website, dealing with all the nasty and ugly shit one would rather like to avoid (to name just one: css - what was wrong with the good old table layout? OK, I know what was wrong, but dealing with all the browser's shitty problems to make it look nearly the same is just ... well, shit)

Meanwhile Squize was hammering out post after post so I didn't felt too bad being quiet.

Now today I actually have something to post, so here we go ...



This is a single frame from the X menu/background animation I've been doing. It'll take a while to render so I have to set up the network renderer on Monday to get the 30 seconds movie out to an flv file (which then will be played in the X menu) ...

If you're a fan of that game already, why not use that image as wallpaper? You can grab the 1024x768 version here.
Bigger Versions are rendered tonight and will be posted later this week - and maybe (if rendertimes for hi-res vids aren't that high there might (really just might) be a screensaver ... we'll have to see).

nGFX

It seems like we're sleeping with Pany over at gamepoetry recently, what with having the exclusive first glimpse of the Zombieland post mortem here, and me currently writing up the Invaders Must Die post mortem as an exclusive(-ish) article for his blog, but we're not. No, honestly.

But... in saying that we are supporting the new comp they're running,

Our new game, "Invaders Must Die", is live today.

Our highest profile to date release is coming along and due for launch this coming week.

Busy busy busy. I'm like a broken record. A busy broken record.

X is on hold for the time being, but it doesn't mean I'm not thinking about it. I think being denied the chance to work on it is making me think about it more, it's like smoking.

Quite a few people are feeding back that the controls stop being responsive on lower end machines. This is due to the main loop it uses. Rather than me go into depth about it, have a check of the great tutorial at the other end of that link.
The only downside to it is that so much of Flash's time is spent actually updating the display that input listeners can be missed, making it feel that the game is being unresponsive ( I'm guessing a listener buffer within the vm is checked every frame, and if the mainloop over-runs due to the sheer amount of data which is being plotted then the listener handler misses it's chance to check the buffer for any triggered events for that frame. That happens 60 times or so and that's two seconds where the game is ignoring you ).

One of the ways I'm looking to fix this is to add an options menu to the game, so people can turn off the eye-candy to suit their set up. The downside to this is, do I default to the game not having everything turned on by so anyone can just come to the game without messing with the options ( As it should be really, a game shouldn't expect or force a user to jump through config hoops before you can play it ), or do I max it out and put some comment in the game telling people that if it's slow to go and mess with the options ?

My current thinking is to run a cpu speed test at the start of a game. So some text explaining what's happening, that the user can go to the options page etc. and a counter runs down whilst it does it's thing ( So we can get an average of say 5 seconds ). This generates it's own problems though ( Doesn't everything ? It'd be so much easier to just be making banner ads for twice as much money ).
The first being, what test do I run exactly ? Should it be a maths formula in a loop and it running some bitmap plotting at the same time ? Is that the best way to judge a machine ? Then, should it be running under a normal enterFrame, or using the timer loop ? Next up, how much can you trust this test ? I don't know where this game will end up, so in theory whilst the test is running something could be happening in the background ( From the user opening a new tab to a nasty chat window to the right of the game doing something ).
Finally where do I get a good spread of test figures from ? I can tell you how quick a quad core pc running FP10 in FireFox 3 with 2 gig of memory will run the test at, but from there we only have so many other test machines. Are there going to be enough of you good readers of this blog willing to give good feedback on such a test ?

Even so, using the figures themselves isn't totally clear cut. To try and explain that, let's say a test on my machine comes back with a value of 10. I know X plays perfectly on my box, nothing I've thrown in there has affected anything at all, so 10 <= is a perfect machine in terms of playback. Great. Say you test it, and you get a rating of 20. What does that mean in real life ? I really doubt it means your machine is twice as slow as mine, 'cause it's just too much of a generalisation. But let's say it means that, what options do I turn off ? Do I kill the particle effects and leave the others running, or can I get away with removing something else.

I'm thinking the way to do it is run the test, output your machines rating, and then turn all the options off. Then when you're playing it, ask you to turn each bit of eye-candy on 1 by 1 until your machines screws up.
Quite a big ask.

I'm really throwing this open to all of you guys, what do you think ( About any of it ? )

Oh the new asteroid images are in the game btw, usual place.

Squize.

Slowly but surely getting closer to the deadlines for the current projects. That's not really a time to worry, as it means they'll be done soon.

To everyone I owe an email too, sorry, I do love you, I just can't show it right now.

Just to give the blog a slight shot in the arm, I found an article which you guys may find interesting.

In-Depth: Biggest 10 Browser-Based Game Sites Ranked

A few surprises for me there, I thought some of the portals listed would have been higher up. There's an insane amount of traffic and therefore ad revenue being generated by those 10.

There's an interesting nod of the head to the newer browser plug-ins ( Such as Unity3D, which is coming to Windows at last, and StoneTrip, not to mention QuakeLive , which although "closed", is still bringing quality 3D to the web within a community ) at the end of the article,

"It also means that we will probably start to see a shift in the monetization model," he predicts. "This will be hugely underscored by 2008 technology developments allowing full-blown immersive 3D in the browser."

The future is more than papervision and Away ? Possibly. Hopefully. I think there will be a lot of smaller micro studios with existing 3D pipelines who will be looking at browser based content a lot more now, as an alternative to XNA and WiiWare ( And iPhone ), all of which are either already really saturated, or heading that way.
It won't be long before mochi, google and gameJacket ads are in more than Flash, and perhaps that's the Flash killer app that everyone has been glancing over their shoulder looking for all this time. It won't be silverlight, or Unity or any other plug-in, it'll be mochi-ads and gameJacket. If you can make money from Flash and make the same amount from something done in Unity, which are you as a game developer going to want to play with the most ?

Yeah, me too.

Squize.

Just a short one to say that our good friends over at dot-invasion have recently re-designed their site, and although the last version of dot-invasion was a site of true beauty, the latest update of dot-invasion is even nicer.

If you are looking to outsource art for your project we really can recommend dot-invasion, they are our 3rd party artists of choice.

( Too subtle ? )

Squize.

I thought it was an idea to show we're not both dead by posting about what we're working on as a stop gap between proper posts.

We got sign off for a new project today, one that I mentioned in a comment recently about being the best IP we've had to work with yet. Although I don't think I can mention what it is until tomorrow, so ignore that for now.

Next up, a new game for the NFL rush site... ah, NDA, k you'll have to wait and see ( And register to play, joy ).

With re-working X, which was my second ever complete Flash game, the irony isn't lost on me that I'm reskinning MJ-12 ( Space Invaders clone, here's another reskin of it ), my first ever complete Flash game. This is for a big boy Dreamworks movie, although this has been outsourced to us with the caveat that we can't pimp it as our own project, or even mention we had anything to do with it really ( I imagine a lot of game devs reading that will just baulk at the idea. I know a lot of people hate sponsors posting their games to portals such as newgrounds and would much rather do it themselves, so to do a game and get no credit at all ? Well, it's not great, but sometimes it happens. If it was something I was really proud of I've got to be honest it would hurt, but a reskin of a game from 2003 which has already made it's money ? I can live with that. Not great, but it's part and parcel of what we do, like handing over the source to clients. If you work as a whore sometimes you have to swallow things you don't want to ).
So, nothing to report there either, and never will be.

Erm, got a meeting Friday to talk over a new project that I'm really looking forward to, but can't really chat about that yet.

We've been asked to pitch for a couple of cool projects, but obviously we can't say anything until at least we've done the GDDs ( Game Design Docs ) because we want to win the jobs.

And that's it, you're all up to speed with what we're doing now. Any questions ? Good, 'cause I can't tell you anything anyway.
And that's how to pad out a blog post where I don't actually tell you a thing. We've gone from linking to other peoples work to not talking about our own. Next week expect blank posts passed off as a witty satire on the middle East crisis, and a critique of the Bush presidency using a 1px by 1px gif.

Squize.

Way back at the start of October we posted about the FHM game awards.

It seems the shortlist is up, and, well it's not awe inspiring to be honest.

There are some gems there, Bloons ( Not exactly bang up to date though, in spite of a steady stream of expansions ); ECaps was quite nice but far from stunning, Raccoon Racing is on there which was so good it's one of the few games we've blogged about ( Complete with typo ); Shift 3 is excellent like the rest of the series but aside from those there's no other games I really feel the urge to name check ( Doom port ? Clever, but kinda like picking Commando in FMame ).

I think the thing to take away from this list is what the audience is. It's young guys working in office swapping viral games to waste time. Tetris still rocks their world apparently ( It's a bit like Spank the monkey being on there ).

It's red carpet season right now in the Flash world too, with Jay having their awards too. Now this is more like it, the proper cream of last years games, and some very tricky choices in there ( For example the Arcade section has you pitting Dino Run against BoxHead, both a pair of beauties ).
Even if you can't be arsed to vote it's essential reading if you're a game dev, this is a collection of the current bench marks.

I can see winning an award at Jay's end of year review being up there with a Flash Forward in the next couple of years, it's a lot more grass roots and less elitist, and it's more focused on gameplay rather than branding dollars.
The Flash indy scene is growing, money is being thrown at it, it will need it's own relevant awards soon. I'd much rather see a site like Jay's, which has a real joy of playing games, pick it up than someone like Kong.

What else can I link to ? Found a beauty the other day, Xbox related rather than Flash, so please feel free to stop reading now if it's got to be actionscript or nothing.

levelmy360 is just great. "Are you having trouble leveling your X360 Gamerscore? Let us help!"
If you're that desperate to boost your gamerscore / achievements to the point that you'd rather pay someone else to have the fun for you, then this is the site for you.
They do different plans, with plan 1 being 500 gamerscore, and for a mere $39.99.

Want to hear GYW's plan 1 ?
Grab Rally-X, that'll cost you 400 ms points ( $5 ). It's a pig of a game, and a joke that it's on there ( You wouldn't play it on Mame honestly ), but it's an ultra simple 200 gs. It'll take you around 30 mins to max it out.
Next up is Doritos' Dash of Destruction. I think this may not be available in every country, but if it is get it, 'cause it's free. This isn't the best game you'll ever play, but it throws the achievements at you. The only slightly sticky one could be the multiplayer one, not 'cause there's loads of l33t Dash of Destruction boys online ready to spank your ass and tell you nasty things about "yo momma", but because it's local mp, so you'll need a 2nd joypad ( You don't need a 2nd player, just the pad plugged in ).

That's 400 gs for $5, so we've got $35.99 of our budget left.  Can you pick up a second hand copy of Gears2 for that ? Or a game in the classic range or even just discounted ? Or buy up all the XNA games on the marketplace to put some money in indy devs pockets ? Or, well anything but give it to levelmy360 basically.
I'm sure you'll get those missing 100 points in whatever game you spend the difference on.

It amazes me that you can pay someone to have fun for you. I'm thinking of launching letMeDestoryYourLiver.com where I'll just get smashed for you and you get the bragging rights ( Plan 1, quite merry, look at that girls chest a little bit too long, put my hand out infront of me when I urinate just to steady myself; going up to plan 5, wake up in my own piss with a dead stripper in the bath and not able to remember anything since last Tuesday ).

And that's it, have a good w/end, hopefully there will be time to actually talk about what I'm doing next week instead of just talking about what other people are doing.

Squize.