Category Archives: Games

Games

Boom Boom Hamster Golf

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Our game Boom Boom Hamster Golf is out on iOS and Android. This has been one fun project! Hats off to my team who has worked their ***es off to make this all happen. My initial concept was to challenge myself to take a game genre I really wasn’t fond of (golf!) and twist it into something fun and different. We also aimed to make something which didn’t feel like a typical mobile game, to give players something extra approaching the value and content seen on console games, but not emulate console controls and instead utilize touch screens in a way they excel at. And we might just have succeeded! We’ve put so much love and polish into this thing – Just check out our credits sequence! And we’ve got some great reviews and Almost a perfect five star rating out of 356 happy players. We must be doing something right! 🙂

//edit: #1 Download in Chinese iOS App Store! 😀

Crows, Games, Pie, Stove

Tank Re-visted.

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After stepping away for a while and coming back, I really wasn’t happy with the tank prototype, so I’ve gone and given it some tweaks. Here’s an adjustment to the design which I think feels much better:

The sloping adjustment to the top of the track created by the larger front wheel gives it a more dynamic, less stiff feel. I also made the exhausts smaller because they were competing with that gun barrel. Tut…tut…tut… This is a tank! It’s all about shooting, so I need to emphasize this!

I’m thinking of sloping the top of the body where it adjoins the turret a little, too. I think avoiding any purely horizontal/vertical lines adds more fun to a silhouette, which is something easily forgotten when wrestling with a methodology for making 2D tank tracks work properly. Have I mentioned how unfathomably difficult that is yet? Why must I engage that damned left brain hemisphere so often?

But…I still haven’t resorted to digging Maya out, so I’m not yet cheating. Still all 100% Adobe Creative Suite, vectors ‘n’ old fashioned painting. 🙂

I’m also toying with this flag design for the Crows. Perhaps I’ll add an eye. 😉

Random thought regarding game sound: What if all Stovey sound is 100% synthesized and all the Crow sounds are real recordings? If we treat them with a textural process, they can live in the same sonic place, but have a different vibe to them. Would anybody notice? Would it sound disjointed, or somehow add to the experience? Only one way to find out…

Also, it might be a good idea for me to stop posting animated gifs. It’s beginning to look like The Internet, circa 1997. 😉

Crows, Games, Stove

Crow Tank Prototype

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Here’s the Crow Tank Prototype. Going to have to figure out those double barrels. Ignore the jerking animation in the Crow. I just threw him in there as a test. He’s actually a Pilot Crow who is standing in for Tank Commander Crow. Crows don’t need to fly in planes, but in this game, they do.

Crows, Games, Pie, Stove

New Pie!

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It’s time for a new pie for Stovey:

Behold! The new pie. This thing was way more complicated to draw and animate than it should be, but I’m not resorting to any 3D because that’s cheating! Now, I have to design some more types of pie. Perhaps a Square Pie. And a lattice pie. So many pies.

Crows, Games, Stove

Stoves and Crows Updated AGAIN… Now with monsterous PIE, multiples and Baking mechanic.

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Now we have a basic BAKE mechanic, which allows you to suck up the helpless featherless crows and bake them into various pies. The pies are currently various sizes to represent power, but I think I’m going to make them different designs. Perhaps a square one. And a lattice topp’d pie. The longer you bake, the more SUPER AWESOME the powerup, BUT, you can’t shoot while you’re baking. STRATEGY! RISK/REWARD!

We’re shaping up to have a rather nice and original mechanic here. Oh, and the Crows are now dive bombing instead of flying across the screen without a care in the world.

I think this was the first Pie-Shooting image I did way back in 199x. Nice to see it all in action now.

Games

More Stoves And Crows Are Flying

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The prototype is coming along nicely with some explosion particles and a few other tweaks. While it’s beginning to be really satisfying shooting the crows, we’re now concentrating on audio/visual feedback for sucking them in. We have a good gameplay plan which adds a bit of strategic choice to the game.

The next video will feature the new dive bombing crow attack animations and perhaps some fat stovey and sucking action.

Games

Stoves And Crows Are Flying

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This is the first unveiling of a top secret project…

A Stove & Crow based Horizontal Scrolling Shoot ’em up in my spare time. Based on my Crows & Stoves works, you play an evil stovey attacking the crows. The innovations include being able to suck in featherless crows (along with other objects) and turn them into different weapons, flipping backwards and a few other fun things.

I’m currently doing the art, animation and will most probably be writing the soundtrack. Jody McAdams is doing the engine along with Adrian Sotelo, who is programming gameplay.

It runs on iOS, OS X, or Android and Windows. Yippee!

Games, Tools

Sprite Something on iPad

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Behold:  A Crow in his Crowship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made this animation with Sprite Something on the iPad.  It’s pretty fun and quite useable, but could do with some additions like cloud sync through dropbox, colour palletizing and a few other tools.  I do like that it builds sprite sheets and includes the info in an email (Along with animated gifs up to 4x the original size ).  Neat.

I haven’t touched pixel art in years, but now I’ve got an iPad, the idea of clicking pixels on and off again with a finger is fun.  Back in the early ’90s , I used Dpaint III on the Amiga for my sprites, backgrounds and animation.  I loved that software to death, but the mid ’90s saw me shift into Photoshop textures and polygons, as was the fashion back in those foolish days.  Recently, I got the urge to go pixelly again, so let’s see what happens…