This is the second part of a three-part series in which I explain how the artificial intelligence works in my latest game, Twistago. In case you missed the first part, you can catch up on it here.
This is the first part of a three-part series in which I explain how the artificial intelligence works in my latest game, Twistago. The AI has three different levels: easy, normal and hard.
As I alluded to in a previous post, Mystery Game No. 1 is no longer a mystery. It is called Twistago and it’s the best thing since… well… the second best thing!
Always new things to learn! This week, I integrated Facebook highscores into Dragon Attack, so you’ll be able to see your friends’ scores and challenge them to beat yours.
Earlier this week, I added some variations to the procedural terrain in Dragon Attack.
Previously, the landscape was generated one segment at a time, forming a “chain” of rotated sprites.
Jekyll is a great tool for creating (mostly) static websites; in fact this very site is built upon it. But it doesn’t come with built-in support for using multiple languages.
Princesses, snakes, and bears, oh my! In the form of Princess Maria, or some other form, make your way through 10 levels to save your fiancé, Plumber Pete, from the claws of an evil monster!
With Mystery Game No. 1 in private beta, while I’m waiting for feedback, I’ve had all week to dedicate to Dragon Attack. A lot remains to be done, especially in the tweaking and balancing department, but there has been a lot of progress.
Yesterday I worked on the control scheme for Dragon Attack. In its original version, Glauron, the mechanics are very simple:
Horizontal speed is constant. Vertical speed is affected by gravity as usual.
In the past few years, I’ve done most of my game development in Java. It didn’t use to be that way. Before Android and libGDX came along, when C++11 was still C++0x, I used C++ almost exclusively.
At the start of this year, I set myself some goals for the first half of 2016. Today marks the half-way point of that period, so it’s a good time to check on how I’m doing on each of them.
Update (14 September 2016): A month after I wrote this, RoboVM announced that they were winding down. I already had a (free) license, which is good until April 2017, but if you need a new one, you’re out of luck.
Update (14 September 2016): A month after I wrote this, RoboVM announced that they were winding down. I already had a (free) license, which is good until April 2017, but if you need a new one, you’re out of luck.
Rocket Mail was the first game in which I’m tracking metrics, using Google Analytics. Adding Analytics support to your app is fairly straightforward, but using it well isn’t.
Any programmer worth their salt will have heard of the DRY principle: Don’t Repeat Yourself. The idea is that repetition is bad: it makes for more code to read through, and it makes code harder and more error-prone to maintain because you have to make the same change in multiple places.
While Mystery Game No. 1 is making nice progress, in the spirit of “throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks”, I’ve decided to introduce what I call “Fun Time Fridays”.
With work full steam ahead on Mystery Game No. 1, it’s easy to forget that I’ve got another baby to care about. Rocket Mail was launched two months ago, but of course the story doesn’t end at launch.
LibGDX has decent localization support via a bundle of .properties files, for example:
== strings.properties == app_name=Confirmation App confirmation=Are you sure? == strings_en_UK.properties == confirmation=I'm terribly sorry to bother you, but would you please be so kind to confirm your certainty on this matter?
As an indie game developer, I’m wearing a lot of hats. At one moment, I play the role of developer, happily banging out code. The next moment, I can be posting about my game on forums, or doing artwork, or communicating with my client/partner/designer.