NimbleBit

Omium was just released! A 2 player shoot em up for the iPad. You can get it on the app store by clicking here. It available at the consumer friendly price of 99 cents so I hope you will give it a shot.

Here are a few screenshots:

This past weekend I participated in the Global Game Jam at the Sunnyvale location (near San Francisco). There were 50 people at my location. It was fun, crazy, intense, insomnia inducing, stressful, and incredibly rewarding. I was at last year’s GGJ too which you can read about here.

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Part 3 coming soon!

One very important aspect of Zero Gear we rarely talk about is weapons. Weapons in Zero Gear are picked up from special prize boxes on the map and used in a variety of ways. Before going deeper, here are some typical weapons in the kart game genre:

Heat seeking missile

Press a button to fire the missile ahead and it will track the person in front of you down and blow them up

Slow a player down weapon

This is some kind of weapon that is usually placed down on the map somewhere, when a player runs into it, they are slowed down for a period of time

Slow down or blow up all other players weapon

Press a button to slow down all other players

Bomb

Place it on the map, after a period of time, it blows up, anyone in the blast radius is blown up and slowed down

Vision block weapon

Press a button to cause other players vision to be blocked so they can’t see

You are invincible weapon

Press a button, you are invincible and touching other players causes them to get blown up and slow down

These types of weapons are annoying. Here are a few reasons why:

• You don’t get a feeling of success. By just pressing a button, the cause and effect sensation is less visceral.
• There is little planning involved. When the only variable is when you hit the button, it minimizes the amount of strategy you can use.
• They are black or white weapons. The player either gets a canned result, or remains unaffected. There is no gray area.
• They are unavoidable. When a player gets hit by an item from which there was zero chance of evasion, they feel like they are being taken out of the game.

The weapon dynamics in Zero Gear are quite different because, well, they are DYNAMIC!

Here are the Zero Gear weapons (so far!):

Puncher

A punching glove is attached to the front of the players kart. Press the use button to cause it to punch forward. *Anything in front of the kart will be launched forward.

* Note, anything is an important word. Objects in ZG react realistically, punch a Sea Mine, watch it fly the same as if punching another kart or a soccer ball.

Ice Cube

Throw or drop this onto the map. It will bounce off walls and slide on the ground realistically. Any player that hits it will become encased inside. They will continue to slide with their momentum which could end horribly (off the edge!) or perhaps will put them at an advantage.

Sea Mine

The mine can be thrown ahead or dropped behind. Much like a real sea mine (real sea mine = what I have seen in movies), once hit, there is a TING! sound and then BOOOM! Anything within the blast radius is sent flying outward to an unknown fate.

Twister

The player can place a twister in front or behind them (hint: probably want to put it behind you!). Anything that gets too close will be sucked in.

These types of weapons are FUN.

• There is no fire and forget, you must aim and use timing if you want to be successful, they are easy to use but ultimately require skill
• All the weapons can affect other weapons, for example: There is an ice cube in front of you so you smack it with the puncher causing it to fly into a twister. If flies out of the twister farther ahead while a player that was just blown back from a mine hits it and slides off the map. Strategies emerge while playing.
• The weapons have varying degrees of strength. The mine and tornado are more powerful the closer you are to it. Hitting an ice cube may just help you move through a slow surface faster. The tornado may cause you to hop over an obstacle. Anything can happen.
• There is always a chance to avoid being hit by a weapon. Addionally, there is always a chance that being hit by a weapon will work out in your favor. Nothing is canned or predetermined. This means that you never feel hopeless.

Weapons shouldn’t force something on a player, they should do something which may affect the player. Using this simple rule causes the player to experience more emergent and reactive gameplay than most games offer.

We have more weapons planned, such as the previously mentioned L.U.V. Bot. Watch the blog for more updates on them!

Of course, explaining this in text isn’t ideal. For the full experience, you will just have to play it!

When developers talk about the way a game is made, they usually talk about things like physics, graphics, AI, and sound. There is another big aspect however: Communication. I am not talking about players or game characters talking to each other or networking a game. I am referring to objects in the game sending messages to each other. When a button is pressed, the door must be told to open. When the player scores a goal, there must be cheering and confetti.

There are many ways communication is handled in games and I do not wish to compare all the methods. I want to write about a method I like and tend to use called Signals and Slots (specifically, my implementation). Signals emit messages to Slots. A Signal can be viewed as a radio tower that only sends messages while a Slot can be viewed as a boombox which can only receive the message. Signals only emit to slots they are connected to (efficient). Any Signal may connect to any Slot. Any number of Signals may connect to a Slot.

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