I Know What You Did Last Week #12

June 8, 2009

Lots of excitement last week with E3, here is what we did between watching new game trailers:

Many bugs were killed last week. R.I.P. bugs. I spent a good amount of time working on the kart physics with Dave. Ray casting is also back. Ray casting allows the developer to shoot a line out into the world and see what it hits. This was needed to detect what surface the kart was driving on (ice, grass, dirt, etc). It is now working with the threaded physics thanks to a concept called futures that the prince of code told me about a few weeks ago. Good stuff!

This week I plan to get the rest of the weapons (puncher, twister, ice cube, and sea mine) working again in the new networking system and hopefully get around to finishing up some polish on the LUVBot. Other than that, we need to do a lot of testing (hopefully some small play tests too, yay fun stuff!!).

Last week I spent a long time testing Zero Gear vehicle model and making improvements where I could. I did a bunch of laps around some of our maps and tried to tweak the collision shape and suspension settings of the physical vehicle model in order to improve stability and cut down on some unwanted behaviors. I also worked with Brian some to put in a few little tweaks and tricks to the physics model.

This week I plan on doing a few things here and there to make sure we have everything ticked off the checklist for the next Zero Gear beta, and also work up some graphics for our next iPhone game.

Last week I was preparing for WWDC, which I’m enjoying right now! I updated some of our product descriptions across iTunes and the NimbleStore and captured and added some gameplay videos. The wait continues for both the Scoops and Bluebird updates to be approved. Last week I also started prototyping a new iPhone game, but that has been postponed while I am out of town.

Tags:

I Know What You Did Last Week #11

June 1, 2009

Number eleven of IKWYDLW, in this episode: we wonder why you are reading this instead of absorbing crazy E3 announcements!

Slow build times are very bad. A build time is how long it takes for a change in code to be built into the game. I spent a couple hours speeding it up which will have major payoffs in the long run. I finally got Rinky Dink working. It took much, much longer than I expected to get a cylinder shape working for the puck. Rinky Dink still needs some polish but it is generally working. And most importantly, on Friday I ingested way too much caffeine and strange energy candy bars and got a bunch of work done related to smoothing out networked object movement.

This week I hope to fix some remaining issues with networking and the last remaining bugs before the next release. The end is near!!

Last week I finished off a bunch of new custom items for Zero Gear and even made a little compilation image. I also did a new background image for Scoops. This week I am going to mock up some new Zero Gear guis as well as helping in any way I can to shape up the next Zero Gear beta. Hopefully we will have more news about that in the coming weeks! We are eager to get the game back into peoples’ hands after all the things we have been working on.

Last week I spent most of my time putting together the Scoops 2.0 update which will include new music, new background graphics and the ability to tweet your scores! Our last Freebie Friday can be deemed a success getting picked up on popular sites like Touch Arcade and TUAW. To start the summer off with a bang we’ve also put both Scoops and Sky Burger on sale @ 99 cents. Last week Bluebird officially flew into the App Store and is available now for 99 cents!

This week I’ll be prepping for heading out to WWDC and hopefully prototyping a new game as well as writing up an iPhone development blog article.

Tags:

I Know What You Did Last Week #10

May 26, 2009

Time for number TEN of those weekly updates you have come to know and love. Soon, you will know what we did last week!

The week started with a fun little debug session to track down a crash. Turned out to be an issue if a sensor thought an object still existed when it did not. Signals + Slots to the rescue! The other big project was to contain anything that modified the physics world into “Physics Commands”. This was needed as the physics run in it’s own thread and synchronization was needed to avoid universe ending paradoxes. No need to thank me for saving the universe you exist in.

This week I plan to smooth out some issues on the client, continue work on our favorite love fueled robot, and finally get Rinky Dink fully working

Last week I started banging out some new custom items and a new character for Zero Gear. As our little library of custom items grows, the process of mixing and matching to create Zero Gear characters becomes more and more entertaining.

I am going to stamp out a few more and then I will post later in the week with a few glimpses of all the new items.

Last week I went about the task of designing and building a simple fun casual game. I’ve always enjoyed cute simple flash games with interesting game mechanics, so I’ve attempted to do both with our soon to be released Bluebird. The game mechanics and art took me around two days to experiment with and finalize, with the full game taking another two to write. With a small scope and such short development time, Bluebird can help us stay in business with any amount of sales.

This week will be spent working on a 2.0 release of Scoops and outlining a book section that I’ll be contributing to.

Tags:

I Know What You Did Last Week #9

May 18, 2009

Look out! Another IKWYDLW!!! AND IT’S COMING RIGHT FOR YOU!

Murphy:

More time was put into the LUVBot before finding some general bugs that needed to be fixed. I spent a lot of time tracking down and fixing those bugs last week. There is still an issue with the physics thread that needs to be resolved this week before I can really move forward. I also integrated the latest version of the Flash GUI we use, Hikari.

This week will be busy with non-Zero Gear stuff but I hope to fix the issue with threaded physics and take advantage of that fix in the networking code. This will bring us one step closer to the ever elusive BETA.

marshmonkey:

Last week I worked on some particles for the LUV bot in Zero Gear, did some miscellaneous art tasks, did a new accessory item, and wrote a speculative blog post. This week I am going to do a few more Zero Gear items and see what else crops up.

eeenmachine:

Last week I finished up and submitted Sky Burger 1.1 with earn-able achievements (pieces of flair). I spent the last few days prototyping a new game idea which I’m going to try and bang out this week.

I Know What You Did Last Week #8

May 12, 2009

IKWYDLW is a day late this week, I hope it doesn’t throw off your entire schedule!

Murphy:

As far as work goes, spent the week fine tuning, testing, and tweaking networked physics in Zero Gear. Initial tests are really promising but as always, there is plenty more work to do. I also started working on a new weapon that will be a lot of fun but didn’t make much progress thanks to some bugs.

This week is being spent improving the kart networking/smoothing, finishing the new weapon, and integrating a new version of Hikari into the client.

marshmonkey:

I spent last week creating a new kart asset for Zero Gear and documenting the entire process. This week I will whip up some Sky Burger achievement art and then find some Zero Gear stuff to tinker away at, perhaps some more particles and level polish.

eeenmachine:

Last week was spent working on Sky Burger 1.1. I was able to make some big optimizations and get most of the achievement system done. The update should be complete once I get all the finished art from Dave, so keep your eyes peeled! This week I’m hoping to spend some time spitballing and deciding what my official next project is going to be.

Tags:

I Know What You Did Last Week #7

May 4, 2009

Made it to another week, have we all? We must be blessed. Lets check the big board to see what has happened since we were last away.

Murphy:

Not a super exciting week. I added a shape manager for the physics code so physics shapes (balls of the same size or all the kart bodies, etc) can be shared. I am told this is good practice. More importantly, I finished refactoring the physics code to allow for multiple worlds. There is now a mirrored world for network prediction that I am currently in the process of tweaking.

This week will be spent using the prediction world to accurately predict the physical state from a past server time to the current client time. If I can get this working, it will be a massive step forward.

marshmonkey:

I finally finished up all the little bits of scripting and miscellaneous work to get the DustBunny level up to par with the rest of the race maps. After that I spent a lot of time figuring out the logistics behind capturing a time lapse video of my next task, creating a new kart. I think I have figured out my set-up, so by the end of the week I should have a fun time lapse video of modeling / texturing a game asset from start to finish!

eeenmachine:

iPhone game updates were flying out the door last week. Scoops 1.6 with game resume support was approved, and I was able to submit minor updates for Textropolis, Hanoi, Hanoi Plus, and Kyper. The goal was to integrate our in-game NimbleStore and news ticker into all our games, as well as address some minor bugs and feature requests that had been piling up. Sky Burger had an active weekend on the Top 100, peaking at #66 Top Paid App and #33 Top Paid Game. With the approval of Scoops, our NimbleStore saw almost 10k pageviews over the weekend! Sky Burger’s Facebook Page hit 40 fans and continues to grow slowly. This week I’ll be working on Sky Burger 1.1 which will include bug fixes, optimizations, and the addition of achievements (pieces of flair).

Tags:

I Know What You Did Last Week #6

April 27, 2009

Hope everyone out there in internet-land is having a bearable monday! In celebration of another week of NimbleBit we have last weeks summary for you in yet another exciting edition of I Know What You Did Last Week! Lets take a look at the board.

Murphy:

Last week was spent working on refactoring (fixing, cleaning, redesigning) the physics code in Zero Gear to allow multiple physical worlds. Refactoring is a slow process but it is almost done. This week I plan to implement the prediction for networking by using a mirrored physical world. Accurate prediction will hopefully provide a smoother network play experience so I can get back to the fun stuff, gameplay!

marshmonkey:

After finishing up most of the layout and graphics for the new Zero Gear level featured earlier, I have been adding spawn points, weapon boxes, nodes and checkpoints to turn it into a functioning race map. I should have that wrapped up very soon, so I will have to figure out what new art-task to tackle next for Zero Gear.

eeenmachine:

Last week I got a small break from promoting Sky Burger (currently #86 in the Top 100 apps) to get a new Scoops update (1.6) out the door. The best feature in the new version of Scoops is the ability to resume an interrupted game in the same way Sky Burger can. This week I’m working on a Textropolis update with some player slot management features, then I’ll see where the wind takes me.

Tags:

I Know What You Did Last Week #5

April 20, 2009

Another week, another IKWYDLW. As a secondary note, check out Eli Hodapp’s iPhone Developer PSA - it’s a great read for any developers wondering what else they can do to promote their app besides just submitting to the app store.

Murphy:

**Brian is unavailable today so I will be filling in for him** Last week I have been very busy with some non game related things, but I managed to hang out and work with the San Diego NimbleBit crew some, as well as get a shiny new dev laptop bought and set up to help test and develop ZG. Having 2 dev machines will come especially in handy as I continue to work on the networking framework. I have also spent some time getting all the libraries and dependencies that ZG uses up to date, a little spring cleaning!

marshmonkey:

Another week of banging away at my new ZG environment. I now have the scale and layout of the track pretty much locked down, all that is left is to light it and add sounds and effects. Then I will have to add all the scripts and entities to make it a working course and it will be ALLIIIVEEE!!!! I hope to have a video of it soon.

eeenmachine:

Last week I spent a lot of time driving around the incredibly flat state of Florida, drinking beer, laying on the beach, and sitting in airports and on planes. After Sky Burger was approved on Thursday I spent every spare moment trying to promote it from my iPhone with varying degrees of success. After I got back on Friday and over the weekend I was able to send out all 50 promo codes for Sky Burger to a multitude of review sites and blogs. So how is baby Sky Burger doing? Sky is now 5 days old and growing into a strong young app. Its sold over 2,250 copies so far, and is currently the #68 paid game, the #5 family game (Scoops is #4), and the #2 kids game (Scoops is #1). Sky also has 37 reviews and a 4.5 star rating so far. Hopefully once more reviews start popping up it will continue to grow and who knows, maybe it will get featured by Apple!

Tags:

I Know What You Did Last Week #4

April 13, 2009

Woo, an entire month of IKWYDLW!

Murphy:

I got the ball controller working and improved the camera system (it is based on a priority system now, more on it later perhaps). I noticed that the networking thread was causing a lot of slow down. The solution was to completely remove threading in the networking system. It wasn’t even really needed. A simple method to verify that user script code implements an interface correctly was added. This will help users make sure the script code they are writing is valid earlier. In a forgiving language like Lua, this is a nice feature to have.

This week I plan to implement better prediction in the network code (using the physics engine instead of simple velocity predictions that don’t account for things like collision or physical properties). This will not be an easy task but I believe it will really help to smooth out the jitter causes by the cheap prediction currently in place.

marshmonkey:

Pretty much my sole focus last week was working on a new environment for ZG named “Dustbunny”, I am close to getting it hooked up in game so expect some screenshots this week. Hooray for new ZG media! I also have been helping Brian test out his new networking inventions here and there.

eeenmachine:

**Ian is on vacation this week, so David will be filling in** Last week I pounded out the last remaining bugs in Sky Burger in order to get it off and submitted to Apple. I also was able to work out some memory and speed improvements to make the game run a little smoother. This week I plan on relaxing in the Florida sun, watching the co-eds frolic on the beach for spring break. I will be back this friday, hopefully to coincide with Sky Burger hitting the app store! Woot!

Tags:

I Know What You Did Last Week #3

April 6, 2009

Time for the 3rd installment of IKWYDLW! Exciting stuff! I also just read this great article comparing the games industry to the history of the print industry and how technology has put the power in the hand of small groups of graphic designers over time. It’s a good read - check it out.

Murphy:

I started last week implementing a new networking method. This involves simulating the client ahead of the server and then checking for errors and correcting. This includes predicting the movement of objects over a period of time. Predicting the movement of the kart is not an easy task (which is why we use a physics engine in the first place!) so I decided to get a ball character controller working (which is easy to predict) to test the networking method. Refactoring the code to support non-kart character controllers (any controllers!) took 4 full days of work but is going to pay off big time down the road. I also spent a night getting motion blur working (it looks AWESOME when boosting). I also got e-mail reporting of errors in the game thanks to Max from Unknown Worlds, Thanks Max!
This week I plan on getting the ball character controller finished (need to provide a better way to control it) and test the networking method a lot before moving forward with it. I also plan to improve the way the different camera controllers are managed so that we can swap character controllers on the fly.

marshmonkey:

Last week I started up my modeling for ZG again and started on a new track environment. It’s a giant “rats” style environment where you are in a scaled up room that makes all the characters appear tiny. Should be a lot of fun! Also have spent some time play testing Sky Burger. This week I am going to try and finish up the new environment enough to post a pretty screenshot!

eeenmachine:

Last week Sky Burger inched ever closer to a release candidate with minor bug fixes and new music. I also built an in game browser for our custom “NimbleStore” to browse our games which includes video youtube reviews and live twitter searches. Final touches on the game icon and attempts to thwart Marshmonkey’s attempts at cheating kept me busy over the weekend. This weekend I also added an unobtrusive news ticker to the main player menu to keep players up to date with NimbleBit news. Sky Burger will absolutely, no matter what, be submitted by this Thursday!

Tags:
« Previous1234Next » (32 total posts)