Archive for February, 2010
Announcing: LandFormer!
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Yes, it’s time to announce my next game: LandFormer! LandFormer is a puzzle game based off the prototype I created at the 360iDev Game Jam in September. The original prototype was called UpDown, but there’s already an app in the store called that. Plus, if you look at the new theme of the game, I think LandFormer makes a lot more sense.
Here’s a first peek at the game. Just note that this is all still work in progress and that the look of the game may still change significantly before it ships:
Here is the write up on the game that I gave to Touch Arcade (with some modifications) when they originally covered the Game Jam:
LandFormer is a puzzle game. To complete a level, all pieces must be raised or lowered to a flat plane. However, you can only raise or lower pieces in the patterns dictated by the brushes. Strategy and intuition are required to master this simple yet challenging game.
Stay tuned for updates on the game’s progress as I continue working on it.
Owen
GDC, 360iDev, and More
Friday, February 19th, 2010
It has been quite a while since my last post. I would have been posting, but I’ve been doing some contract work, so I haven’t had a lot of my own news to talk about. I’ve also been doing my year-end bookkeeping, and as exciting as that is, I’m not sure anyone wants to read about my adventures in recording business receipts from 2009.
However, over the last few days I’ve been returning to my own projects and getting back into the swing of things. As you might recall, I took part (remotely) in September’s 360iDev Game Jam night and created a prototype for a puzzle game idea I had. I’m happy to report that I’ve been developing that idea further and it’s coming along nicely. The game now looks very different from the screenshot I posted on Touch Arcade, by the way. As for a preliminary look at what the game is becoming, I might have something to show early next week, so keep an eye out for that!
Yesterday I decided to rewrite the rendering part of my engine to take advantage of a bunch of optimizations I had been putting off making. It turns out that the changes I made over the last day reduced my render time by about 40%! That means that I can render nearly double the sprites on the screen without dropping my framerate. This is great news, and I’m looking at porting the changes back into Monkeys in Space at some point to help out with that game’s performance.
In other news, I thought I’d mention that I’ve decided to attend two conferences this spring: the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March and 360iDev in April. I’m looking forward to both conferences, but I’m especially excited about GDC as I’ve been in the games industry for over 6 years now, but I’ve never gone to GDC! I’m really excited to get a chance to finally go and see what all the fuss is about. I’m also looking forward to attending sessions on game design that are more broad than just iPhone games.
That being said, I’m also happy to be attending 360iDev again. It will be great to see the iPhone developers I speak with every day on twitter in person again. Last year I had a fantastic time at the conference and I expect no less this time. I’ll also be speaking at 360iDev. For my presentation I will attempt to create an iPhone game prototype in 80 minutes based on audience suggestions. While doing that, I’ll be highlighting some of my best practices for rapid prototyping. If you’re attending the conference, I hope you’ll check it out. If you’re not attending the conference, why not? Check out this amazing schedule of speakers. And if you’re thinking about it, go register! 
Owen