Magigoo released

Magigoo title screen

Play it here.

This game was developed for a month. I finished it around July 12th 2008 and it took around 2 weeks to get it finally picked up by a sponsor: Candystand. And another 2 weeks to get the version ready for release.

Dave from Candystand was a great guy to work with, I manage to get a primary sponsorship which means after a month of exclusive in CS, I’ll be able to sell it for non-exclusive site-locked versions and also release a viral version with mochiads. Sweet.

Oh, and not to mention, Candystand QA was just awesome. I was happy it got QA’ed.. They found several bugs that I wouldn’t expect to see unless they helped. My previous experience in releasing a buggy game made me realize how important QA is, and I’m lucky this game got proper QA :):). Double sweet.

Tell me what you think about the game .

Pieces “sequel” frozen

I had plans to create a “sequel” for Pieces and started it approximately a month ago.. but due to circumstances, I think I’m going to pass for another idea.

The current idea for the sequel was going to involve something less frustrating for people who were thinking it’s an ordinary platformer, which means no control restrictions at the start. And, no “finding a problem and learn from a role model” pattern anymore. The basic idea goes something like this:

We play as a transmagi apprentice. Transmagi is something I made up for wizards that shape-shifts. At the start the character will go through a tutorial that explains the basic mechanic, whereas as a transmagi we can shift into 4 types (including our human form).

First is the human form where the character can walk and jump. The jump is like in Mario, you hold down jump key and it can go higher, but of course there will be a maximum height. Second is the bird form where we are able to fly, the jump key will be used to flap its wings so leaving it unpress makes the char drop down, while holding it pressed makes the char glide. Third is the frog form, this allows the char to go underwater, while on land the char can only jump (no walk). And the last form is the mole, this allows the char to dig up loose walls (can also walk but no jump). It’s pretty complex huh..

The world was going to be much larger than Pieces, and mappings were quite different so I had to modify the editor. But due to time and circumstances, I think I’ll let this freeze for a while.

So now, I’m approaching a simpler design. The idea came after playing “Floats“. The basic idea is capturing colored bugs with your mouse by drawing a circle around the bugs. But this time I’ll add power-ups and the possibility to combine colors of bugs before capturing. I hope this will make an even more fun game. My approach to simple mechanics is an alternative to what I did for Pieces. I felt that a lot were confused and frustrated with the unusual way of doing things in Pieces, plus I’d like to experiment how a simple game might be more welcoming for quick players and see how it goes.

Detour: entering JIG’s 5th Game Design Competition

Yup! A ‘quick’ detour.

I wasn’t intrigued to enter at first, I never thought I had any good original ideas to come up with. But after reading about the benefits of entering (like your game gets submitted automatically for MochiAds “Be a RockStar” gamedev competition, and the possibilities of sponsorships, plus the use of MochiAds), it got me hooked. So I took the time to do several brainstorms, and had a somewhat good concept.

It’s called “Pieces”, and it’s a platformer. You play as Proo, this little character (girl?) that landcrashed to this strange place. She lost her memories about everything, even her bodywork skills (running, jumping, etc). Your goal as player is to guide her to recollect pieces of her memories, skills and craft to get her back home. The somewhat unique aspect of the game is how she learns (upgrade) her skill, which is done by doing 2 things in order:

1. find objects that interests Proo (create curiosity/interest).
2. find creatures that indirectly tell Proo how things are done (watch role-model).

The mechanics of getting these status is quite simple, as soon as Proo enters a map with either one point (interest or role-model) it automatically gains the corresponding status.

To make it more clear, here’s a simple example of how things would work (and will be in the tutorial mode):

You start with Proo being immobile, sitting and wondering what to do. Then Mr.Tutorial drops a food beside her only several steps away. Proo has the food in her interest slot, but you can’t command her to move her to the food. What to do? Proo needs a role-model, so Mr.Tutorial lets a creature come in running from side-to-side, probably stopping for several moments before finally it move along. By that time, Proo gains a new skill, you get a notice how to use the cursor keys to move her.

That’s pretty much the base of how the game works. Proo will encounter a certain map where she needs to jump and the same thing start over, ‘jump’ is in her interest slot and she needs to find a role model to help her understand how to jump. The placements and terrain of the map will be the puzzle and exploration is essential in the game. Monsters and obstacles? Maybe I might add them, but currently I imagine this game as ‘very peaceful’, so no death feature for Proo, I guess.

I’ll be programming this in AS3.0, using flex2SDK. One of the things I took consideration is that I’ll need to add external codes from JIG and MochiAds to be eligible to enter competition. But I’m sure there will a place for haXe coding as I’m planning to do the map editor in haXe+swhx.

Working on new title: MercOps

My plans for current game for sponsorship is to avoid real-time fast-paced action game . A little disapointed with SoM, yes.. but mostly just wanted to try a new genre. Strategies, especially tactical strategy, fascinates me. Titles like XCOM:UFO Defense and Jagged Alliance are the most favorable games. They don’t do those games anymore, so I’m determined to bring it up in flash, but more casual.

MercOps is a working title, and is basically a tactical strategy. It’s more like Jagged by theme and mechanics, although not as complex as Jagged. I planned to have it in isometric view and you start out with a set of mercs. All in default stats. Mercs will gain exp and level up automatically depending on what skill they mostly use. Certain skills will add more to exp, like ‘accuracy’ and kills. If a merc dies, you can recruit new ones after a mission ends. The goal of each mission is simple, eliminate all opposing forces on the map. Once cleared, you’ll be shown a screen of statistics and options, like recruiting new mercs and save/load. I’m not sure if money will be involved in recruiting (if it does then I should plot how will the team get money). I also haven’t laid out all possible weapons and items (armor? grenades? etc) yet, although I planned to start with a very few and maybe add more for the sequel. Yeah, I think it’s best to design for a series.. like say 3 – 5. Adding more detail and most importantly, the feature to keep mercs from previous series .

Jagged Alliance 2: WildFire, courtesy of MobyGames.com

Development will start with prototyping, and learning from SoM, I’ll make sure to ‘prototype’ everything: including screen/GUI flow and transitions so it’s already in a ready-to-complete-by-producing-art-assets state. Doing art in between code and design can slow things down. I hope I’ll manage to be persistent this time. So currently I’m doing placeholder art and will start coding shortly. I’ll be using flex for this project. I found haXe a bit troublesome if you’re going to use 3rd party API (from portals or mochiads/mochibot). Plus the weirdness in exclusively needing flashplayer 9.047.0 when outputting flash9 in haXe (I managed to find several players discouraged with the wrong flashplayer version error in SoM). I think flex doesn’t have that, plus you can easily make a preloader on a single swf and it’s AS3 :):).

It’s already mid-January and I’m way out of schedule. I planned to release something by February and now, I think I won’t have the time . But just making something vs. making something you like and worth playing is very different and that’s my base for working on MercOps. I hope I learn my mistakes from SoM and produce a worth playing game. Till then .