Hi guys,

Neo Circuit is only a few days away from submitting it to Apples Appstore. The download will be free, but it will have an In App Purchase option  for playing all the levels as well …

Continue reading »]]>

Hi guys,

Neo Circuit is only a few days away from submitting it to Apples Appstore. The download will be free, but it will have an In App Purchase option  for playing all the levels as well as all difficulties. It will also support Game Center for highscore submissions. I will leave out achievements this time, but might add some in further updates.

The Android version needs a little more polishing because there are some screen size issues which needs to be fixed first. I will keep you updated!

Share/Bookmark

Neo Circuit reached  a million plays today, which is quite ok for a flash game in 21 days. But  even more impressive is the average playtime of 24 Minutes and 18 seconds for all play …

Continue reading »]]>

Neo Circuit reached  a million plays today, which is quite ok for a flash game in 21 days. But  even more impressive is the average playtime of 24 Minutes and 18 seconds for all play sessions. I am a little proud, to be honest .

The game was also frontpaged on Kongregate for a while and has a rating of 3.69 at the moment. I have some more good news to come soon.

Currently I am working on the iOS and Android version of Neo Circuit, which should be ready in a couple of days. So stay tuned. I will let you know as soon as I got it submitted to the stores!

Share/Bookmark

Hey,

Neo Circuit was sponsored and  released on the 25th of December by BigDino! I am glad about the deal with BigDino, because Earth Vs. Aliens without a sponsor did not perform well at all. The first numbers …

Continue reading »]]>

Hey,

Neo Circuit was sponsored and  released on the 25th of December by BigDino! I am glad about the deal with BigDino, because Earth Vs. Aliens without a sponsor did not perform well at all. The first numbers show that Neo Circuit is much longer played (actually twice as long as Earth Vs. Aliens) and the ratings seem to be quite good as well. It really helped that I put a lot of effort into the handling and the tutorial of the game. Actually 50% of the development time went into polishing, which really helped.

Please rate and play the game!

Share/Bookmark

Update: Newgrounds is featuring the game at their frontpage…this is just awesome!!!

Today my first game is officially released as an indie games developer. You can play Earth Vs Aliens now on Newgrounds. The game will be released on Kongregate …

Continue reading »]]>

Update: Newgrounds is featuring the game at their frontpage…this is just awesome!!!

Today my first game is officially released as an indie games developer. You can play Earth Vs Aliens now on Newgrounds. The game will be released on Kongregate and other portals in the upcoming days. Please vote for the game. Thanks!

Play and Vote here!

Share/Bookmark

I have been researching for a while and to include Admob into my Android game made with Adobe Air and I stumbled over this article from James Ward. He describes actually the most important steps to have everything setup.

So as soon as you have done …

Continue reading »]]>

I have been researching for a while and to include Admob into my Android game made with Adobe Air and I stumbled over this article from James Ward. He describes actually the most important steps to have everything setup.

So as soon as you have done the steps to set everything up as stated in James Ward article  (to the point where it says System Notifications and Services), you can start following the steps here to have your admob add running in your game or app.

1. Create the Notification Service in Java

First of all create a java class called NotificationService. The class is also copied over from James Ward article with slight  changes:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120

package com.roughsea;
 
// This code is copied form James Ward article Extending Air for Android and change slightly
// http://www.jamesward.com/2011/05/11/extending-air-for-android/
 
import java.io.BufferedInputStream;
import java.io.DataInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;
 
import android.app.Service;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.os.IBinder;
import android.os.Looper;
import android.util.Log;
 
public class NotificationService extends Service
{
  public static MainApp app;
  private boolean stopped=false;
  private Thread serverThread;
  private ServerSocket ss;
 
  @Override
  public IBinder onBind(Intent intent)
  {
    return null;
  }
 
  @Override
  public void onCreate()
  {
	super.onCreate();
	Log.d(getClass().getSimpleName(), "onCreate");
	serverThread = new Thread(new Runnable()
	{
	  public void run()
	  {
		try
		{
		  Looper.prepare();
		  ss = new ServerSocket(12345);
		  ss.setReuseAddress(true);
		  ss.setPerformancePreferences(100, 100, 1);
		  while (!stopped)
		  {
		    Socket accept = ss.accept();
		    accept.setPerformancePreferences(10, 100, 1);
		    accept.setKeepAlive(true);
		    DataInputStream _in = null;
		    try
		    {
		      _in = new DataInputStream(new BufferedInputStream(accept.getInputStream(),1024));
		    }
		    catch (IOException e2)
		    {
		      e2.printStackTrace();
		    }
			int id =_in.readInt();
			// this depends on what your flash code is sending
			if (id == 1)
			{
			  doNotification(_in);
			}
          }
        }
    	catch (Throwable e)
		{
	      e.printStackTrace();
		  Log.e(getClass().getSimpleName(), "Error in Listener",e);
		}
		try
		{
		  ss.close();
		}
		catch (IOException e)
		{
		  Log.e(getClass().getSimpleName(), "keep it simple");
		}
	  }
	},"Server thread");
    serverThread.start();
  }
 
  private void doNotification(DataInputStream in) throws IOException
  {
    String task = in.readUTF();
    String showAdd = "on";
    if (task.equals(showAdd))
    {
      app.showAd();
    }
    else
    {
      app.removeAd();
    }
  }
 
  public void setApp(MainApp _app)
  {
    app = _app;
  }
 
  @Override
  public void onDestroy()
  {
	stopped=true;
    try
    {
      ss.close();
    }
    catch (IOException e) {}
    serverThread.interrupt();
    try
    {
      serverThread.join();
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {}
  }
}

2. Create the AS3 code for communication with the service

Include this function wherever it fits your needs in your flash code:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
private function ToggleAdd(_show:Boolean):void
{
	var text:String = "on";
	if (_show == false)
		text = "off";
 
	var s:Socket = new Socket();
	s.connect("localhost", 12345);
	s.addEventListener(Event.CONNECT, function(event:Event):void
	{
		(event.currentTarget as Socket).writeInt(1);
		(event.currentTarget as Socket).writeUTF(text);
		(event.currentTarget as Socket).flush();
		(event.currentTarget as Socket).close();
	});
 
	s.addEventListener(IOErrorEvent.IO_ERROR, function(event:IOErrorEvent):void
	{
		trace('error! ' + event.errorID);
	});
	s.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.SOCKET_DATA, function(event:ProgressEvent):void
	{
	  trace('progress ');
	});
}

The port 12345 is actually selected by random, you should just get sure you are using one which is not used anywhere else. I use the text sending for just switching things on or off as an example, but you could actually send any specific data.

You have now setup communication between flash and your android app.  Now Change your MainApp.java like this:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77

package com.roughsea;
 
import air.app.AppEntry;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.os.Message;
import android.content.Intent;
 
import com.google.ads.AdRequest;
import com.google.ads.AdView;
import com.google.ads.AdSize;
import android.view.Gravity;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.FrameLayout;
import android.os.Handler;
 
public class MainApp extends AppEntry
{
 
  private static String MY_AD_UNIT_ID = "use your own ad unit id here";
  private AdView adView = null;
  private MainApp app;
 
  @Override
  public void onCreate(Bundle arg0)
  {
	try
	{
	  app = this;
	  NotificationService.app = this;
	  Intent srv = new Intent(this, NotificationService.class);
	  startService(srv);
	}
	catch (Exception e)
	{
		// service could not be started
	}
	super.onCreate(arg0);
  }
 
  public void showAd() { handler.sendEmptyMessage(0); }
  public void removeAd() { handler.sendEmptyMessage(1); }
 
 private Handler handler = new Handler()
  {
	@Override
	public void handleMessage(Message msg)
	{
	  if (msg.what == 0)
	  {
		if (adView == null)
		{
		  FrameLayout.LayoutParams adsParams = new FrameLayout.LayoutParams(
	        FrameLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,
			FrameLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,
			Gravity.TOP|Gravity.CENTER_HORIZONTAL
		  );
 
	      adView = new AdView(app, AdSize.BANNER, MY_AD_UNIT_ID);
	      app.addContentView(adView, adsParams);
 
	      AdRequest request = new AdRequest();
	      request.addTestDevice(AdRequest.TEST_EMULATOR);
	      request.addTestDevice("0299D8EE8828629D2B15162000A09DE9");
	      adView.loadAd(request);
		}
		else
		{
		  adView.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
		}
      }
	  else if (msg.what == 1)
	  {
	    adView.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
	  }
	}
  };
}

3. You want to place your ad somewhere else, no Problem!

1
2
3
4
5

FrameLayout.LayoutParams adsParams = new FrameLayout.LayoutParams(
  FrameLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,
  FrameLayout.LayoutParams.WRAP_CONTENT,
  Gravity.TOP|Gravity.CENTER_HORIZONTAL
);

Just change the Gravity parameters to your needs. You can find a explanation of those parameters here

4. Now we need to setup the manifest file.

Load the AndroidManifest.xml file into your editor. You might have done some changes already when following James Ward article, but there are still things missing:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<manifest package="com.roughsea" android:versionCode="1000000" android:versionName="1.0.0"
  xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <application android:label="app" android:icon="@drawable/icon">
        <activity android:theme="@style/Theme.NoShadow" android:background="@null" android:label="app" android:name=".MainApp" android:launchMode="singleTask" android:screenOrientation="nosensor" android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation" android:windowSoftInputMode="stateHidden|adjustResize">
            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
			<meta-data android:name="aspectRatio" android:value="landscape" />
			<meta-data android:name="autoOrients" android:value="false" />
			<meta-data android:name="fullScreen" android:value="true" />
        </activity>
  		<activity android:name="com.google.ads.AdActivity" android:configChanges="keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation"/>
  		<receiver android:name="com.admob.android.ads.analytics.InstallReceiver" android:exported="true">
  		<intent-filter> <action android:name="com.android.vending.INSTALL_REFERRER" /> </intent-filter> </receiver>
		<service android:enabled="true" android:name=".NotificationService" />
 
    </application>
    <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="8" android:targetSdkVersion="8" />
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"/>
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE"/>
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE" />
</manifest>

The following three lines are necessary if you want to have a landscape orientation pinned as well as fullscreen mode enabled. Change those parameters to your needs:

1
2
3

<meta-data android:name="aspectRatio" android:value="landscape" />
<meta-data android:name="autoOrients" android:value="false" />
<meta-data android:name="fullScreen" android:value="true" />

If your compiler does not find that style android:theme=”@style/Theme.NoShadow”, open the values directory under res in your project and load styles.xml

Add the following code to your styles.xml if its missing:

1
2
3
4
5
6

<resources>
    <style name="Theme.NoShadow" parent="@android:style/Theme.NoTitleBar">
        <item name="android:windowContentOverlay">@null</item>
        <item name="android:windowNoTitle">true</item>
    </style>
</resources>

5. You are done…sort of

You should be ready now. First of all compile your swf, if you use the packager, it will build a apk file, which can be opened with any unzip tool. Go to the asset folder and copy the .swf into the asset folder of your project and rename it to app.swf

Compile your java android project and start the emulator. If you did everything right, you will see a test ad popping up in your flash app or game.

Dont forget to remove the addTestDevice codelines before uploading your app to the android market.

Closing thoughts
There are many android device and I have tested this code only an a Samsung Galaxy 9000S, but actually it should work on any other device. I hope I haven’t forgotten anything important. The code should work, I pasted from the original project and did only make some string adjustments. Please let me know if you run into any problems and I will try to help as far as I can.

I have no proof yet, if this fixed the account fraud problems, but I am quite sure, because the standard google admob API is used. We should be on the safe side here. You are actually not limited to admob, you could add any other advertisement API  if its available for android.

Thats its for now. I hope somebody finds this helpful.

Share/Bookmark

Hey guys,

the last 48 hours were quite exciting, I was taking part at the world wide game jam Ludum Dare #48 – 21 The Theme was “escape” this time. While that is a very good theme for a computer game, its actually used in lots …

Continue reading »]]>

Hey guys,

the last 48 hours were quite exciting, I was taking part at the world wide game jam Ludum Dare #48 – 21 The Theme was “escape” this time. While that is a very good theme for a computer game, its actually used in lots of games already, so its hard to come up with something entirely new.  I did the game “Lost in the Shadows“.

The game is a rogue like adventure game where a dwarf is lost in the mines and tries to escape without dying. You have to find the exit, dig for water to survive and collect as much gold nuggets as possible on the way.  Sounds fun, but actually the game gets boring too fast. Its probably a content problem but also a design issue as well.

So here is my post mortem:

What when right…

Level generation
Level generation was done very fast and the rocks are layered, rooms where cut in after the rocks were calculated. There are 4 different rock types, the easiest which the  level is filled from the start. The second rock type is generated with rectangles. The third layer is more complicated, because it can only exists on the second type of rocks and the same with the forth type. So when you dig the rock gets harder step by step. This makes the game much better and more appealing. The rooms where cut in after the rocks where generated. That was ok, but I would change the now and cut the rooms after the first rock type is set. That should make the levels even better. The hardest rock types sometimes reveal hidden items. You can find gold nuggets and water. While the distribution is ok for this small short game, it needs much more improvement  for a decent experience.

Sfx
The sfx creation was a lot of fun. I went out with a hammer to hit some stones in the park, fiddled around with water in the sink, walked around to record footsteps and so on. That was really cool and exciting. The recordings have a not so good quality due to the iPad2 microphone, so I pimped them a little with audacity. That was fun and didn’t cost too much time.  The mining sound worked quite well, so I synchronized it with some particles. That is actually my most favorite part of the game yet.

Character pixel art
The character creation was ok as well. You have to know, that I am very inexperienced in creating pixel art, so it was really ok for my knowledge level!

Gameplay and gui implementation
The implementation of the gameplay and the GUI was working out very well. Actually I had only a few minor bugs nothing I to worry about and it was done quite fast. Well the code is far from optimal, but that was not the purpose of that competition.

I got it done:
Well it was my first official game jam ever and I got the game done. That’s was and still is really good for my ego! I overall invested around 20hours into the game creation.

What went wrong…

Tileset creation
The tileset creation was really bad,  it took me ages, at least 2-3 hours which is, compared to what is looks not worth 15 minutes. There is still a bug in the tile set. Connected to this my biggest time consumption was the FlxTilemap class from flixel. I never used that before and it didn’t work at all for my game. So I decided to implement it by myself, which isn’t too complicated, but I was a little frustrated already about my progress and made bad mistakes.

Game design and game mechanics
The  idea was to create a rogue like adventure, but without monsters, just the mine and the dwarf with a tight storyline etc. Sounds ok so far, but the most important part, the storyline, was done in the last half an hour before submission. So  just a few atmosphere texts made it into the game, thats it.  Well, actually the story wouldn’t have made sense at all, at least for what I have planned for, because you can die quite fast and so everything gets repeated, which is not a good game experience.
The water and the nuggets worked ok as items, but I would have needed some traps and enemies overall. The game is lacking lots of content here and so its really not that much fun. So all in all the game mechanics are quite poor. You walk around dig some rock, try to find water to survive and if you are lucky you will find some nuggets.  I have to invest much more time thinking about the concept before starting coding and art creation.

Music
No Music, I have never done music and I started to use musagi 2 hours before I wanted to submit. I realized that this would take me at least several days, because I have never created any music. The game doesn’t feel complete now.

Overall I am quite happy and I am will pimp the game so I can release it con kongregate or newgrounds. Thanks to the ludum dare team for all their hard work. I am happy to be part of such a great community and this was definitely not the last ludum dare for me!

Share/Bookmark

the title says it all .

Neo Circuit developer diary on Google+

The new game will be called “NEO CIRCUIT” and is a strategy title, mainly for mobile devices. I have still not decided if am am using  flash or Corona SDK. This time the graphics will be done by myself as well as sfx and programming. I am …

Continue reading »]]>

The new game will be called “NEO CIRCUIT” and is a strategy title, mainly for mobile devices. I have still not decided if am am using  flash or Corona SDK. This time the graphics will be done by myself as well as sfx and programming. I am not sure about the music yet, but that will be decided later!

Earth vs. Aliens is still waiting for a proper bid on FGL, so its not officially released yet. The bidding will take at least another 3-4 weeks.

Share/Bookmark

Earth vs Aliens was released to FGL today. If you want to play the game just  create an account and start playing. Here is the link

http://www.flashgamelicense.com/view_game.php?from=dev&game_id=19365

I made a video with more gameplay footage:

A little later than promised. Here is my little list of things I have done for Alien Invasion until to now. I have translated and pooled the tasks, to make it more readable for you. All figures are calculated in work hours.

Protoype and design

Continue reading »]]>

A little later than promised. Here is my little list of things I have done for Alien Invasion until to now. I have translated and pooled the tasks, to make it more readable for you. All figures are calculated in work hours.

Protoype and design

10 hours design sounds ok for this little game, but honestly I should have put much more thoughts in the concept. That could have saved me a ton of work. The prototype was done in a time of 1 week, 2-3 hours in the evenings.

Player programming

The player programming was the most work yet. So I wasted about 18-20 hours on dump weapons. A little more thoughts on the design side could have helped, but well you never know. 4 redesigns on the weapon selection was necessary and I am still not 100% happy, but its ok for now. I got lots of help from friends, which suggested what should be changed. Thanks guys!

Enemy Programming

You see, I wasted too much time on the enemies. Way too much. I should have used splines from the first minute…but I wanted to have a really cool movement behaviour patterns. I tried different steering behaviours etc. Nothing really worked out well or was slow as hell. I got frustrated of that topic a several times. Using splines was my best choice until now. Some enemies still use parts of the steering behaviour. Anyway, lessons learned.

GUI Programming

I am quite happy with the GUI so far. Flixel and Flixel power tools don’t have that much GUI stuff so I thought I would spend much more time. But I reduced everything to the bare minimum. I am quite happy with the outcome. There is still some work to do, but that’s easy stuff like achievement and credits screen.

Effects Programming

Well this is my favourite part. Just 19h for such an outcome. I am really thankful for the FLINT particle system. I will need some more polishing time, but I have not wasted much time.  Good stuff!

Other Programming

Premature optimization!! I should no better, I watched this video from Jonathan Blow! Well to be honest, this was a necessary optimization. My frame time on my 5 year old laptop went from 10 frames up to 20 frames with all the particle action. I could throw away hundreds of lines of code as well, so that was worth it.  The port to Flixel 2.5 was not a big pain and worth the work as well.

16h bug fixes sounds not that much, but I have not tracked everything, its probably much more time which went into bug fixing.

Not much hassle with the asset management, just a few centralised files and I use .txt files for my levels. XMLs would be too complicated for my efforts.

Leveldesign and Tools

Skyline and spline editors were easy to implement and worth their time. Very useful tools. The tutorial mission was a complete waste of time. I did this far to early in the process and had to throw it away completely. Most of the work left is on the level design part. You could spend endless hours. I have not much experience in level design and this is really the hardest part for me at the moment. I got a little better already, but I am a complete noob. It can only get better .

The graphics part is only integrating graphics and doing some additional ones. The most graphics are done by Chris Noeth. The music is done by Cain German, so I need only to give feedback and integrate the music. The sound effects are created with the great sfxr and there is a iPhone version of this cool tool which I use as well! So this part is mainly outsourced. But I get better in doing some art myself using gimp. I lately started using sprite something on the iPad, not for Alien Invasion but maybe for the next game.

Marketing

Well not much up. Spent a view hours making video, screenshots, forum posts and writing blogs, what I should do more often. Twitter sucks a lot of time, but I think its the best marketing tool for indie game developers.

Whats left?

Well theoretically I am done in a week, but as you know yourself, the first 90% are done, now I am at the second 90%. Well I hope not, because I did a lot of polishing already, but 42 hours is probably the best number which could be left. The meaning of life and such….:)

Well to be honest there is some stuff missing like integration of the kongregate, mochi or newsground APIs, but I will try to sell it first on FGL.

So the total numbers are 370 hours of work until now and 51 hours wasted. I did work 2 month parttime work in the evenings and one month full time work. I hope I can finish the game within the next two weeks.

Ok thats it for now. Hope you enjoyed reading it!

Oh I forgot something, I think I played my game for at least 40-50 hours. I have just not tracked that time…

Share/Bookmark

Hey guys,

I am back with some excellent news!

The start screen has made some great progress. I am not completely satisfied, but its much better than I thought it would get. It took me around 2 days to complete it.

While doing the start screen I …

Continue reading »]]>

Hey guys,

I am back with some excellent news!

The start screen has made some great progress. I am not completely satisfied, but its much better than I thought it would get. It took me around 2 days to complete it.

While doing the start screen I thought I need a little more entertainment for the user. Thats why I integrated rescue helicopters and some helpless people which need to be picked up in the city, as soon as buildings get hit. My intention was, that the player realizes that a city is under attack and needs his help!

I had this idea quit a while ago, but I thought it could wait. Well now its inside the start menu as well as inside the game. If you safe your citizens and your helis you get extra bonus while playing.

Here is a little video:

Did you realize that it is the helicopter art from Fort Apocalypse on the C64. I loved this game, so I thought I make a little tribute.

Next two big things are story mode and the mothership attacks. Stay tuned!

Share/Bookmark

Hi there,

as promised via twitter yesterday, I reveal some information about my project called ALIEN INVASION. Its a small Flash game with some elements from to Missile Command. Please checkout the video for some ingame footage.

The game is done with AS3, Flashdevelop,

Continue reading »]]>

Hi there,

as promised via twitter yesterday, I reveal some information about my project called ALIEN INVASION. Its a small Flash game with some elements from to Missile Command. Please checkout the video for some ingame footage.

The game is done with AS3, Flashdevelop, Flixel, Flixel Power Tools, Flint, Singulartiy and some own tools like a Splineeditor for enemy movement etc.

Alien Invasion is still in development. The full game will have a story and a survival
mode and a ton of weapons for your defending convenience. If the flash game will be successful (either on FGL or Chrome Webstore), the game will be ported to iOS and Android.

I don’t have a final release date yet, but I currently working fulltime on it. I hope to finish all features in 2-3 weeks plus an unkown time of polishing.

P.S.
Sorry for the quality of the video, it was my first try

Share/Bookmark

Handling resource loading in a web project can be tricky sometimes. We stumbled time and time again over new issues. Today, I would like to share some thoughts with you about this topic. These are things that may help you to get asset handling right the first …

Continue reading »]]>

Handling resource loading in a web project can be tricky sometimes. We stumbled time and time again over new issues. Today, I would like to share some thoughts with you about this topic. These are things that may help you to get asset handling right the first time in your project.

In the beginning, there was our neat little asset loader that early in the development only had to load files locally. From the start we integrated parallel loading of files to speed things up a bit. When we tried it online everything still seemed fine. No worries, ey? Well, the problems started when we hired an external Quality Assurance team of 20+ people sitting behind a single unstable 2MBit line. To our surprise they weren’t able to load our game at all. Using a remote access tool we debugged what happened and fixed, and changed, and tried out until the game loaded somewhat reliably with their connection.

There were two main problems we had to fight at first: “File Not Found” and “Broken Data”.

“File Not Found”
Well, sometimes the Flash loader returned a 404-error for no apparent reason. Next time, the game is started, it would find the file but another one not. Crazy stuff! We did not really find the root of the problem. We only guessed that maybe some part of the internet connection was only able to handle a certain number of parallel http requests. Yet, we were able to work around the problem: When a “File Not Found” occurs, we simply flag the asset as “not loading” again and put it in the back of the load list. When the asset loader is done with all the other files it will try to load the file again. We allow this to happen up to 10 times before eventually giving up for good.

“Broken Data”
Now, that our external QA team was much more likely to be able to play the game a new problem emerged. The data that was loaded was sometimes broken. Pictures looked scrambled; XML-objects threw exceptions on initialization with our loaded data. Again, that was a weird phenomenon that we were not able to find the root of. Yet, our workaround from “File Not Found” worked here as well. We put a try-catch block around the part where we turn the loaded data into real objects and if something fails, the file goes to the back of the load list.

Later, we refined our workaround by adding two more features like “Reducing of Parallel Loading” and “Trick the Cache”.

“Reducing of Parallel Loading”
During our testing we realized that we were able to increase loading stability greatly by only loading on file at a time. Unfortunately, that slows down the whole loading process tremendously. So here is what we did: After every unsuccessful loading attempt we decrease the number of files to load at the same time. So, only users with unstable connections will get slowed down.

“Trick the Cache“
If a load fails, we flag the file so next time we try to load it we try it without the cache. Otherwise we might just get the same broken file again. That is not an obvious thing in Flash since it has its own caching system that is hard to influence and besides, you never know what other caching mechanisms (like proxies) are at work on the way from our servers to the user. Well, by adding a parameter to the request URL (something like “?foo=” plus a timestamp or a random number) you can trick most of the caches to believe they need to load the file anew. (External resource about this here)

Is there any room for improvement?
Oh Lord, yes, there is! For one, we will introduce some kind of hash system to validate downloaded resources at some point in the future. Right now, we only assume that if turning a chunk of binary data into an xml or a bitmap actually worked everything is fine. Well, it’s not. Especially, JPGs files are fairly error tolerant which already did cause broken visuals in the game for some users in the past.

Another cause of problems can be content firewalls. As it appears, some users are not able to download our (I must say brilliant *hehe*) background music while not having any troubles with the other file types. So, I believe we should introduce an optional asset type that will not render the game useless if they’re not found or broken.

Furthermore, alternative data servers could be something worth discussing. If communication with the dedicated data server shows any problems, it would be nice to be able to simply switch to another one.

That’s it for now.

Happy Coding,
Manuel

Share/Bookmark

It’s always impressive, right after E3, to consider all the games that I could (or will) buy this year. The graphics and environment get more and more realistic, the heroes cooler and cooler. So shouldn’t that indescribable excitement — the release day fever, the “just can’t wait” …

Continue reading »]]>

It’s always impressive, right after E3, to consider all the games that I could (or will) buy this year. The graphics and environment get more and more realistic, the heroes cooler and cooler. So shouldn’t that indescribable excitement — the release day fever, the “just can’t wait” trembling — have hit right about now? Well, it should have, but…

The developments of recent years provoke in me, an active gamer for a quarter century, the opposite feeling. The ever-increasing pressure to add unique selling points, better graphics, physics, etc. has decreased the willingness of the developers (or rather the publishers) to explore new directions, and in the end, they mostly produce interchangeable pablum.

Back when blocky pixels and abstract forms invited us to fill their gaps with our own stories; when we waited for minutes in a submarine off Gibraltar for the sun to set; when, after endlessly repeated runs through a level, we finally found the hidden key and with it an indescribable joy, games were primarily sparks for our imagination. Today they simply fulfill our expectations. We used to buy the key to a new world; today, a consumable product.

Today’s gamer has been squeezed into a mold of expectations. He expects games to work in certain ways; any deviations must be carefully explained in advance. Confronting the player with a task that he must solve by his own efforts, without hand-holding, is no longer allowed. Recognizing the patterns and mastering new skills was part of the attraction of earlier games. These days, games have degenerated to pure entertainment. They no longer challenge, they simply divert. This parallels the development of films, which have gone from providing a topic of conversation for post-show socializing to grabbing our attention with ninety minutes of bombast that are immediately forgotten.

Whether lack of design imagination will eventually lead games to follow another film industry trend, namely remakes, remains to be seen. Regardless, throwing away the chance to create high-quality games will certainly confirm a widespread and long-held gamer prejudice: anybody can design a game!

Share/Bookmark

Goodbye Duke Nukem Forver or a last  ” Hail to the king, baby!”

We all played it! We all loved it! We all made jokes about some release date troubles. But who thought of living without DUKE NUKEM?!

Why did …

Continue reading »]]>

Goodbye Duke Nukem Forver or a last  ” Hail to the king, baby!”

We all played it! We all loved it! We all made jokes about some release date troubles. But who thought of living without DUKE NUKEM?!

Why did this happen? Maybe a serious alien invasion of the 3D Realms studios? Too much bubblegum to chew?
I hope Duke Nuke Forever will be not buried and someone can resurrect the charming hero of muscles and big guns.

But I am quite sure this will happen, as Duke has balls of steel! I keep on waiting to see DNF! Hear my words!

Share/Bookmark