Apr 18

Hosting update + working on “Constellation Control”

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Instead of using an old virtual private server account to host my files, I have signed up to Amazon’s S3 cloud storage, which is much easier to use and maintain. Because of this, the games were offline for some time, but should be online again in a few moments.

On a second note, I have been working for a while now on a new game, inspired by Galactic Conquest 4k, called “Constellation Control”. It’s basically a fancier version of gc4k, with better graphics, more depth, and available as a downloadable game instead of an applet.

Jan 04

New update to Galactic Conquest 4K

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Based on the feedback I have received on Galactic Conquest 4K (my entry to the Java4K 2012 contest) and after squeezing out a few more bytes using the JoGa tool, I have made an improved version of the game. The graphics are much nicer now. Also, I rebalanced the space monster so it’s less of a game breaker if you’re in bad luck.

Unfortunately I had to remove the 1,2,3 keyboard controls for selecting ships because I needed the space. However, to avoid RSI I changed the selection sequence when clicking a star from 1, half, all to all, half, 1. This saves a lot of clicking since usually people will want to send all of the ships instead of just one.

Dec 29

Square II balancing update

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I’ve just put a new version of Square II online for each of the 3 platforms.

After observing some Square II gameplay sessions, I noticed that the game balance was a bit off. The baby mode wasn’t really easy, and the “huge” level size was a bit boring. In addition, the level size names turned out to confuse people (“huge” has got tiny blocks?).

In short, the changes are:

  • The level size selection has been replaced by a selection of five game “modes”, ranging from “Baby”, which is very easy, to “Rain of Blocks”, which is very hard.
  • Initial & max fall speed, and the rate in which fall speed increases has been tuned for each of the five game modes, so that in each mode the maximum falling speed is reached after 10 minutes.

Finally, let me wish you a fun 2012!

Dec 28

Galactic Conquest 4K released

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Ever wondered how much of a 4X strategy game you could get in just 4096 byes of code? Here’s the answer: Galactic Conquest 4K!

The year is 4096 and all hell just broke loose. Xenophobia got the upper hand, and now all races in the known galaxy are at war. Cruisers are cruising, lasers are blasting and aliens are screaming. There is no surrender, only extermination or victory!

You can play it here.

This game is my entry into the Java4K online games contest.

Nov 29

Small updates to Square II

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I’ve made some small technical updates to the Square II code, and made the depoyment package a bit nicer (from a nerdy point of view). This should mainly be noticeable when you run into problems, since error handling has improved a bit.

Unfortunately, I found out that the current installation files I had was not suitable for mac, linux or win64 due to missing “native” DLLs. I will fix this soon, but for the time being, only a normal windows version is available.

Download the newest version from the Square II page.

Nov 26

Square II released!

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A new version of Square is released: Square II. This one has got squares, too. (I know, bad joke). It’s got many improvements over the last version:

  • a new fancy gui system, built from scratch
  • much improved graphics, in a higher resolution
  • settings for fullscreen mode and sound volume
  • improved exception handling, and an error log
  • different level sizes
  • … and more!

Download the game from the Square II page!

It took me some time to get this finished, but I’m happy with the result. Please let me know if you encounter any problems! My next project will be a bit more original and involve conquering the galaxy and lasers that go pew pew. Details are still being worked out though.

Nov 04

Updates on the website, Square

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The past weeks I have started working on a game development library, as a step towards a new game (involving spaceships and pew pew lasers). However, after building fancy user interface code, improved error handling and logging, resource management, and some other nice stuff, I realized that I could relatively easily improve Square a lot. So since then I’ve worked at making a version 2 of Square, which will be “Tetris with a twist”. Official release date: “soon”.

Also, the website was until yesterday hosted on a virtual private server that I have, but managing my own webserver and all that comes with it turned out to be too much of a pain. I’m interested in game development, not in system administration. Hence, since today I moved my blog to a dedicated website host (the Dutch GetHost, which incidentally has some servers in my hometown Groningen).

Sep 05

First game finished: SQUARE

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I just finished developing my very first game: SQUARE, a simple yet fun to play game in the tradition of Tetris. Visit the game page to play the game. I hope you’ll enjoy!

A little about it’s development: game development has long been a hobby of mine. However, after almost-but-not-quite-completing a couple of projects I challenged myself to really finishing and polishing a game, so that I could let others play it. This game is the result, it’s simple but it is a complete game including a menu, highscores, sound, music, balanced gameplay, etcetera. Turns out that making a prototype of the game is only 20% of the work; 80% of the work is polishing and testing.

SQUARE was developed in about five days in Java using the Slick 2D game library, which is based on the LightWeight Java Game Library. The nice thing about developing in Java is that the game should run in Windows, Macintosh and Linux environments, and Slick 2D lets the game use graphics hardware on each of these platforms. Graphics (using InkScape and Paint.net) and sound effects (using as3sfxr) have been created by me, music was downloaded from the The Mod Archive.