#smallgaming

This week was a great week for game development.

For now the website is empty, but I will work on beautiful new website and continue to work on The Battle for Eersim. 2014 will be a productive year because of Unity3D and the tools it brings to the table. I hope 2014 will also be a productive year for you!

After 3 months I can say One game a month is a great stimulant for building games in the most optimal manner. Also the use of best practises helped me a lot and still is. I am having fun with one game a month and I sold a few copies of Bouncing Alien Pixel. Not bad for a little game which mixes a few classics into one. Also this game was featured on the iTunes store within the Arcade, Action and Game Center sections. For coding this means reuse of code. At the current time I am working on 3 new games which all use the Cocos2d-x engine. Using an not in house made engine saves me a lot of time of course, but the engine did not come with the social media integration I wanted to have. So I wrote a small code base for this purpose. The code is not done yet, but the finished code will ship with the next update of Bouncing Alien Pixel. Also I have to redo a small part of this code so I can use it in on Android also. Another issue which hold back Bouncing Alien Pixel up until now is how collision detection is done. The ball now does not go really fast, well it is fine for beginners. I want to make this game a real challenge for every gamer out there. So I wrote a collision grid which uses the inner workings of a ray caster. This grid really helped with speeding up the gameplay of Bouncing Alien Pixel. The grid will also be used by two upcoming games. Also I could use the grid for all kinds of collision checks within a 2d space. Some of the other code from Bouncing Alien Pixel is also reused by the three games which are in development. Code for settings and saving high scores are all reused without redoing any of the code itself. I did not only wrote games with Cocos2d-x. I wrote two games or tools for helping out my son with his schoolwork and I used Javascript. The first game was to make an easy to use game for learning to read a analog clock. The tool is really easy to use, but the parent must also be actively involved. Since the parent must check the answer and must handle the input. The reason why the parent must be involved is I believe a kid should learn as much from the parents as possible. The parents shows they care about their offspring when the parent is actively involved. The little math tool/game is written with the same mind set as the clock game/tool. Still there can be some improvements to this game. Like an overview of all (in)correct answers after all questions have been answered. It only shows how many correct answers are given. I did use both tools and made games out of them. My son learned his maths and how to read a clock, so for me those Javascript games were perfect. Check my profile of one game a month here: http://www.onegameamonth.com/SmallGaming And remember: "You can do it!!"

Jan 9 2013 The other part of One Game a Month I totally forgotten to mentioned! The social media part. I really like to read the tweets of others on twitter. I try to stay positive when replying. Giving positive energy and receiving positive energy, it makes me energetic. McFunkypants is really good at it and I try to follow by his example. The IRC chat room is great! There are always people to chat with or helpful people. I hope the good spirit will always be on IRC. For more information about One Game a Month or the IRC room go to http://onegameamonth.com/      Wish it, dream it, do it If you want to know how the game will next week, follow me on twitter @smallgaming and I will let you know when my next blog post is online!

Jan 9 2013 It was a good start for me. Besides working on the game for this month, I also written a basic tutorial for Cocos2d-x. The code can be found on Github of OneGameAMonth. The second tutorial is almost done. The progress for the game is good enough. The first game will be a Pong clone mixed with elements from other games and it is for the iPAd. There is a single- and multiplayer option. The single player is a combination of Pong, Space Invader and Arkanoid. The player moves around a paddle, can "shoot down" Aliens with the ball and there are power ups like Arkanoid. There are no lives, the player just collects points until the ball hit its maxed speed. When the player pick ups a power up there be multiplier going up. The multiplier is for the points of course. The ball will go faster over time. When it hits the screen behind the player the multiplier will go down until there is no multiplier is left. The same will happen when a bonus hits the same side of the screen. The multiplayer is not via Wifi, but a local multiplayer on the iPad. There is still lots of work to do to finish this mode. The basic is just like Pong. I hope to finish this week the gameplay of the multiplayer and start beta testing the game. Today I played the multiplayer game with a kid during the Kung Fu lesson of my son. The kid liked it, so that is extra boost for me to finish it. The kid also played the single player game and looking at him seeing his reactions was really nice. It told me the game is on the correct way to become a full game. Next week during beta testing I will finish the menu and redo all assets of the game. Wish it, dream it, do it If you want to know how the game will next week, follow me on twitter @smallgaming and I will let you know when my next blog post is online!