So, the Playbook’s been released, and anyone who happens to own one can download and play Rocket Storm, completely for free! Hooray!
It’s been gathering a good few downloads – more than I thought it would, and overall the store reviews have been pretty positive. A lot of users have identified a bug with the ‘next wave’ banner though – occasionally it hangs around for longer than it should, obscuring the first couple of missiles and making the game harder than it needs to be. I actually fixed this bug a few days ago, but there’s a delay between submitting an update and it getting approved and posted up on the store. I have no idea how the machine handles updating, I hope it’s reasonably well automated.
The reason I don’t know how updating works is because I don’t actually own a Playbook. They aren’t released over here until June, so I made the game using an emulator – I’ve never even seen the actual device, let alone tested my game on one. So I’m in the slightly weird position that thousands of people have played the game, but I still have absolutely no idea whether it’s running at the right frame rate, or the touch controls work ok, or even whether the sound is working! Haha, it’s a complete mystery.
Anyway, There’s now a link on the right sidebar over there to Rocket Storm, which I intend to release on as many systems as I can just as soon as I can. Starting with Flash! You may consider this an official COMING SOON.
Speaking of other systems, my Android experiments have been largely successful, with working Android versions of Small Worlds and Fireflight up and running on my phone right now. They’re both not quite perfect – Fireflight is the best fit, although it’s not yet running at its full framerate. Small Worlds is completable, but has some issues: it occasionally goes completely, insanely wrong (gets confused about which world the player is on, so picks random images from them all), and seems to suffer a noticeable slowdown about one minute into each level. Also touch-screen platformer controls are tricky; I have yet to find a control scheme that isn’t a horrible compromise. Next on the conquerable platform list is iOS. Then, the world! Probably.
Obligatory non-game news: I made a little stop-motion comedy sketch thing that you can watch right now over at BBC Online! Yay! It is the very best work of animation you will ever see. Also, this film here that I made last year with Rathergood has been nominated for a Webby Award in the Animation category! Hooray, it is also the very best work of animation you will ever see. We’re actually up against Aardman in the same category though, so there’s absolutely no chance we’ll win. The Aardman film is really really very good. It is the very best animation you’ll ever oh forget it.
Anyway that’s it for now BYE!
Buddy i loved your game! greetings from México (Colombian Guy) keep doing great apps!
Awesome game, you have more?
Game development’s taken a bit of a back seat for now, as I’m neck-deep in a big animation project, but I’ve also made a couple of browser games you might like – Check out the ‘games’ tab at the top of the page!
Once I’m done with the animation, I’ll get back into gamedev – there’s a few projects I left half-made, including an expanded (and improved!) sequel to Rocket Storm.