Final version of the Smiles video. It’s the short one again, but with me talking. Here’s your chance to hear and mock Mike. I’ve been getting a number of positive and amusing comments from the video. Such fun things as that I sound like an Infomercial host, and music sounds like “corporate training music”. Finishing this video has been an incredible hassle. Hard drives dying, frequent reboots, loss of WAV file playback in Windows, and YouTube difficulties....
One of two promotional videos I’m making. This one is the “hands on” one, requiring a silly looking “camera on tripod hugging thing” to collect all the footage. Viddler Long Version: http://www.viddler.com/…/19/ Youtube Short Version: http://www.youtube.com/E4sUK241aRA Youtube Long Version: http://www.youtube.com/nEO1-zybCU4 In this video, I’m unfortunately assuming the player will pick up on all the nice things why this isn’t a Bejeweled clone. But to be sure, I’m going to spell it out next video, and briefly mention some of things not covered here....
A press pack is now available for Smiles. Hit the website, it’s currently linked from the front page. Refresh if you don’t see it. http://www.smiles-game.com Screen shots and high-res logo and promo artwork. Video is in progress. Hopefully by the end of the day Friday....
Just got back from the grocery store, and got the word. “Ready for Sale“. http://appshopper.com/games/smiles Search for “Smiles” and scroll down a bit, or browse the puzzle or strategy categories in iTunes. Contrary to the description, it’s an Action Puzzler. Lumines/Metoes ‘esc, or Bejeweled on crack. Thanks to some fancy design kung fu, it’s also what the description says. But that’s a topic all in itself. – – – –...
I’d love to say the wait is over, but now we start the next wait. Waiting for approval. As of 7:45 AM this Tuesday October 28th morning, the game is now sent. – – – – – – – Digging through my SVN logs for some stats. Repository was created on June 22nd, 2008. That’s a total of 4 months and 6 days. All code, art (except the original TTF font, though I did design and make the logo text), and audio created by me....
Wow, it’s been so long. The last game I did TRC for was Atomic Betty, the Gameboy Advance game I worked on before leaving Big Blue Bubble. That would have been some time during July of 2005. That finished up, and I was a free man for August 1st. By TRC I mean Technical Requirements Checklist. Every platform holder has them, though they sometimes have a different name for them. A TRC is a combination of guidelines....
It’s late, now 5 AM Saturday morning. Release Candidate 1 is just a few hours away. Some achievement tweaks, and minor bugs and we’re good. Should go out to Apple on Monday afternoon. Then probably a week and it’ll be live in the App Store. I’d have taken a photo, but I’m currently cameraless. – – – – The dummy website for the game: http://www.smiles-game.com Some time after it goes out, I’ll make a proper site....
Hypothetical situation. Note: Try to refrain from bombard me with requests yet, ‘cause I know a lot of people already like this idea. cough, I’m in London, Ontario, Canada.A typical game company places 10 or more people under the same roof. Office space rented out at the expense of the company. There’s a management hierarchy, one or more people responsible for business and infrastructure aspects of the company, and an arrangement of programmers, artists, designers, possibly testers and a sound guy....
Lets try a little experiment. (Try to) read this. Sykhronics Entertainment Anyone that’s followed my work probably won’t be miffed by that mean looking first word. But if you stuck around, you stuck around for my work, not my clever name. You probably have your own pronunciation of it too. I’ve certainly heard some interesting ones from telemarketers that whois’d my domains for a phone number. Lets see if we are thinking the same thing....
This is from a forum post I made in response to a question on testing methods. A classic Mike random advice assault. This branched off to a series of thoughts on built in game recorders. – – – – Free testing methods: Peer testing has worked well for me, as developers tend to have bizarre PC configurations (multiple monitors, multiple gamepads, etc). There’s also a level of critique a developer can give that goes above and beyond, but you need to be clear and capable of asking for the harshest of critiques....