I’ve talked before about the kids virtual world called WebbliWorld that myself and the Aardman Digital team built. Well it’s been an extremely busy 4th quarter for us as we’ve been releasing hundreds of in-world updates, as well as producing a really excellent racing game called WebbliRacers:

The game has a dual purpose, and two versions exist. One to be released “into the wild” to entice new visitors to the world. And a full version that lives within WebbliWorld which has all 4 tracks and a comprehensive (and fun!) achievement system built into it. Do well and you’ll unlock special items of clothing to wear. Do very well and you can unlock items to decorate your pod (house) with. Do really well and you’ll get awarded special trophies to show-off to your peers

The game was developed by Julian Scott (of Drift Runners fame) with art and animation by the Aardman Digital team. It’s a really beautiful game, and takes the unique and wakky style of WebbliWorld and uses it to full effect as these screen shots show:

Track 1 – The cute little traffic cones blink and change colour when hit

Track 2 – Take the hidden routes for extra coins

Track 3 – Oh I do like to be beside the sea side!

Track 4 – Looks so yummy be careful not to lick your monitor!

I urge you to try it You’ll need an account on WebbliWorld, but that’s a 30 second process and is 100% free. Once you are in-world click the map icon on the menu and look for the arcade machine on the left-hand side. There you’ll find the “WebbliWhizzers” zone, which is the in-world leaderboard and place to play WebbliRacers.

The game has so many nice little touches, from the skid marks, puffs of smoke, jumps, extreme driving bonuses and excellent animation. Lots of what looks like 3D animation (spinning coins, rotating traffic cones) were in fact all hand-animated by the ever talented Robin Davey directly in Flash.

The 4th track is my personal favourite. Originally it was going to be a volcano level, with lava and tikki statues and the like. But it was rightly decided this was a little too dull for WebbliWorld, so the idea of a “chocolate mountain” was born. So the whole track winds around caramel, marshamllow, chocolate and sticky oozing syrup volcanoes. When you drive through the goo you leave a beautiful messy trail behind:

Click here to visit WebbliWorld – I look forward to seeing you on the leaderboard and if you see “WebbliMunro” in world, come over and say hi!

To celebrate a highly productive 2009, the chaps over at Just Add Water game studio asked me to create a Flash Christmas card for them. They provided all assets and wanted it to showcase the successes of 2009, such as the release of Gravity Crash on the PS3. But also to include a few gentle nods towards 2010.

The music is by CoLD SToRAGE (he of Wipeout fame) and is from the Gravity Crash game soundtrack, available next year. Also due out is the PSP version. If you’ve not yet had a chance to try it, then do so!

Click here to see the Christmas card in action.

Check out some monster Gravity Crash videos.

Christian has been busy! FlodPro was already the best Amiga module replay library available for AS3. But not content with that he went and added support for 3 new chip-tune formats: SidMon, Future Composer and BP SoundMod.

As a special Christmas present for those who visit this blog I whipped up this little demo, showcasing 6 tunes, 2 of each newly supported format.

Hit the jump to see the demo in action

Read the rest of this entry »

Issue 197 (the super shiny golden Christmas one) of .NET magazine has a two page spread featuring yours truly, and the rest of the awesome team at Aardman Digital. They fired various questions at us about the work we do, which myself, Dan and Gav answered. There’s also a mini showcase of our projects including a few of my games, WebbliWorld and two of Chris’s games he developed for us.

Feel free to download the article (2 page PDF file, 160KB). Sorry about the image quality, it’s pretty low. But you’ll get the general idea!

I know that “print is dead” (yadda yadda) but it’s still nice to see yourself featured in something real and tangible. And I’m a sucker for magazines

All of my personal (and work) projects are stored in subversion reposotories. For all its quirks and foibles svn does, generally, just work. And is has saved my ass on more than several occassions.

I keep all of my project files under source control including all of the Photoshop PSDs files that compromise the artwork for my games. Up until now this has been fine, as i could commit changes to PSDs and svn would take them quite happily. But when it came to rolling back you had to rely on the comments to really know what the previous PSD may have looked like.

So I was extremely excited to get an email from my svn host, Beanstalk, to say that they now supported use of PixelNovel Timeline direct with their service. PixelNovel is a plugin / stand-alone app for PC and Mac that lets you preview any PSD stored in svn, and any previous version of it too. So you can easily, and visually, roll back to an earlier version. It works in a similar manner to Adobe Version Cue, but the interface is simpler and the software considerably cheaper, plus of course it works with any svn host (be it a 3rd party one like Beanstalk, or your own). You can commit changes to the PSD to svn direct from the plugin, and it only uploads the differences. It works with CS2, SC3 and CS4.

It costs $60 for a single license, but if you use the code BNSTLK you’ll get 30% off that (this offer expires in 2 weeks time from the date of this post).

So if you use Photoshop and svn I’d strongly recommend downloading the free trial and checking this out. It could save you a lot of time in the long run!

Beanstalk – svn hosting at http://beanstalkapp.com
PixelNovel Timeline – svn for Photoshop at http://pixelnovel.com/timeline

Developing games in your spare time is always troublesome when the real-life workload ramps up. And it’s no exception for me right now. But in between insane schedules and family commitments I am ploughing all of my free time into a new arcade action game.

The gorgeous pixel artwork is by Ilija Melentijevic, and we’ve got big plans for a series of games featuring our feathered game hero “Burd Reynolds”. This first outing see’s him rescuing cute green blobs from alien critters. We’re not actually sure why yet, but it’s fun to play all the same

Here’s a sneak peak of the game, grabbed from the version I’ve just committed to svn:

The Burd is coming… during 2009 hopefully, but I should know better than to ever quote dates in a public place

You know it’s gonna happen …

Sorry if you already knew this, but out of pure chance I thought I would check to see if one of my favourite web sites – Nectarine Demoscene Radio – was back on-line today, and lo and behold, it was! Nectarine had been streaming classic and modern demo scene tunage across the tubes for years. Site admin Yes had built up an awesome collection (18,000+ mp3s!) and like lots of other people I had saved hundreds of favourite tunes on there, voted on thousands, and listened to probably weeks worth of tunes!

And then some script kiddie went and ruined it for us all. He found an exploit in a script, and wiped the whole database and back-up. The site died and the scene lost a little bit of its heart the same day.

Lots of people wanted to help bring it back. I offered my services (as did many others)  but the events obviously took their toll on the Admin, and the site was destined to be nothing more than a fond memory. I would check back every 4 months or so, just in case, and today I struck gold

So I putting a shout out – if you used to listen to Nectarine, or are just interested in 24-hour streaming demo scene coolness, then go over there, register and help to breathe life back into the site again.

http://www.scenemusic.eu

If you enjoyed playing Kyobi on the web, then why not download the complete iPhone version totally free of charge!

Kyobi on the iPhone is called “Touch & Go”, but it’s the same physics match-3 fun, with lots of added bells and whistles.

This is a fun and innovative “match 3” casual game that uses the touch input of your device to the max. The rules are simple, drag the blocks and throw them together. When three or more of the same color collide they all explode. Just don’t let the blocks pile-up too high. If they stack to the top then your game is over.

Smashing four or more blocks in one go will release one of three special power-ups – a time freeze, a stick of dynamite that blows up half the blocks on screen and a bomb that wipes out all the blocks.

Combo bonus points are awarded if you manage to smash blocks together in quick succession and multiplier points are awarded for four and five block hits. Each level has a set target of blocks to explode and when this is reached all remaining blocks will count against your level end bonus.

As the levels progress the action speeds up and more blocks will fall. From level five small blockers are introduced making the sorting of blocks trickier. From a gentle mind soothing experience the game will develop into a fast paced sorting crisis!

As the game plays you can organize the blocks by tilting the phone to move all the blocks to the left or the right.

See how many levels you can complete!

• Great Casual Gaming fun
• Total touch game play
• Tilt the phone to move all blocks
• Easy to play
• Great time filler
• Cool music track
• High score table
• Score combo bonuses

Touch & Go! is perfectly suited to the iPhone, a truly new touch game experience!

Overall, Touch & Go! is well designed and responsive. For a new take on the standard match and clear block game, the current sale price of just $.99 makes Touch & Go! a worthwhile purchase.

8/10 Appcraver

Placing a block is simple. All you do is catch a block out of mid-air, you then have full control of where you place it – and I mean full control. This is what sets Touch & Go! apart from it’s competitors.

www.148apps.com

As the AS3 Soundtracker replay library Flod gains traction, so I have been receiving more emails saying “Help!”. Apparently people are having trouble dissecting just the replay sections from FlodPro (the full player interface). So to address this I have created the Beginners Guide to Flod. This download offers you source code that does nothing but replay a mod file. No file browser, no FlodPro, no UI, no hassle!

The guide includes source for both FlexSDK + FlashDevelop users, and also for Flash CS4 (if you really must code on the timeline.) I have included examples for plain vanilla replay, and also replay with the flectrum active:  the funky looking vu-meter seen in the screen shot above. Pick whichever is most useful for your production.

You can download the Beginners Guide from the updated Flod page.

Back in August we wrote about the $10,000 Unity 3D Indie Developer Challenge that was being run by Muse Games. All they were looking for was “A Working Prototype demoing your game concept”. The prize was a healthy sum of money and a distribution contract. Although obviously they were looking for games made in Unity and not Flash, it was still great to see a company supporting indie game devs, regardless of their choice of language.

Well it’s now time for you to play and vote on the games you think should win! There are 35 entries in all, and as you’d expect the game genre and quality of finish differs wildly. A couple of games caught my eye immediately – the first was Water Mania, which was supposed to be all about racing a speedboat against opponents around islands. Lovely stuff. Except it wasn’t. What it really was was a single boat zooming across a flat water plane with some terrain. Zero collision, zero opponents, zero game really. Still, it had nice music.

A bit upset I moved on to the game Wings of Rage. It looked like a 3D WW2 combat flight sim. I’m a die-hard WW1/WW2 flight sim fanatic, and thankfully this one was at least playable. The flight mechanics didn’t feel like you were flying a plane at all, but the gameplay was fun, and I enjoyed blowing the enemy planes and turrets up. It had a lot of niggling issues, but we can forgive that seeing as they only had to enter a prototype.

Feeling buoyed by this experience I tried another, the lovely named SpringyTurret. This involved dragging and sticking gun turrets onto walls, and chaining them together to blow up everything. Despite a quite difficult control system, once you got into it there was a true gold nugget of a game idea there. With more refinement I could see this one being really fun indeed.

That was just 3 out of the 35, sadly I ran out of time to play any more but they did all look interesting for the most part. RPG games, puzzle games, racing games and several FPS style are all represented. The quality of them is no higher than the sort of games I have judged many times in TGC competitions over the years (the Alienware compo being an especially good one). But it’s still early days for Unity in the browser, and it’s exciting to see where it may be headed.

Baldy Dash is a game myself and the talented crew at Aardman Digital built. It’s to promote the new Shaun the Sheep Nintendo DS game “Off His Head” published by D3.

It marks my second game released this month, and my 5th involving sheep, farmers and lots of grass

The concept is similar to Star Fish – drive around, collect the wigs and avoid everything else. The sheep amble around the farmyard, trying their best to get in your way, slow you down and end your game.

If you play this game on the official Shaun the Sheep web site (and are logged-in) it will enter you into a competition to win a Nintendo DS and copy of the game. Just make sure you have the highest score on the Competition leaderboard by the end of November.

Click here to play Baldy Dash and read more about the development process.

After reading my write-up of Q-Block I was contacted by Tim Wesoly who has just finished his 3D pixel art modeller Qubicle. There are two parts to it: Qubicle Constructor, which is a stand-alone bit of Windows software that allows you to create 3D pixel art, using tools similar to Photoshop. And there is the Qubicle Maya Plugin, which lets you import Qubicle files into Maya and easily animate or rasterize them. You can see some example videos and models on Tim’s (gorgeous looking!) website Mind Desk.

So if pixel art is your thing, and you fancy taking it into the third dimension easily (perhaps for animating) then you really ought to check this out. PhotonStorm’s resident pixel expert Ilija is currently on holiday breezing around Egypt, but when he returns I’ll throw this in his direction to see what goodies he can come up with. Nice work Tim, keep us updated on developments, everyone here loves good pixel eye candy

Away3D is an awesome 3D library for Flash. Flod is an awesome library for replaying tracker music in Flash. Throw those two things together with my inner-geek upbringing of the 80s and you get DarkCubes. I grew up drip-fed on ST/Amiga demo effects, and this random little 3D game is what I banged out during a couple of lunch breaks and some hours last night.

I actually wrote DarkCubes back in 2000 on the PC/Windows using DarkBASIC (hence the title of the game). So I had the code and figured it would make a good first experiment for Away3D. A bit of messing around, a bit of swearing, and lots of fiddling later and this tiny puzzler was born.

The logo is from the original PC game and was made by Yann ‘Kohai‘ Parmentier. The music is by Adam Sikorski (DSX of TRSI), 505 of Checkpoint and Toodeloo of the Dead Hackers Society. The rest by yours truly.

Lots of keys do stuff in-game, so have a fiddle! (1-5 changes the music for example, D turns on Debug info, 7-9 change texture, etc. Read the scroller for the full list).

I make no apologies for this beating shitty spec  Netbooks / PCs over the head with a giant CPU grinding axe. Deal with it. It’s hardly the end of the world.

Click here to play (sorry no pre-loader, but it’s only 1MB in size)

Enjoy