Posts Tagged ‘kids’

  • Our 3rd NFL game – Guardian Training: Over Throw is now out

    overthrow-titlescreen

    We really enjoy working on the NFL Rush Zone games for CA based agency Brandissimo! So we were very pleased when they asked us to create a third game for them based on the new Rush Zone Season of the Guardians.

    over-throw-mobile-640

    Guardian Training: Over Throw was built in HTML5 for desktop and mobile browser. You start in the VR zone where you learn to jump and throw before being unleashed across 4 changing stages. Smash down the blitz bot targets as you go, collecting the power-ups, avoiding the obstacles and seeing if you can smash the other players scores on the site.

    obstacles

    In order to maintain performance on mobile browser we used a relatively low resolution (480×320) and up-scaled it for tablet. Working directly with the designers at Brandissimo! we were able to ensure the graphics still looked good scaled up. It also meant performance on lower-end devices was kept responsive, which is vital when you’ve a stack of blitz bots to knock down with your last chain bonus throw. They were able to mock-up the animations and effects in Flash and we translated those into HTML5.

    Play Guardian Training: Over Throw on the NFL Rush Zone site.

     

  • Helping Multiplication.com support their growing mobile traffic

    fishshop

    multiplication.com is a site dedicated to helping kids learn multiplication. Like many other sites they use Flash games to do this in a fun and engaging way. But as with many other sites they identified a growing volume of traffic from mobile devices, most notably iPads, so looked for a way to offer their games to those visitors as well.

    fishOrangeThey contacted us to help convert existing Flash games over to HTML5. They had tried a few times already but the results had been less than satisfactory; the games either not working fast enough or not working across devices. So we took their game Fantastic Fish Shop and ported it over to HTML5, retaining all of the original features of the game such as the transitions, animations, wide variety of character faces and shop upgrades.

    Site owner Alan Walker had this to say about the experience: “I wanted to drop you a note and let you know how wonderful it was to work with Photon Storm. I am thrilled with the game you converted from flash. I was a bit worried about having work done by a company half way around the world. (I have experienced some major issues in the past.) After my first conversation, I knew you were the people I wanted to work with. Thanks for finishing the job on time and on budget. But most of all, thanks for the amazing work!

    We look forward to helping Alan and his team in the future as they build up their selection of games for mobile visitors. If you’ve got existing games you’d like converted to HTML5 then please get in touch for a free quote.

  • Introducing our 3 new HTML5 games for the BBC

    It’s always a good feeling when you release a new game. A heady mixture of the elation of having Β finished combined with the daunting high of knowing that people are now actually playing it. So when you release three games on the same day the feeling should be 3x greater, right? πŸ™‚ That is what happened today when three of our HTML5 games went live on the BBC’s CBeebies mobile web site.

    CBeebies is the brand under which the BBC release TV programmes aimed at children aged 6 and under, so from baby and toddlers to pre-school. Supporting the TV shows are a wide range of activities and games on the main web site. But like many organisations they identified the need to offer content to the increasing numbers of visitors hitting the site from mobile and tablet devices.

    Working closely with the CBeebies team they selected three popular Flash games from the main site that we rebuilt in HTML5 for the mobile audience.Β The games included two titles based on The Numtums show: Poppedy Pop and SwipeTum, and one from the Andy’s Wild Adventures series called Run Sengi Run.

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  • WebbliWorld is live!

    WebbliWorld

    After a manic “finishing off” period the brand new version of WebbliWorld finally went live today. It’s out of beta and open to everyone!

    We’ve added loads of cool new features including a huge stack of new items, pod colours, t-shirts, hair styles and more. The in-game currency is working and you can buy new items for your house (or yourself).

    Lots of other little fixes, updates and changes were added – but best of all did I mention that it’s LIVE! Almost a year of work and now the general public can charge around and explore for themselves πŸ™‚

    There will be a special promo video going up on the home page tomorrow, but in short feel free to register and play (especially if you have young kids who may enjoy it).

    http://www.webbliworld.com

  • WebbliWorld Public Beta is Go!

    Today was pretty momentous for me to be honest.

    We finally, finally, FINALLY launched the true public beta of the kids virtual world I have been working on since December 2008.

    Called WebbliWorld it’s aimed at young kids (5 years+) and offers a hybrid Flash / HTML multi-user world. You can run around the Flash world, chatting, playing and customsing your space. While checking out the new site content through HTML links. It works in a similar manner to Whirled really.

    You can access the beta at http://beta.webbliworld.com


    WebbliWorld

    Feel free to register and play. You will need to have your account manually approved before you can “buddy” with other people in-world, but the moderation team are working flat-out this weekend to ensure there isn’t much delay.

    While it may look a little “sparse” at the moment, there are some really cool things coming on-line shortly (yes, including games!)

    The Technology

    It’s built on ElectroServer 4.0.7b, which the ElectroServer team supported excellently. There were quite a few issues with http connections that they worked diligently to resolve for us, so hopefully other ES users will benefit from those fixes too. We’re running on a pretty meaty server that should be able to cope with thousands of connections.

    We had a soft launch of the site today, promoting it just on a few dedicated forums that Aardman run (Shaun the Sheep and Wallace & Gromit) and we’ve seen a flurry of users registering, walking around and chatting. This is the first MMO world I’ve built, so there was something quite magical about seeing a room full of users all charging about, that knowing that they weren’t fellow office staff πŸ™‚

    Development has been a truly mammoth task for me. I did all the AS3 code, platform design, server plugins, all of the AMFPHP gateway work, web site php/html/css/javascript, MySQL structure, stored procedures, debugging tools, logging tools, numerous utilities and admin systems… the list goes on and on! Now you can see why I’ve been so utterly frazzled and haven’t released a new game in the past 4 months πŸ™‚ Thankfully a few weeks ago we hired a really good AS3 developer to help with the project, and his input has been invaluable. You can see a lot of his handiwork in-world, and in the exciting new features we’ll release soon.

    Feel free to register and have a play. There are lots of hidden things in there. Click around, as lots of objects do stuff you may not expect. At the very least please edit your pod πŸ™‚ Wake the pod up by clicking it, then click the “Edit” icon on your toolbar to start placing items. Feel free to post screen shots of your pod designs here!

    Oh and if you see “WebbliMunro” charging around the world – that’s me.