Con and I just launched our latest game called Crush the Castle. I tackled code and Con did the art. The game consists of destroying castles with a huge Medievil Trebuchet. What more could you want?

Little bit of history on this game, just about every one at the office here loved Castle Clout by Liam Bowmers so we decided to make our own version. We were lucky enough to get permission from Liam as well.

To give even further inspiration, John and I decided to make our own Trebuchet in the office here with a fair amount of success. After terrorizing the town with it for a few hours, it was off to actual development.

I started doing some research on 2D physics engines, and I realized there are quite a few out there. One of the most prominent ones used in the flash community that I saw is Box2D. Now I did some tests with Box2D and it is very fast and powerful, but one of the things that bugged me was that it was a direct port of the C++ version and that it had very little done to it for Flash optimizations.

I did some more research and found another awesome engine that suited my needs perfectly. It’s called Glaze and it’s made by Richard Jewson and it’s fast. Really fast. I mean I was able to throw quite a bit at it before I saw any stutter. This meant that castles could be huge and menacing without a big drop in performance.

Anyways, once I got the engine figured out the rest was just making the actual trebuchet. With alot of testing and data adjusting, I was able to finally get a realistic looking Trebuchet working. The best part was making my first castle and realizing how much fun it was to just demolish it.

Knowing that, I built a castle editor so you could crush castles of your own design. Let me tell you, nothing is more satifying than building crazy castles and destroying them with bombs. We created a forum post so players can post their own castles and rate others. Check it out when you get a chance, and see some of the castles created in the office here.

The game is done and finished so check it out on Armor Games Crush the Castle.

Hey folks!

We just published version 2.0 of Sonny 2 on ArmorGames, and there are two new Zones available now! This is the equivalent of the bonus Zone in Sonny 1: There’s not much of a story or voiced dialogue, but there is a lot of challenge for you and your character. I think these new bosses are the hardest I’ve ever designed in an RPG… Even those of you who have level 30 characters saved will find it tough. Here are the list of changes:

Zone 6
A challenging Zone that you can only access after defeating the game on either Challenging or Heroic mode. Includes new sets of items and four new bosses.

Achievements
Can you defeat the Hydra without damaging him directly? Are you able to win against Clemons solo? Think you can beat the game on Heroic without using a single training fight or repeating a single boss battle? One wrong purchase or Re-spec could be the end of you! New and challenging Achievements have (finally) been implemented. Now you can keep track of all the crazy things you try to do!

Zone 7
The secret Zone. The four hardest bosses in the game. Have fun unlocking and beating it!

General Adjustments
Minor bug and balance fixes. Psycho class can’t pull the Shock Coma trick anymore, because that makes the game too easy. Although I have to say kudos to whoever figured that one out! Hydra fight has been made a bit easier for certain elements.

Screen Shots

That’s all for Sonny 2 now, I hope the updates will keep you satisfied while I take some time to learn AS3 so I can program a new RPG engine that actually has some movement and adventure

Yours Truly,
Krin J

After months of Development ‘GameinaBottle‘ is proud to annouce the release of GemCraft Chapter 0.  (Trust us when we say, “It was well worth the wait!” )

If you enjoyed the game, help support the Developer by DIGG’ing it.

DIGG IT!

Yesterday I launched a game called I Love Traffic.  Gameplay consists of moving traffic through an intersection without causing collision, backup, or running out of time.  Any and all lights can be turned any colour at any time!

There’s a bit of story behind why it was made.  In all honesty I hate traffic.  I get caught at every single red light on my way home and it is not because I am a bad driver.  It’s because my car is cursed!

My car has the amazing ability to turn traffic lights red.  Whenever the light is green in my lane the approach of my car will instantly flip it to red.  It’s some amazing phenomenon that occurs and others have started to see it too.  Even when other people drive the car they make note of its bizarre supernatural traffic light interaction.

So on my way to work one day, I pondered, “How can I make traffic and intersections more fun?”  And after a few brainstorming sessions I started building models of roadways and the ways cars interact while on the road.

I created some basic principles to apply to all vehicles:

A) Vehicles drive only as fast as the car in front of them.  If a vehicle reaches within 1 - 2 vehicle lengths away it will decelerate to match the speed of the vehicle in front.

B) All vehicles accelerate and decelerate at different rates.  Everyone has different ways of driving and different vehicle types to facilitate those habits.

C) Vehicles have a maximum speed and cannot go backwards.

D) Vehicles will not stop unless they have reason to (other vehicle, intersection, etc)

Since these principles apply to traffic lanes, it only made sense to make each lane function as it’s own little ecosystem.  Lanes then interact with each other through overlap and collision!

That’s where I found the game.

After sketching several lane layouts I built 20 fundamentally different designs that enhance different types of lane interaction.  Obviously there are traditional 4-way intersections, but the game’s flexible lane-by-lane style opened up new interactions.  One lane crossing several, like design #6 above, creates walls of car backup to deal with.  Meanwhile design #8 (above) deals with cross-traffic and watch multiple directions at once.

And from there the game was made.  Different vehicle types helped facilitate different experiences each time the intersection was revisited.  Trucks were made slow, police cars super fast, and motorcycles were made to accelerate faster than any other vehicle.

That said, the game is finished and out on Armor Games!  Go Play I Love Traffic, let me know what you think!

After playing Castle Clout we were inspired to make two things.  A really awesome remake and a really awesome trebuchet, all while using the word ‘awesome’ too often.  Joey and I spent the last half of our Friday making this really cool medieval weapon.

We started the build around 12pm.  We grabbed supplies and were back at the office in about an hour, and spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what final design we wanted.  Here’s what we bought:

20 feet of PVC
6 End Caps (PVC)
10 45 degree Connectors (PVC)
13 T Connectors (PVC)
2 4-Way Connectors (PVC)
Twine
PVC Pipe Cutter
PVC Glue
PVC Grease
Duct Tape

We decided on a standard design, nothing too fancy.  Simplicity works wonders.

After cutting a bunch of the pipe, remeasuring, and then recutting again, our design started to come together!

We forgot a crucial part of the trebuchet: the weight.  Luckily earlier that day we bought about 3 pounds of peanuts and other mixed nuts for the office snack bar, and were lucky enough to snag it in-time for the build.

We fired a few shots inside and magically it worked!  We then took it outside to see how far we could launch a Ball Revamped squishy.

With the peanut weight we can launch about 15-30 feet without additional manpower.  That’s pretty good for a 2-3 hour build.  After about 5 more tries we also discovered that the ball is the best item to launch.

Dan also had the idea of trying to push down on the trebuchet arm as fast as possible, and then we suddenly had a range of 30-60 feet!  It was a pretty awesome experiment, and we learned a lot of about Trebuchet physics to pick up and start this project.

And with that, here’s a screenshot of our newest game (click to embiggen).    We’re going for the Castle Clout style but we’re going to have a few more features and some new art style.  We have permission from the original artist, of course, so all due respect for his design is there.  I’ll let Joey update you on that news as it comes around, since he’ll be leading that project.

But seriously, trebuchets are fun.  Spend a couple hours making one, you won’t regret it.

Wow my first blog post on ArmorBlog! Anyways, John and I launched our first collaborative game today called Fox Fyre. You may have seen some earlier posts from John during it’s progress. Took us about a month to make and I’m glad it’s done. I had a blast working with John on it. Check it out here http://armorgames.com/play/3439/fox-fyre.

If you’re curious on how we did some of the special effects, post a comment about it. I might post on how we got the terrain to look so cool.

And here is a video showing gameplay of the final 5 levels, by Tass: