Production Notes: Crush the Castle
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.
Nice game, stuck on 17, ill build my castle later, bye and thx
great game! very satisfying to knock down the castles. Here’s my 2 cents:
should zoom out a little on the trebuchet at launch.
sound effects need more variety.
Why don’t lighter loads travel further? It would have added more strategy to the game (ex. one bomb would travel further than three bombs).
I’m stuck on level 23. Thus my frustration.
The game is just as fun as the original and it looks great. It sounds like the game was a lot of fun to make.
Never heard of Glaze before, I’ve only played around with Box2D. It’s nice to know there’s an alternative.
looks nice!
[...] Production Notes: Crush the Castle | ArmorBlog [...]
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Great game! Great graphics! Great music! love it.
[img]http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s271/eddiy13/7IWLVCA7XAC5XCAMVYUEHCAI7MTLKCAD-3.gif[/img]
I got the no Shiftin’ blues…
I loved this game. I beat it in a week. A few levels were hard but if you keep at it you will pass it. I think it is way better than the first and second one.
10/10
This game is awesome, i beat it in an hour but it’s still fun! Specially because you can build your own castle and then destroy it!! 10/10
Great Game! As for Box2D there is another phyics engine based on it but heavily modified for as3, called motor2, which is also pretty fast in my experience.
this game is very good , but too short =/
i love it
10/10
i love this game. i beat in like 20 min. haha.
but its really fun.
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GREAT game!!
lol! (big castle, just try it..
try to take it down!
massive bombing material!
peace!
I love the game. Playing it over and over. Nicely done!
i think its an easy game , but it has great graphic, nice music , and its a kool game.
You two did a fantastic job on this game. I enjoy all that comes from Con! Keep up the great development!
When i first looked at this game, i thought it would be rubbish, but when i had a go at playing it. It was fun. My brother more mad at this game than i am.
Great job 4 the 2 of U2. You deserve all the credit!
Love this game and I play it all the time, hope you come out with a second one soon.
Great game, at first when i played i got addicted to it haha. I just couldn’t stop playing it
So about half an hour later i finished the game and i have to say it is amazing!
Thanks a lot for producing it!
cool game i love this
GREAT GAME!! I’m addicted. The basic game (24 castles) is fun, the hardest castles are 17 and 24, damn you bitch in castle 24. But I got thru it, haha. The upgraded Crush the Castle Players Pack is even better and harder.
I love the funny player’s castle posts on YouTube too. Death Pit…LOL. But on somepody’s posted walkthru, I saw ’superbombs’ which never show up on your game in the final armament window. To quote the Joker…”Where does he get those wonderful toys?”