Game development is so much fun sometimes.  A lot of times it’s a monster rearing its ugly head, but recently I had an opportunity to make This is the Only Level Too, which quite possibly was the most rewarding game development experience I’ve had of late.

If unfamiliar to the game, its a game about playing the same level over and over again in various forms.  In the first level you may have to push a button to open the door, but in the second pass of the level you’ll have to drag the door open with your mouse.  Each time the level changes just enough within the level design to create a different experience 30 times over for 30 stages.

I worked on this project with a hardcore Flash gamer Tasselfoot, who is maybe better known for making walkthrough videos for various Flash websites and managing the community of the late Flash Flash Revolution.  His position in this project was level design and testing.  I’ll give myself enough credit as to say I was fairly involved in level design as well but it was really his initiative and design that rolled this project along.  I did the programming and the artwork, as well as porting my own homebrew tile engine to Actionscript 3 finally  (its been missing in action for a while).

We met in Irvine, CA one day for a grinding section of brainstorming and level design.  Tass came with a general level design (as seen at the top of the post) and together we came up with a good 30 stages.

Post-it Notes are really good for laying out level ideas, and the more and more we looked at each of the levels and progression we got closer and closer to nailing down level design.

It’s a back and forth though.  Some level schemes break other level schemes which means levels are incompatible with each other.  These have to reach compromise or be forfeited.  Luckily we managed to find a median for most level choices.  Levels such as the Ice Level (move in one direction until you hit a wall) nearly dictated the entire design (but we just HAD to have it).

One choice we made was to list all the level design on Google Docs.  With Google Docs you can share information between multiple individuals quite easily.  Since Tass wasn’t onsite for most of the project it was essential that we had a central meeting point to list notes and level progress.  It’s amazing how much incentive to finish a few more levels before the end of the day comes out of simple colour coding of spreadsheet squares.  I was printing out spreadsheets every day to see what my day was shaping up to be.

Tass was constantly testing and providing feedback while I coded, which is different than what I am used to.  Usually it’s a an unaided experience until the last few moments of the project, in which I start getting feedback before features get locked down.  It’s a whole different experience when you are constantly working with a game tester.

There was plenty of research too.  I ran a poll on the website to see who knew what “Sticky Keys” were just to make sure levels were easily understood.  We have an alphabet-based level too, and we went into keyboard layouts to make sure that a good majority of the players could hit the keys for that level (or at least replicate them).

One of the more interesting things are the levels we decided NOT to include. We had planned a Left Gravity level but I decided to nix it towards the end of the project.  Some ideas sound really good on paper but once you realize you have to rewrite your entire character jumping and interaction script it becomes a deadly time sink.  Another level that was modified was the “Rembrandt” level, which we instead went with a fingerpainting-style art (I thought it looked better).  We even had a brown-bag artwork choice for that level that was never implemented.

There are so many tile types in this game.  In the first game every tile functioned the same, but in this game we had a lot of features that relied on changing tile types.  If you’ve played through the game you’ll probably be able to relate all these tiles to those levels.   This was an easy reason why this game took so much longer to produce than its predecessor.

In the end we ended up with a solid 30 stages inside the one level design.

Once again, it was a fun project because its fun level design and programming.  It’s like taking a VW Bug and adding more and more random accessories to it until it has everything including an ejector seat.  I appreciate Tass’s enthusiasm to help me finish the project and work on it with me and I appreciate the warm reception the project has received.

We’ve got two new games!  Yes, two games.  Both around the same time, on TWO different platforms: I Hate Traffic on the website and I Love Traffic on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Golly gee, this project was big.

I Hate Traffic is about smashing cars.  It’s the ultimate tantrum-toddler-causing-ruckus-playground-funtime.  In response to I Love Traffic (see below) a lot of people asked me if I could make a crash-only mode.  So that’s what I did!  I Hate Traffic is about crashing and goal achievement.  One level may be about crashing a 20 cars, another might be about shoving a car into a square target area, and another might be about throwing yourself in front of a semi to save a bus from a cluster of bombs.  Its all up to you.

The best part about this game is that level creation is by YOU.  Like Little Big Planet the entire environment is unlocked to the players.  Through the level editor any player can recreate any of the levels found in the game.  All the tools are there for the taking.  The game even allows you to make your own goals.

And share those levels!  The Game Share made by Armor Games team allows you to take any challenge and allow your friends to try them out.  Send them it by Short URL or browse around the recent levels floating in.  Here’s a level I made, for example:  http://armorgames.com/=An5g

Check it out.  I Hate Traffic is out on Armor Games now!

I Love Traffic came out as a Flash game last year and had a nice reception.  I came up with the game while sitting in traffic, being incredibly patient for the light to change.  I thought to myself, what the heck?  Why is the light taking so long?  Can we do better?  Sort of… if it causes for near collisions and manual light changing (obviously not applicable in the real world, but is in a video game!).  Now, I Love Traffic is ON THE iPHONE AND iPOD TOUCH.

I wasn’t the soul creator of this game.  I had a team of great developers working along side on this project with me.  Christopher Skelton was the big hand here, helped me take this project from AS2 source to iPhone, and he did a tremendous job working out all the kinks in transition as well as providing some of his own level design for a few levels.  Jeff Wofford also helped out by creating the source engine that allowed the transition to take place.  I did about 99% of the artwork as well as the original coding for the Flash game before it got ported.  Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com, did music for several other games of mine) was also a fantastic addition to the game.  And of course, thanks to Dan for letting this project evolve from Flash to iPhone.

Anyway, with all credit aside, the game has 40 levels (20 new levels in addition to the Flash ones), a new stats page, and a whole bunch of new random trivia to boggle your mind (who knew a human hair could handle 6kg of pressure?).  The game plays as it does on the computer with cars coming from either direction on the screen.  Use your traffic light to safely navigate X amount of cars through the inspection.  Cause a crash and you have to start over.  Easy as that.  Sort of.  Levels get more and more difficult and intersections go from traditionally seen simple intersections  to devastatingly troublesome forces to be reckoned with.

We’re only charging 99 cents for it and its available on iPod Touch and iPhone (v3.1.2 or later).  If you want to try out the Flash version first to see if you’d like it, go ahead.  It’s the first game I have ever charged money for out of the 50+ titles I’ve made so help support.  Don’t buy that candy bar, buy a game instead!

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All said and done, a busy week (and month!) with two launches in the tank.  I’m off to go relax and enjoy the rest of my day.  Go make some levels in the new I Hate Traffic and go save some lives in I Love Traffic for iPhone and Flash.  Enjoy.

Our friends over at Hero Interactive have released a preview video of their upcoming game release, Bubble Tanks Tower Defense!  The project looks like it is coming together.  While you are at it, check out previous versions of Bubble Tanks to get a sense of what you are up against for Bubble Tanks TD.

Their most recent blog post says the team is expecting the game to be done within the month, so check back for release on Armor Games later this month for the full game!

This is a sort of script-heavy post, I apologize in advance. But like I have mentioned in a previous post, I have been working on a level editor for I Hate Traffic.  One of the concerns of the game is somehow storing these levels as something small and compact enough to fit easily into copy and paste bits of code.  We all love those massive million character codes, but since we are planning on making this a game with levels built into a level select system, we decided to make things smaller…er.  Prepare for some geekiness….

I first took the raw code for the level above…

So 2,187 characters… is about ~2.2 kb.  Not much right?  Sort of.  It’s just a tiny bit on this scale, but once you start putting it on a larger level (thousands and thousands of plays) that data transfer can add up.  Every three digit number (displayed back to back) represents a single tile in the system, in case you were wondering.

So in an attempt to shrink down that number a bit I formatted the tiles to write themselves down sort of like a gif file.  Gif files reference a table of data, then run a set of algorithms to eliminate the need to map every pixel independently.  So instead of 109109109109109109 to represent 6 tiles we can put in 109×6 instead, which is much less beafy.  So, after this algorithm runs….

We’re down to 1,802 characters, or 15% streamlining.  Not bad.  And given the circumstances and complexity this precentage can rise up into the high 50-99% compact rate, but since this is a rather complex level it’s not streamlined that heavily.  So let’s go one more.

With the help of Joey we have discovered that dumping the code into a ByteArray makes it even smaller.  ByteArray are containers of bits, as way of accessing and working with binary data.  In this way we can move things around in smaller chunks of data.   Transferring the data into byteArray data and compressing… well…

We’re down to 676 characters, tapping out at only 30% of the original code.

2,187 -> 1,802 -> 676, not bad.  That’s for a level with 625 tiles on it, pulling from a library of about 100+ different tile types.

So in this way we can store much smaller chunks of data.  I’m guessing there’s even smaller ways to store the data beyond these methods but we’re extremely happy with what we have come up with so far.

Programming aside, the game is going well and the tools in the editor should be plenty fun to play with.  Should be done soon!

Joey and I are working on a couple of halloween games at the moment, and until then, we’re decorating our computers for the holiday to get into the spirit.  Even our coding is getting in the groove!

Also, if you’re on the website, check out the Halloween Armatars just posted (you have to be logged in).

If you are looking for some halloween games to play right now, check out our some of Zombie games, we’ve got a lot of them!  Too many, perhaps.

Hi everyone!  I’m deep in midst of my next game, I Hate Traffic.  If you haven’t gathered, I Hate Traffic is a game based on the earlier Flash game I Love Traffic, a game about cars.  In the latest offering of traffic games, it’s time to smash things up.

Think of it as the aggressive younger brother with hormones raging.  I Love Traffic was about safely guiding traffic, but this incarnation will be all about causing damage.  The ying and yang of traffic direction, perhaps.  If you have ever played that Burnout 3 (PS2) crash mode you’ll know where I’m coming from on this one.

One new feature of this game is the ability to share your own challenges with others and make your own crash environments.  While the game is fairly early into production the editor is already underway.   Here’s a glimpse at the oh-so-early level editor.

More updates to follow, but I feel like sharing this game production because I am in the midst of trying new things and I would love to share my programming triumphs and struggles with the world.

While Armor Games staff was not in attendance, we were very surprised to find out we were featured in the Keynote of day 2 for online Flash gaming at the MAX 2009 conference put on by Adobe.  The specific moment of the feature was to talk about EA and Pogo, and their involvement in using Flash for their casual gaming division.

Cheers Adobe for the plug!

I’m working on a simple concept right now.  I’ll just leave you with this teaser image for the game upcoming (next week even!).  Have a great weekend!

Like Shift?  iPhone and iPod Touch users may now play Shift on their own devices wherever they go!  We’ve setup two versions.

Shift Lite - FREE - You get the WHOLE Shift 1 game and all the tasty puzzle goodness.  The game you play online is the same here!

Shift - $0.99 - An additional 25 never-before-seen levels to wet your appetite to the point that you’ll probably eat your phone.  Plus you get to do a few more snazzy things.

And if you STILL yearn for more levels, well, we see a looming Shift 4 on the horizon…

That’s right, I’m making a text-based puzzle adventure.

It’s very small, and decidedly so!  I’m testing out a new concept and I want to make sure it works.  I’ve been working on this new Text-Based Adventure game format that is heavily inspired by SMS text messages and suggestive text input.  All the input starts to autofill as you type and works to help you work through the game as easily as possible.  Start typing keywords and actions and they change colour.  Write longer ones and the code starts making suggestions for you.  It really helps streamline the game.

The problem I’ve had with text games in the past is that it’s really hard to figure out what I am trying to write in the game.  In fact I spend half my time just trying out words to see if they work.  I may just be impatient but that irked me.  I want to help alleviate some of those weird issues.  And since we have a platform like Flash in full-colour and powerful enough to display complex messages in interesting ways I might as well do that!

I must admit, I know nothing about the interactive fiction community.  I know it is huge and that I am possibly treading on toes and taboos but I really curious if my game design would work in an older (dare I say?) game genre.

In Llama Adventure you are a Llama.  You interact with someone named. “Master,” who is putting you through a series of obstacles and “kill rooms,” which are essentially trap-triggered puzzles.  Think Goonies.  Get through all the rooms and live to see another day!

It’s not an epic Interactive Fiction by any means, but it’s a small little title to get my toes wet.  Expect it soon next week, I hope to finish it this week.