Final crunch…

May 26,2009 11:28 am 2 comments

We are in final crunch mode.  Martin, Brad (designer) and I worked a long week of polishing and fixing.  It was a good week and we got the game looking and feeling nicely.  Everything is now in for version 1 of the game and we only have a few bugs to fix.  We went from 4 pages at the start of last week to 1 page at the end.  It’s even shorter now…taking up about 1/2 page.  Some of the issues to be addressed this week is a final revision of the AI.  To me, the Easy version is very easy, I don’t lose a guy when playing that version (and I typically only use the Banshee or Archer) but watching newcomers play the game, they have a hard time winning battles.  I think it’s a matter of getting used to the iPhone controls.  Most people I’ve watched are new to the iPhone and thus new to the control mechanisms.  My 8 year old nephew played and had a hard time winning a battle until he got used to the controls, then he did fine (he’s a gamer who regularly kicks my butt at many games.)  I hope I’m right and it’s just the iPhone itself.

One struggle we’re having is the selection of characters on the Strategy board.  They are small spaces, but slightly larger than the keyboard spaces on the iPhone when people are typing…so I’m hoping iPhone users will be used to that.  I notice the new-user is trying to use their fingernails to select the pieces (palm and other OS users) and I have to teach them that touching with the fleshy part of their finger works better on the iPhone (they are used to the stylus approach.)  We’ll probably incorporate a “controlled” zoom so people can zoom the board to the area they want.  Initial tests with the pinch zoom didn’t work as the iPhone constantly got confused between a touch to “zoom” and a touch to select a character.

All in all, the game is playing nicely…the interface is easy and the combat is fun.  Although there will be some features we won’t be able to add in the initial release, I think most Archon fans will be pleased.  I certainly am.

Final T-shirt designs…

May 20,2009 7:01 pm no comments

We had a design contest and the top 2 were chosen to be printed.  They are now at the printers.  I had to change each design slightly from the originals that were posted.  I hope you don’t mind, but I think they’re better:

If there is enough interest, I’ll probably put the other designs on our website for purchase, along with other Archon merchandise items (we’ll probably use something like CafePress.)

GamerCast Network Video Game Show!

May 19,2009 7:18 pm 2 comments

I did an interview with the GamerCast crew.  They were great…and big Archon fans.  It can be downloaded from iTunes here:  GamerCast Network Video Game Show!

Thanks guys!

All the little things…

May 19,2009 6:25 pm 2 comments

Getting ready for launch (TBAVS) is a very exciting, frustrating, joyful, tearful time.  Each day is so very different with so many ups and downs that any sane person would…well, turn insane.  Camera is working better…but compressed textures aren’t loading…fixed textures, now animation frames are skipping…frames working, but we’re out of Vram…Camera’s now broken, but Vram is fixed and so on.  Even with all this, though, our team is doing a great job and working at breakneck speed.  My hat’s off to them!

Our designer, Brad, spent the day leveling out the characters in Combat…before, the Banshee reigned supreme and the Basilisk fired so fast you couldn’t see his projectile.  He adjusted the main elements for each character such as Rate of weapon recharge, Weapon speed, Icon speed and strength.  Now, the Combat portion plays like a dream!  It’s a bit different from the original, but we had to make it “feel” right on the iPhone using the iPhone controls.  The main factor was it had to be “FUN” which we accomplished.  With “smart fire” enabled and all the other little things, the combat is AWESOME (and I rarely use that word.)  It plays smoothly, it is responsive (I like to use the Accelerometer instead of the Dpad for combat) and overall, great.  I can’t say enough about this and it was the one part I was worried the most about.

Oh yeah, and now, the Phoenix rivals the Dragon, instead of being a throw away piece.  I’m very excited and TBAVS means…well, I’ll let you figure it out.

One more week…

May 18,2009 6:07 pm no comments

…of polish/debugging.  I say polish along with debugging because that is actually what we’re doing to make sure we have everything in the game that will make it fun, exciting and everything that Archon is.  We launched into debug mode too early, which was my mistake.  Martin (Programmer) is working his butt off to get everything in there we need…and I think I’m driving him crazy.  I blame the iPhone.  If it only had a built in D-pad on the side, everything would have been peachy!

We had an internal deadline of polish we had to push back by a week so we could get everything in there and we’re going to hit it.  At the same time, we’re fixing bugs and now the game is coming along NICELY!  We’ve finally dumbed down the AI so anyone can actually win a fight in combat.  Up until now, we stubbed in the AI with no rules or scripts so it basically dodged your attacks 100% and fired upon you 100% of the time you were in it’s path of fire.  Also, the short-ranged pieces ran straight into you and stayed on top of you, which made the Banshee the most powerful piece on the whole board!  Now, we’ve added in rules and scripts for the AI to follow and it’s much more fun.  Since the iPhone is such a casual game device AND it’s hard to get the fast twitch response, we’ve slowed down movement a little and made “easy” mode something fun that anyone could play, have fun and beat the computer.  The “hard” mode (yeah, we’re only having 2 settings now) is for the Archonian who has played since birth and knows the game inside and out.

The Combat camera has been giving us the most trouble and if we can’t figure it out soon, we’ll keep it static. This isn’t a bad thing because the playing surface is sufficient as it is…but it was sure nice when the board felt so much bigger.  I know we’ll figure it out later, but that might be included in another update (right now we have several cameras we can switch between and will include a setting in the options panel in the future updates.)

Textures working, camera fixed…

May 12,2009 8:17 am no comments

Since we’ve implemented a virtual D-pad, we decided to make the Combat Arena bigger than the screen and have a dynamic camera, which would zoom in and out, following the characters.  This was a good decision (after spending countless hours trying “other” things that didn’t work...see video example of what we tried)  The camera is working better, even though it’s not as smooth as it needs to be for the final.  Each time I play, I’m surprised at how big the Combat Arena seems.  Martin figured out the compressed textures that was giving him a headache for the past few days.  Going from PNGs to what he’s using now has greatly reduced space and memory consumption (1/8th the space.)  Now the entire game loads in a matter of seconds, instead of….well…more seconds (again, it takes about 1/8th the time to load.)

With the art for the Combat Arenas, you can see their progression from Light to Dark.  These have taken the most time to do and we decided to go with more reddish for the dark team (instead of purple and blue.)  One comment from our designer was “Blue!  Blue!  Why does everything have to be so blue!” as he fell to the earth and pounded his fists to the ground, weeping.  The whole idea was to make each team a bit camouflaged on their color square, so they have a tiny visual advantage.  The reddish color works well, because most of the dark team has some type of red in them (trying the blue scheme, they got lost more easily, so our beloved designer was right.)

Now, its just a matter of sending bugs to Martin.  I can’t say enough about him…He has been great!  Working long hours (he was up until 5 this morning doing camera work.)  We’ve got a great team here at React…mainly, I think, because we’re all HUGE fans of Archon and working on this project has been a dream come true for us all.

T-shirt Designs…

May 11,2009 3:51 pm no comments

Well, I’ve put up some designs for the T-shirts on the forums (click here for thread.)  I’ve done a bunch, with the intent on only printing the top 3 from the poll, so go vote for your top three favorite.  I’ll be closing the voting sometime tomorrow or Wed. so hurry on over.

Compressed textures are giving us a headache right now, but we have set an internal deadline and we will hit it (no matter how many ROCKSTARS or REDBULLS we have to drink!)  It seems like we’re in a dream-like state, since we’re running on small amounts of sleep, but that just goes with the industry…as I’m sure many of you know.  After we release the iPhone, we’re going fishing to reward ourselves.  There’s nothing like spending time in the outdoors after being cooped up all day in the office for weeks on end.

Work, work, work…

May 9,2009 7:04 am no comments

Yeah, it’s a Saturday and I’ve been here since 6 this morning.  I will probably be here most of the day, and it’s BEAUTIFUL outside.  I must keep all the windows closed so I can pretend it’s cloudy and crappy outside…ahhhh, the things I do for Archon.  I wouldn’t do this for any other game, though.  We’ve been working like crazy these past weeks, putting in crazy hours (I’ve mostly slept on the couch here)

My bed for the past few days.

We’ve got a lot of work done last week and the week before, but it also seems like there is so much to do before release.  Bugs, bugs, bugs.  We just got a new batch of test devices to test on so we’re working hard to find all the bugs and make the game perfect for release.  We’re pretty excited about all the great press we’re receiving…check them out here:

• Kotaku Article
• Onipepper interview with Chad
• Touch Arcade Article

Getting the word out…

May 8,2009 10:23 am no comments

I’ve been so busy trying to get the project done, that I haven’t had much time to do any of the necessary PR and marketing things I’ve wanted to.  Now that we’re just debugging and most/all artwork is done, I can hop onto that.  There are a ton of things I want to do, give-aways being one of them.  I’ve worked briefly on some T-shirt designs, which I’ll upload.  Some of them are going to be for sale and others are going to be limited edition ones that you can only win in our contests.  I’m especially excited about the skins we’re designing for the iPhone and iTouch…they are pretty cool.

http://kotaku.com/5245579/archon-classic-brings-back-fond-memories

Here are some pretty great reviews about us and the game.  We are really excited about this first release of the game in more than 12 years.  Hopefully it won’t take that long to get the next platforms out  Next up, after the iPhone is the PC/Mac versions…as well as continuing updates to the iPhone.