Update to 1.1July 2,2009 12:13 pmWe’ve addressed some of the issues from the forums, mainly those that have to do with gameplay and a pretty big exploit that got past our testers…(won’t go into that.) We’ve added a few visual enhancements in the UI and prepared the way for a LITE version, should we choose to release one. Seems like it would be a good idea to help spread the Archon bug. We’re also laying the groundwork for the multiplayer, which we’re pretty happy about. We’re also looking into services to host our leaderboards and such so we don’t have to start from scratch and make our own…but we may end up doing it ourselves anyway. Not too sure at the moment, doesn’t look that hard to get something simple up and running, although something like the Plus+ stuff looks pretty cool. Archon getting great reviews…June 24,2009 2:58 pmThe last day has been a whirlwind with many of the media blogs and websites posting about Archon Classic. They are mostly great reviews with very few complaints. We are very happy with the response from the long-time Archon fans who’ve been quite complimentary about the game. There have been many emails about how this game has taken them back to the old C64 days. We are happy about how the game has turned out but know there are some small improvements to be made. Mainly in the area that made Archon great in the first place…playing with friends, so rest assured, MULTIPLAYER IS BEING WORKED ON AS I WRITE THIS. Our designer, Brad, has been invaluable in helping make this version work. We have many things planned and this option is only a few short updates away. So, get your virtual Dpad skills up to par, pretty soon you will be competing against your friends, creating tournaments and battling for that elusive top spot of Archon! p.s. What are some of your top scores? Post screen shots of your ending rank and final time on our forums to get free Tshirts and other prizes! Archon Classic is now on the App Store!June 23,2009 12:10 amWell, whew. We did it! The most fabulous game ever made is now officially on the App store, ready for sale at the low price of $3.99 USD until we get version 2.0 out the door, then it will be the regular price of $4.99. Version 2 will include many little enhancements along with the 1 player campaign mode. This first game for us was such an up and down roller coaster ride! There were some really high points and some low points, but all-in-all, it’s a great game that I’m proud of…even though it took a lot longer than I wanted, but it’s paid off. If you have an iPhone or iTouch, please buy it and leave your comments on the App Store comment area. We’re counting on everyone who loves this game (the original and our version) to “make some noise” about Archon and how it needs to be on every platform. The more noise the community makes, the easier it will be for us to go in and confidently show these different console people how there IS a desire to have this great game on their console. I hope you like the game…it was very fun to make, test and now play. Now, on to the next platform…PC anyone? New Gameplay video…June 19,2009 5:15 pmHere is what is on YouTube (but this version is more crisp, i think.) Sorry I couldn’t imbed it…trying to hurry and get it out and move on to other fun stuff. Hope you like it! Oh yeah, here is the YouTube Link, if you wanna see it there too…and comment.) Archon submitted to Apple!!!June 19,2009 12:03 pmI have to apologize for not being in touch lately…we’ve been working out a few internal issues and getting the game finished, which we have. Version 1.0 has finally been submitted…we actually submitted it last friday and have been doing some quick catch-up work this week to make sure everything is right on. This version (1.0) plays really well, which we’re really excited about! The combat is fast and fun, the characters are more evenly matched and the Phoenix KICKS BUTT! The Easy setting is VERY easy so everyone can get used to the controls on the iPhone (if you’re not yet) and win a few battles fairly easily. The Hard setting is pretty challenging, even for the veteran player. There is a ranking system that works nicely and in subsequent versions, we’ll be able to upload to a server for global scores and global rankings…it keeps track of your total game time, fastest combat time, how many pieces you’re won/loss, etc. In combat, you can control the characters by using the Dpad (which works excellent) or the Accelerometer. I’ll post some video of the game soon, so check back. oh, p.s. My fastest win time is 1 minute and 17 seconds, with the fastest combat time being just over 1 second. June 1st and internal milestones…June 2,2009 1:39 pmWell, June 1st came and went. I guess I should confess that we had an internal milestone to hit June 1 as our submission date to Apple. We hit a major issue over the weekend and it reared up yesterday again and sent us reeling. I think we found a solution today so it should only delay us a few days. Sound is the major bug fixing now, along with some minor AI tweaks. Although it’s mostly okay, sometimes the AI characters seem to want to run into the corners and stay there. We’ve got to come up with a few more rules to take care of that. As much as I want this game finished, I want the game looking and playing great! My philosophy is thus; to release great games…releasing a game will not do if it’s mediocre in it’s visuals or gameplay. If I don’t want to play it, I don’t want to release it…even if it costs a little extra time and money (thanks Mr. Investor!) We’ve got a great backer, because our philosophies are in line with each other and that’s hard to find in a businessman now days. I’ve seen too many companies release games that were sub par just to get it out and make some quick money. Well, not us. I’m hoping our community grows enough to get the word out and make the whole world aware of the great game that is Archon. As we play here in the studio, we hear yells and shouts from different rooms and Brad, our lead designer, says, “You can tell it’s a great game by all the yelling thats going on!” Once we get some of these issues out of the way, I’ll post some video footage of the game so you can see what it’s like while we’re waiting for Apple to do their stuff. Final crunch…May 26,2009 11:28 amWe 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 pmWe 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 pmI 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 pmGetting 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…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 amSince 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 pmWell, 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 amYeah, 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: If you know of anymore, please let me know and I’ll pop them up on our site. Thanks to all the Archonians out there for your support. Keep the comments coming on the forums and help us make this the best release ever (well, at least until we release the PC/Mac versions…)
Getting the word out…May 8,2009 10:23 amI’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.Alpha Week…April 23,2009 7:30 amWe had “Art-lock” yesterday, which means no new art going into this first version for the iPhone. We’ve had “design-lock” last week, where all controls, layout and all that fun stuff got locked down. No more new stuff. Now it’s just iterating on all current stubbed art and programming. The Menu systems are looking great, with all functionality in them. The Strategy board works well with the controls we’ve implemented…which will default to a virtual D-pad, but the Accelerometer will work as well. We had a bunch of problems with the touch screen input on the Strategy board, with the iPhone trying to recognize what the user is trying to do…pinch to zoom in, select a character, swipe pan…but we’ve got those issues nailed down and it really plays nicely. Finally, I’m really happy with the control scheme. The combat board plays quite well. Martin came up with a bunch of tricks to make it fast and fun, which includes some AI to help the player out (which you hard-core fans can turn off.) All in all, it’s shaping up to be a really fun game. We’re concentrating the rest of this week to put the finishing touches on programming, then spend the next week bug testing. Hopefully, if there’s not too many bugs or things that go wrong, we’ll release this initial version the first part of May. I’ll upload some screen shots as soon as I’m able to get to them. Archon on TwitterApril 22,2009 7:30 amFor those who don’t spend enough time on the internet, we’re on Twitter. Follow us at http://twitter.com/ArchonClassic This is as well as our Facebook Page, which has been up for a little while. We’re trying to grow this community so please get the word out, join us as fans and let your voice be heard. iPhone controls, revisited…April 16,2009 8:41 amLast night, I played the latest build on my phone and it hit me…we’re actually really close to finishing. Most of the elements are in, well, pretty much everything is in, the rules are working, the controls scheme plays nicely and the menu systems are working. All the design is done…now we’re just polishing and tightening. For those who have seen the rough prototype (you know who you are) the controls now make it just as fun to play as the PC prototype. The controls scheme, which we were fighting with earlier, now is fun and easy to move the character around and fire. We’ve implemented a few helps throughout the boards to really make the beginning player (or even the veteran Archonian) enjoy picking up the game and playing. Our goal for this game is to make it as simple as possible to pick up and play AND HAVE FUN. We know that a good percentage of the people who will first buy this game on the iPhone will be unfamiliar with it or the controls…and let’s face it, the virtual Dpad has its limitations, which is what I’ve been trying to get around…but to no avail. It is the most widely recognized and accepted means of controlling characters in a game such as this on the iPHone. Some have done it well, others haven’t. We’ve made controlling easy and almost second nature (as much as we can.) I think that control is the most important issue when making games for the iPhone. It doesn’t matter how cool it looks, or what features it has, if you can’t control the character’s movements easily, people will lose interest and the game will fail (it’s supposed to be fun, not frustrating.) With that said, I think we got it. Now it’s just polishing…getting the artwork looking great and all the little stuff. iPhone controls…April 6,2009 7:18 pmI sure wish we had a built in D-pad on the left side of the device to offer the tactile feel of other gaming systems, but it’s a phone first. We’ve been adapting and play testing a bunch of different controls for this version. The problem is the fast-paced action of the Combat Arena, where you need all the real estate of the screen. Putting an efficient D-pad anywhere will really cut down the size of the playable area. The Accelerometer of the iPhone is a good solution, but it takes a little getting used to. We’ve experimented with various different configurations using the accelerometer and I think we’re close, but not there yet. We’re still experimenting with the D-pad thingy but still have yet to come up with something that really works. The Strategy Board is easy, just point and touch to move the pieces. That was by far the easiest part of the whole input process. We’re slowly adding final artwork and coming up with particle effects to implement, which will be a really cool thing. Our menu system should be added this week, so we’re all pretty excited. If everything goes well, we’ll be in a rough Alpha stage by next week for the Classic version. Release shouldn’t be too far off…we’re so close, so keep posted…and tell all your friends! One last thing to tweak in the next couple of weeks is the AI. Currently, Martin has implemented some simple AI…simple, NOT easy. I still can’t beat it, but it’s sure fun to run away. I time how long I last and feel good if it’s over a minute. The reason I can’t win is the AI knows what you’re doing when you do it, so it’s next to impossible to hit him…or maybe I just stink. Either way, it is really fun to play. GDC 2009 San Francisco, CAMarch 30,2009 2:27 pmWhat a conference. The weather was beautiful, the conference was outstanding and the people we met were great! There are so many things happening in the industry that are helping us out in many ways, with sony dropping their dev kits and creating the Pub Fund. Nintendo offering DSiWare and increasing their Wii console’s ability to use memory cards more efficiently. Things are looking great for 2009. The industry is at an all time high…even though the economy is quite hard. We’ve had to be creative in how we do things, so as to finish on time and on budget (we’ll have more news on that soon.) The iPhone version is coming along nicely and it’s pretty fun to play. During the conference, I met many people and almost everyone over 30 has heard of Archon. I even had one guy come up to me (I was wearing my official Archon t-shirt) and thank me for redoing this game. ”It is a long time coming.” he mentioned as we parted ways. Keep us bookmarked and come back often, as we will be updating several times a week, if not daily…and holding raffles and giveaways. You can get free Archon SWAG (t-shirts, posters, cards…even an iPod.) So keep in touch and we’ll see you around the site. |
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