Friday, October 12, 2012

Artists should do art, not programmers!

Ahh, what a waste of time. My time, my Precious time!

What happened I hear you ask.. Well let me tell ya a story (short one, honest ;)

A Few nights ago I am working on 'A Day at the Zoo', and it is going well. we are nearly finished with the App and I get all excited. I have already made a list of all the final changes required to finish the app, and well the list is not very long. So while my artist Nathan is busy working over the last few pages and any mods I need to the existing images. I decided to help out where I can.

Now for me I have some audio work to redo, but cannot get to that till Sunday (for various reasons of the voice actor being away!). So what am I to do.. Wait? lol, that is not likely. Not when i am this close!

So one of the items on the list is the title buttons. I have my generic grey ones on there, and they look so drab and dreary. As I had previously had some success in making buttons for the 5 Golden Coins app, I decided I could do it again... Woe is me, what a fool I was.

I decided as this app is about a Zoo I would take animal skin textures such as a snake skin, or leopard skin or even a bald eagles feathers and meld them onto a button. Well the final result is that I have 3 buttons on the title page and each one with a different texture.. It looks freakin horrid! What a mess.

Still, the only way to go from here is upwards, lol.

The moral is, don't waste my time when I have a talented artist who can do a great job, and go do something more useful instead.

Laters,
Da Voodoochief

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

JSIL? Xna->Html5?

Really?

Yes, really!.. Linky Here

There is a cross compiler that can take my XNA C# code and make it work in a browser.. Hmm, sounds really tempting to try. If only I had more time. Though If i did do this conversion, I am not certain what I would do with it.

Place it on my web site, so people can play my games in the broswer? Well that could be good for drawing people to my site. But I would have to suffer the increased badwidth requirements and so might feel that I was paying for people to play my game, not an ideal situation. Though peolpe playing my game is an exciting thought.

Maybe if it works I can place it on a flash/html5 game site and have it use their bandwidth and yet still have people (probably more) playing it. Now that sounds like a better plan.

I do wonder how much work this would be for one of my games, such as A Shooter or Aceball. I do not think that HTML5 wouls manage Pellmell, that game is just too intense with so many freaking crazy sprites and effects going off. Heck even the sounds might send it througha  loop, haha!

If I get some time, I might try and set this up.. Though if anyone would like to volunteer :)

This is still exciting news though, very cool.

Laters
Da Voodoochief

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

AdatZ getting closer

My artist Nathan has been busy these last few weeks and been working hard on the artwork for A Day at the Zoo. In fact the game is getting really close to being in final testing (YAY!).

All I have to do now is get the title/cover picture and tidy up some odds and ends and some audio anomalies and then get the whole thing setup with all it's different sized icons etc and it will be ready.

Doesn't sound like much does it :)  Hopefully it will be fully done by the end of this weekend and I can submit it to Google Play and Amazon apps and the Appstore. Good times. And on that front I have just submitted the 5 Golden Coins book/App update to Google apps and also re-submitted to Amazon, and I already heard that they will be publishing it tomorrow sometime, Also a big YAY! Now I simply have to get the new iOS update sorted out, maybe tomorrow eh :)

It is all coming together which is nice as once the ADatz book/app is done and released I can get some PR going and hopefully get it all promoted and maybe, just possibly get seen... One never knows eh!

Wish my luck,
Laters
Da Voodoochief

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Updating Game Screenshots

Yeah, It is true. This is what ya have to do when ya change the look of ya game. Though in all honesty the new look is so much more professional looking than the old one. Now i have the job of updating all the screenshots wherever they may be..

Lets revue:
On my www.sorcerygames.com web site.
On the ABC Books web site at www.b4ir.com/page6.html .
On the Google Play 5GC page.
On the Amazon 5GC page (not yet approved).
On the Apple AppStore 5GC page.

I will add that I also need a few extra screenshots now for the Appstore as their new iPhone is a different aspect ratio.

All in all I find this kind of thing a bit tedious. But it has to be done. So far I have completed the Google Play pictures. Next up is Amazon.

Meanwhile I am updating the second Book App code to match this new look from 5 Golden Coins. Maybe I'll get away with only one set of screenies for this game :)

G'night
Da Voodoochief

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Marmalade License, Paid for

Why?

Is that your question? Why have I paid 499 dollars for the pleasure of using a cross platform development system? Or maybe it is Why have I paid for this Particular cross platform development system.

To answer the first question you never asked. I will say that I really need to update my Games and Apps, and so I needed to renew my Indie License.

Maybe the Why is asking about why the 499 license and not the 149 dollar license (License info). That is a fairly easy thing for me personally to answer. The main differences between these licenses is that the Indie will let me publish to all the machines and devices covered, yet the standard covers less. (Supported Platforms)

Why buy a development SDK anyway. Why not simply use Java and Objective C or maybe HTML5 or some of the other options and SDKs. Simply put, I feel this is the most powerful and easy to use cross platform SDK currently available. Yes I tried some of the others, and yes they are ALL pretty darned good.

Information..
This you might find great news. As I did not really HAVE to buy my own license. I could have gotten into this most excellent new program that will GIVE you a License and Blackberry Playbook, though you will have to apply etc, check out this Link BlackBerry.

Laters All,
Da Voodoochief