Version 0.4 of the G3 UI Library is featured in the video, and you’ll be able to see most of its features. You’ll also see a bit of the diagrams and source code behind the G3 UI Library and Alien Invasion.

For a technical presentation of the G3 UI Library, read this article.

And, if you’re curious to demo it, go play with this (older) version 0.2 on the G3 UI website^.

The video’s duration is 6:31.

Usage Instructions: please wait for the Video Player to load. It should not take long. Then, press the gray “Play” button in the middle of the Video Player.

Note: since I don’t own a top-notch microphone, the quality of the audio recording is not stellar.

As for the Planetary Combat mode, that is/was an even greater problem. First of all, the landscape doesn’t look nice enough and secondly, I am not at all satisfied with how the game progresses. It’s too… bland.

Due to these reasons, I had to pause the development of the game for a little while. I needed something to recharge my batteries / reset my brain. That something came in the form of an upgrade to my PC, which allowed me to play a few of the games that have been gathering on my list in the past few years. I hold the firm belief that any game developer should also be a gamer, so I spent a few weeks reminding myself of how it is to be a gamer and how games are supposed to be (fun and, at least for me, challenging).

Alex also had a little vacation during the past few months. I think he was also a bit over-worked at this project. All in all, it was a welcomed break from the routine.

Fortunately, during this break, I came up with a few solutions for the problems plaguing the Planetary Combat Mode of Alien Invasion, solutions which will be implemented starting now.

Alien Invasion version 0.6 is now officially in work. Expect a DevLog post with version 0.6 in the following weeks.

Here, I’ll be talking about the Space Combat Mode, which is where the Player takes the fight to the Aliens. This is accomplished using Fighter Ships, and you’ll be able to see how their work and see their Special Abilities in action.

You’ll recognize an arcade-style side-scrolling shooter, where the enemy Flying Saucers come in packs, trying to defend their Mothership. At the end of the video, the big bad boss Saucer will make an appearance.

The video’s duration is 8:15. Before seeing this video, you should see the General Presentation of Alien Invasion and the Planetary Combat Presentation.

Usage Instructions: please wait for the Video Player to load. It should not take long. Then, press the gray “Play” button in the middle of the Video Player.

Note: since I don’t own a top-notch microphone, the quality of the audio recording is not stellar.

I will present how the defense of a Planet Area goes, starting with the building of the Bunkers, equipping them with Weapons and, later on, with Soldiers. You’ll get to see how the in-game user-interface looks like and how the game keeps the player engaged.

The last part of the video will focus on the Soldiers and the “RPG elements” of the game. You’ll see how Soldiers level-up and how they can be upgraded. I will also be explaining what their skills mean. Last but not least, I’ll demonstrate the usefulness of Cargo Ships.

The video’s duration is 14:20. Before seeing this video, you should see the General Presentation of Alien Invasion. After seeing this video, you should see the Space Combat Presentation.

Usage Instructions: please wait for the Video Player to load. It should not take long. Then, press the gray “Play” button in the middle of the Video Player.

Note: since I don’t own a top-notch microphone, the quality of the audio recording is not stellar.

In the first part of the video, I will mostly be talking about the Map, presenting how the Player can travel from one planet to another, talking about Ships and the hybrid turn-based system which is at the base of the Alien Invasion gameplay.

During the second part of the video, the Tech Lab, Shop, Library, Roster and Starport will be presented to you.

The video’s duration is 9:17. After watching this video, you should see the Planetary Combat Presentation and the Space Combat Presentation.

Usage Instructions: please wait for the Video Player to load. It should not take long. Then, press the gray “Play” button in the middle of the Video Player.

Note: since I don’t own a top-notch microphone, the quality of the audio recording is not stellar.

I will present almost all the features of the game and I will also reveal a few of the mistakes which have contributed to its rather poor commercial showing.

During my narration, you can see almost two games of Thunderbirdz being played. I will also be making a few comments about the lessons I learned from the development of this first Gamaddiction game.

If the video makes you want to… then you can go here and play some Thunderbirdz!

The video’s duration is 20:17.

Usage Instructions: please wait for the Video Player to load. It should not take long. Then, press the gray “Play” button in the middle of the Video Player.

Note: since I don’t own a top-notch microphone, the quality of the audio recording is not stellar.

The first one is The Archivist. It consists of a Class and an Interface, which are used to persist save-game data for Alien Invasion. I also integrated a Base64 utility Class which I am using to provide a human-readable representation of a save-game, which, in turn, I need for Alien Invasion’s ability to show its save-game data in a nice textbox, from where the user can copy, e-mail and then paste on another computer (since moving Flash Player save-game data can otherwise be quite difficult).

The Archivist Class handles all Flash Player Shared Object writing/reading functionality while the Interface represents the contract which any game object which desires to be saved needs to implement. We will be using The Archivist in all our future Flash games, naturally.

As for the name, I don’t think it needs any explanation. Or does it?

The second component freshly added to the GFGL is The Maratonist. Ok, this naming is perhaps a bit too hard to understand, but perhaps once I’m done explaining what this component does, you’ll see the connection with the word “Marathon”.

The Maratonist is a set of classes which is used by Alien Invasion to interact with the social back-end of various websites, in order to submit high scores, achievements and other such social candy. For now, The Maratonist works with Mochi and Kongregate, but a FaceBook implementation is also on the way.

Actually, I built The Maratonist in the context of a side-project I’m developing with a Norwegian company (after almost a year of focusing purely on Gamaddiction, I start to feel the wind blowing through my pockets, and that’s never good). But The Maratonist was always intended to be used by Alien Invasion for social integration. It’s just a coincidence that my collaboration with the Norwegian company required it first.

So, the GFGL is growing and evolving into a really nice toolset for Flash Games Development. When I feel happy with what it is, I might publish it for non-commercial use, or even Open Source it, who knows?

The game has grown to much more than what I originally had in mind. That also happened with Thunderirdz, although back then I weren’t able to implement a lot of the great ideas that I wanted to. This is not the case with Alien Invasion, because it has a great UI Library behind it (I’m talking about the G3 UI Library, of course) and because with Alien Invasion, I really want to make a power statement.

Originally, the game was supposed to only be a sort of Tower Defense game with an interactive mission selection area, in the form of a planets map. But eventually, the Map became a module with a life of its own. I added the ability for the Player to travel from one Planet to another, using Ships that they can buy from the Shop. And then, I added something even better: counter-strikes by the Alien Invaders. Once I did that, the Map became a sort of Turn-Based Strategy game.

Alien Invasion Adventure Map Mode

The Tower Defense part became the Planetary Combat mode, the Map became the Adventure Map mode and, finally, a third module was added: the Space Combat mode ::- D. But more about that one, in a future posting. Actually, I plan to do even better than show you pictures. I plan to release a few presentation videos showing exactly where’s the game at, but it might take me a while to do that because I’m so caught up in the development work. Stuff changes very fast so even if I record a video today, in one month it would be obsolete. So I’m waiting to nail down the engine completely.

Here’s a nice sign of the progress we’re making with the game. The most recent revisions pulled directly from our Mercurial repository. Beware, the text may contain foul words, programmer jokes and other weirdness ::- D.

Alien Invasion Revisions (CLICK to open the image in a NEW WINDOW)

Every version from the above listing takes between 8 and 24 hours of work. And if you do a little math, you’ll realize I’ve been coding at Alien Invasion for more than 1000 hours. That would be a correct estimation.

And, if you want some (very) deep insight into the “mind” of Alien Invasion, check out this diagram I just pulled from Enterprise Architect. It shows just a part of the notes I’ve been taking while working at the specification (you’ll have to click to see it in all its glory ::- D).

Alien Invasion Specifications (CLICK to open the image in a NEW WINDOW)

That’s it for now. Back to work!

I’ll upload some videos soon.

But being an amputee isn’t fun… um… that didn’t come out right ::- D. But you got the idea. It’s painful to cut stuff you need. This doesn’t sound right either ::- >.

In any case, the fact of the matter remains that I reached a decision regarding our future as a game development organization/company. No more “pure-indie” titles. By “pure-indie” I mean with absolutely no external funds. It’s too stressful and too risky (not risk as in lack of game success, but risk as in abandoned projects, like we just had). Bottom line? We need investors.

Starting now, we’ll get more active in the search for investors, because I believe that the partnership with a dedicated and capable organization will push us forward where we belong.

The search won’t be easy. I’m perfectly aware that we need to prove ourselves and show our potential before we can even think at attracting a valuable partner. But that’s exactly what we’re setting out to do.

And when we do find that perfect partner to walk with us (and I truly believe it’s only a matter of time), we’ll be able to show you and give you so much more!

Alien Invasion can live without Epic Game Studio. The game is pretty complex, but for now, we can deal with the bunch of XMLs from which its game design is configured.

Sure, I’d have liked to do the game design in Epic Game Studio, which would have advanced the project a lot, that is, working in it on an actual game rather than my usual sandbox. But this will probably have to wait for our third game, which, hopefully, will be RoboFite. RoboFite is much better suited for Epic Game Studio. The game is much larger in scope and will feature a continuous post-release development cycle. So having a well-coagulated game design and story will be essential for handling streamlined updates.

Until RoboFite, there is simply no time to continue work at Epic Game Studio, so we’ll focus on finishing what’s on our plate now, that is, the 4 projects I just listed above. The Logicon is actually completed, but small tweaks are still required. Version 2 of the Logicon will probably happen together with RoboFite and version 1 of Epic Game Studio.

I hope that next year around this time Alien Invasion will be long-released and we’ll have found some good financial support for RoboFite, because really, the project is too damn great to leave it hanging for longer than that!

That’s just because I’ve simply been too into Alien Invasion to write about it! Ever since the middle of February when I started development, I’ve been like a crazy scientist never leaving his laboratory. And before that, Alien Invasion mostly consisted of work at The Logicon, which was supposed to be the game’s component to handle arithmetic computations, but got branched into a completely separate project.

But now, after two months of hard work, Alien Invasion is already at version 0.4! I finished implementing all the math-related stuff, which I wanted to get out of the way as soon as possible. A great deal of art created by Alex has also been imported and right now, I’m busy hunting some memory leaks, profiling & optimizing the game ::- ). Here, have a look!

AI Memory Leak Hunting

That’s the Flash Builder Profiler. It’s a wonderful tool for any professional Flash Player developer. Without it, your game/application might end up with sluggish performance at best, or crash your user’s browser at worst.

Luckily, my search has been quite successful. I found an issue when parsing the game’s XML data which cut the game’s memory usage in half. Remember to never put XML objects in Arrays where you want strings without casting them to String first: what will happen is that you’ll end up with an Array with XML objects in it, and XML objects eat a lot of memory!

Also remember to look very carefully at your game’s art, especially if you draw your shadows dynamically, based on the size of a certain object. Take a look at the following picture and try to spot the problem. Awww, too late, I already circled it for you.

AI Bunker Shadow Bug

The shadow of the Bunker spills over the hill. Not good. But I fixed it, of course ::- ).

And yes, I just showed you the very first picture from our upcoming game ::- D. Enjoy it, it’ll be the last I’ll be posting for a while ::- D. The graphics are still in alpha stage, especially the landscape and the UI, but you can already see that we’ve been using our G3 UI Library in the game.

There are many more things to show, but I’m thinking of uploading some nicely narrated videos, because people now-a-days are lazy readers ::- D. Aren’t you? Ok, ok, I admit it: it would be hard to write & upload pictures of all the features that the game has in it!

But the lines I wrote aren’t nearly as “deep” (read: complex) as the ones before. Why? Because I’ve been writing Unit Tests for the Library. LOTS of Unit Tests.

All in all, we got about 12.500 lines of Unit Tests. Yes. That’s 12 thousand 5 hundred ::- D. Which, considering The Logicon has less than 2000 lines of code, is quite a bit ::- ). But there is a reason.

The Logicon is a critical Library. Remember, it is used for EVERY game-play calculation we make in our games. This means that it is extremely important that there are absolutely no mistakes in any calculation, otherwise we might end-up with nasty game-play bugs, and we certainly cannot afford that.

Ok, so now that I finished with the bold-fest, maybe you understand why I tested the library so heavily. I am now quite satisfied with it and I have already started work at the actual game! Alien Invasion is finally on its way to a game portal near you!

However, this is not the end of development for The Logicon. During testing, I made many improvements to it, but I also took note of some improvements which I won’t be able to implement right away. These, plus some new ideas I had, will have to wait until Version 2.0 of The Logicon, which I plan to release sometime in 2012.

The Gamaddiction Flash Games Library, which consists of a number of very useful classes which we used in Thunderbirdz, the G3 UI Library, RoboFite and now, Alien Invasion.

What’s it made of? For now, just three classes.

The Tools2D class contains various methods which work with the 2D drawing systems of Flash Player. For example there are various methods which work with Sprites and Movie Clips, but also some really nice functions for shape-adaptive hit testing, into which I poured dozens of hours.

The Numeric class, as its name implies, is a class which works with numbers. We use it for various custom number conversions which AS3 does not provide. Most importantly, converting Dates to Numeric or String representations, something we used heavily in our Thunderbirdz weather system.

Last but not least, the Math class contains functions which work with angles, distances, radians, conversions and rotations. This class is the newest addition and I’m still working at it, in the context of Alien Invasion.

It may look a bit chaotic or not too much for now, but trust me, this will become a respectable Project before too long. I got some nice plans in store for it, plans which will take shape as the development of Alien Invasion will kick-start in the following months (as soon as I finish work at The Logicon).

I built the Logicon with Diablo 2 in my mind ::- ). I wanted to create a library with which I could power all computation in a game like Diablo 2. As it turned out, the Logicon went beyond that, increasing my development speed using the XML loaders I integrated in it, which also make it extremely adaptable to game-modding.

The Logicon can be used for any kind of game (hence, the mash-up of terms I used above), written in any programming language. Its small size of only ~1500 lines of code, clear architecture and C-syntax makes it very easy to port in any language. The original code is AS3, as the first game to make use of it is Alien Invasion.

Below, you can see a diagram which shows a simplified structure of The Logicon. The main class has many more methods, but I cut them out for simplicity’s sake. You don’t want to know all the details, do you?

Using Alien Invasion as an example, I’ll explain a few of the general features of this class library.

At the base of The Logicon lies the concept of “Modifier”. A Modifier is, at its rawest form, an object wrapping a Number (Float). There are two types of Modifiers: Base Modifiers and Influence Modifiers. You can probably guess where I’m going with this. To confirm your guess: in Alien Invasion, the hit points of Bunkers and Flying Saucers are Base Modifiers, while the damages of all Weapons are Influence Modifiers.

The Base Modifiers offer a notification function for when their value changes, while the Influence Modifiers also provide various events.

Each Modifier type has an inheritance branch which perfects it and adds nifty new features to it.

Simplified Diagram of The Logicon

The Temporary Base Modifier, as its name implies, will only be in effect for a certain time. It’s useful for temporary boosts. And yes, The Logicon allows modifiers to stack on each other, using a unique Modifier Type ID. Furthermore, Modifiers can be percentile or numeric. And to top it off, they can be organized in Tiers, which allows the percentile Modifiers to be applied only in a certain order. This makes The Logicon extremely versatile.

As its clear name implies, the Perpetual Influence Modifier is used to make sure that a certain Influence Modifier gets applied more times to a target. This could be used for a poisoned arrow, or a weapon that causes bleeding. Influence Modifiers can also be percentile and numeric and can also be organized in Tiers. Of course, they too can be stacked. Furthermore, Influence Modifiers allow automatic randomization, to give you those “sweet” damage ranges you see in so many games.

The Logicon also has some internal logarithmic functions which are used to provide nice, gradually increasing difficulty in level-upping, or exponential-gradient functions with various curves of difficulty, for any imaginable game scenario.

As I completed the first version of The Logicon, I realized that this Library will probably pay a pivotal role in our future games. This is just version 1, and I already have a several optimizations and improvements in store for version 2. A C++/C# port will probably follow, as we (will hopefully) branch out to Unity / other game engines.

The most important Widgets have been added and the Render / Screens system is working perfectly. Among the completed Widgets: Buttons, Labels, Windows, Panels, TextBoxes, Images, Image Rollers, Group Panels and more.

But you know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? So here’s one from our upcoming G3 UI presentation website:

G3UI Preview

As you can see, we got a fully functional UI Library here! With it, we got a damn good fighting chance to complete some really nice and complex games.

The first game to use the G3 UI Library, will, of course, be Alien Invasion. So make sure you follow the Alien Invasion News Section, because the G3 UI is sure to make more than a few appearances around there!

As I was laying out the Class Diagram for Alien Invasion in Enterprise Architect, I started to realize that a certain (quite large) part of it is increasingly detachable from the rest of the project.

The part I’m talking about is a series of Classes which are responsible for calculating certain properties of in-game objects. I realized that with a bit of tinkering, I could create a library which we could use in all our future games. And that library is named… *drums*… *trumpets*…

The Logicon

We are still committed to Alien Invasion, and Alex, our designer, is still working at the game’s art. But I will be taking a short detour prior to starting work at the game itself. This detour will consist of finalizing the first version of The Logicon, our in-game arithmetic calculations.

Not to worry, The Logicon is not a huge project. Its size is quite small actually. Barely a handful of classes. However, the Logicon will help us immensely when developing just about any kind of game!

I estimate that I will complete The Logicon in two to four months from now. I will write more information about it when I get there.

This is a hard and painful decision, but we will not give up on the project. Gabi “DiAngelo” Balasz has worked too much on the PHP side for me to allow such a thing. RoboFite will return one day, hopefully soon.

It is my hope that our newer game project, Alien Invasion will secure us some much-needed funds, which I could funnel into RoboFite. And, if not funds, at least fame. Gamaddiction needs more exposure and portfolio, so that at least we can bring more designers on our side, interested to work with us at some really great games.

And RoboFite is a great game. It has a huge potential and is filled with innovations and great ideas. Sure, that’s how any game developer talks about his game! ::- ). But really, RoboFite is awesome and I will never give up on it!

For now, the focus switches on Alien Invasion. It is the healthy thing to do! We will stay focused on Alien Invasion and deliver one more quality single player game.

And, besides Alien Invasion, there is, of course, the G3 UI Library which continues to evolve. And there’s one more secret project in the works. But, come tomorrow, it won’t be a secret any more ::- ). Stay tuned!

I conceived this game when I started having doubts about Radu, our RoboFite designer (which has left the project eventually). So, let’s see what’s all this about!

Ever since work at the RoboFite Flash Game Client stopped, I realized that the G3 UI Library will be missing a most important step in its development: being used in a real project, as opposed to the sandbox project I was working with. This, combined with my enthusiasm for doing some actual game programming (even if it’s another single-player game) and getting in touch earlier this year with an older designer friend of mine, resulted in the birth of a new game project!

Alex, my designer friend, has already completed a quite large amount of assets for Alien Invasion. He’s been working at this since April, while I continued to keep myself busy with the G3 UI Library.

A big thank you to Alex, because without him, this project wouldn’t have existed. Here’s a little sneak peek into the art of Alien Invasion.

A few assets created by Alex

So, it’s game-time once more!

We’ll post more news about this as we… create them! ::- ).

Epic Game Studio is a one-of-a-kind Universal Compiler which uses a common “base language” to transpose pseudo-code into actual code. It accomplishes this by using a Program Definition Database to outline the lexical structure of the Programming Language it will need to output code in; and a Game Database for storing “Epic” data (story, game design elements, etc.). It then translates all this into a very friendly UI, which people without coding skills can use (although a syntactical parser is planned as well).

What’s the purpose of this? Quite simple: to create a tool which ensures complete separation between Game Design and Game Engine. This is possible because you can store absolutely all Game Design Data into an Epic Game Studio Project which you build. When you build it, Epic Game Studio generates code in your format of choice (XML, C++, AS3, SQL, C#, whatever!) which you can then rebuild / import / recompile using your coding IDE. Epic Game Studio can be used by ANY (complex enough) game.

The project is a .Net 4.0 C# Windows.Forms application, with a SQL Compact back-end and extensively uses LINQ. The User Interface is enhanced by employing DevExpress controls and the IconShock icon library (both having been purchased by me during 2009). Epic Game Studio is fully internationalizable, using my C# I18N-by-XML framework.

Epic Game Studio Instruction Editor (CLICK for FULL SIZE Image - New Window)

Epic Game Studio was started in August 2009, but it barely reached version 0.1 before I had to focus on Thunderbirdz’ release and on the G3 UI Library. But, come 2010, I finally had time to shift the project from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010, which was actually a mandatory move, as Visual Studio 2008′s Entity Framework had no “insert” support for the SQL Compact Database I was using. Visual Studio 2010 added the required support so I was able to finally make changes to the SQL Compact Database rather than just have read-only access to it.

In August, almost a year after commencing the project (although less than 150 hours of work in it), I finally, I managed to reach a solid milestone with Epic Game Studio: data can be saved back into the database. That, made it possible for the Instruction Editor above to work. And, for the first time, the Build Workflow is able to compile the programs into target code!

A must-have of the 0.2 milestone was to give Epic Game Studio the ability to actually compile data from its two databases (the Language database and the Game database) into meaningful program code, as defined by the Language Database. This is achieved by using the Program Editor which can be seen below.

The Program Editor is that “user friendly” way of crafting code which I mentioned earlier. Granted, what “user friendly” means to a Microsoft Word user is a programmer’s hell. And since most game designers have programming background, that could be a problem. It’s something I intend to address by implementing a lexical interpreter.

Epic Game Studio Program Editor (CLICK for FULL SIZE Image - New Window)

Below, you can see the Build panel. This is where the Magyqck happens! Each Instruction Folder or Instruction Group in your Program can be output into its own separate Folder or File.

The custom Workflow button (visible but not functional) is used to add additional External Tools to your Compilation Process. This makes Epic Game Studio able to work with a countless number of external programs, sending parameters to them and accepting parameters back from them.

For example, Epic Game Studio could be used to generate a SQL script, after which it would call a little program you wrote which takes that SQL script, can do additional modifications to it and run it against the correct database. Or it can generate some files and then call a program of yours to upload them to an FTP. The list can go on. And on. And on.

Epic Game Studio Build & Workflow (CLICK for FULL SIZE Image - New Window)

Here is a little sneak peek at how Epic Game Studio works on the inside. This is a Language Database. Here, the Instructions and Data Types known by the Language are stored. Epic Game Studio is able to work with Numeric and Text data types, but can also understand any combination of such types, through the use of Advanced Data Types, visible in one of the tables below.

The diagram is not complete because this is, after all, a commercial product. However, if things go well with Gamaddiction in the following years, it may see a Community Edition as well. I have a great respect for the indie developers community. Because I came from there.

Epic Game Studio Language Database

This other diagram shows a portion of the Game Database. This is where your Game Design data goes. The data can be organized in Folders, Groups and Procedures. Here, you may define Variables and use them in Instructions. The Value Entries table is used to store the values of Variables, as well as instant-declaration values.

Epic Game Studio Game Database

Well, I think this is a healthy preview for Epic Game Studio so, for now, I’ll leave you with a sexy screenshot of the program’s Main Menu. And, if you noticed that in the Title Bar it says “Epic Game Studio 0.3″ (as opposed to the 0.2 in the title of this entry), that’s because it’s the version which is in work right now.

If you have any questions regarding this project, feel free to Contact Us.

More news, as we produce them ::- ).

Epic Game Studio Menu (CLICK for FULL SIZE Image - New Window)

I do have some good news though. The Gamaddiction team has a new designer now. Through a fortunate twist of life, I came across an old friend who apparently has gotten quite good in this department. He is willing to help us out with some vector art.

Now the question is… what should he help us with? The first answer that came to my mind was, of course, RoboFite.

But I know better than that now! I do. I understand that RoboFite is a very large project which needs more commitment than one volunteer designer can give. So, for now, I’m having thoughts about perhaps creating a smaller game before heading into RoboFite.

However, that would mean that we’ll have to divert our already thin time resources in one more direction, an idea which I’m not very receptive to.

It all remains to be seen. For now, I can’t decide and, truth be told, I don’t even need to decide. This is because, for now, we’re very busy working at the G3 UI Library. There is much to do so we’ll just worry about our game projects in a few months, when the G3 UI Library has advanced enough. Until then, both me and DiAngelo salute you!