This video presents overall aspects of the G3 UI Library as well as how I work with it in the development of Alien Invasion.

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.

Our upcoming Alien Invasion has just been through a rather rough period. The Planetary Combat mode and the Intro Movie are to blame. I built the Intro Movie at the beginning of October, but I wasn’t satisfied with the result, and neither were the testers of our game. So I had to drop it. It needs to be recreated from scratch.

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.

This is the last video in my series of 3 which present Alien Invasion version 0.6.

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.

The second video in the series of 3 which present Alien Invasion version 0.6, will introduce you to the Planetary Combat Mode, which is where most of the game’s action will take place.

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.

This is the first video in a series of 3 which will present Alien Invasion version 0.6. In this video, I’ll show you some general aspects about Alien Invasion.

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.

In this video, I will talk about our first released game, Thunderbirdz (developed in 2009 and released in January 2010). It has been almost 2 years since Thunderbirdz was released, so I think it’s time for an objective look over the shoulder.

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 Gamaddiction Flash Games Library has just made two very big and important steps forward. During the development of Alien Invasion, I added two more very useful components to it.

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?

Development at Alien Invasion has been doing great in the past few months. We’ve included new art and overcame lots of problems. A ton of new features has been implemented and the game engine is almost feature complete.

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.

Freezing development at RoboFite and Epic Game Studio was not an easy decision to take. But, nevertheless, it was a necessary decision. We simply don’t have the funds to branch out too much, so the parts upon which we cannot focus have to be… well… amputated.

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!

As unpleasant as this may be, I still have to say it. Development at Epic Game Studio has hit a road-block, namely that we’re simply too busy working at Alien Invasion, The Logicon, the GFG Library and the G3 UI Library.

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!