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Filler 2
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 02/04/2009
(Image lost in the Great Update of 2009)
I’ve been a little quiet lately–and crazy busy. I’ve got a few new projects to announce in the next few weeks, but the first of the bunch just went live. As of yesterday morning, Filler 2 is officially live on Shockwave! I started working on a new version in October of last year, and I think it’s fair to say a lot more time has gone into this one than the original. Changes include:
- 100 Challenges, most of which allow you to jump right into a specific game scenario.
- Optimized physics to support more balls onscreen in higher levels.
- I rolled lives and balls into one, which was a point of confusion for some people in the first game.
- The bonus timer is gone.
- Improved graphics, with the ability too choose your ball and background.
- I added the ability to freeze time–pressing “space” will freeze all the bouncy balls and make you invincible for short bursts. Your freeze time is replenished each level, and you get roughly 1/4 of a second per level.
- When a ball pops, it now “explodes”–repelling any nearby balls. This can be used strategically on later levels to create void spaces.
- There’s now a hard level cap at Level 50.
- Past level 25, the bouncy balls will pick up speed every level to make things more challenging.
- There are three difficulty settings:
- On easy, you can’t die. This is more of a “relaxation” mode.
- Normal is, well, normal. You get two more balls each level and limited amount of freeze.
- Hard is closest to classic Filler. There’s no freeze time, and the balls are a lot more limited than the first game.
- The game will automatically track some basic stats for you (average score, highest level reached, etc…).
- A self-destruct button will allow you to end the game if you’re read to submit your score.
This game also marked the first game I’ve ever done in Flash (as opposed to pure AS3, compiled with the Flex SDK). The vast majority of the code was still done in class-based files, but it’s really a lot easier doing menus and “screens” in Flash. My workflow going forwards will likely involve doing all my prototyping with the Flex SDK before moving on to Flash for the “fit and finish.”
The game will be an exclusive on Shockwave until May 3rd–I’ll be able to start distributing it more widely to the other portals afterward. In the meantime–everyone go play it on Shockwave!
Who Says the Crowd Has to Be Right?
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 11/10/2008
(Image lost in the Great Update of 2009)
When I’m not making games, I’m still cranking away on my day job–Piqqem. Eric Schonfeld did a review of the site on TechCrunch last Friday, so I thought I’d respond with my own two cents on the company. Clearly I’m a little biased since I work there (and wouldn’t be if I thought it was going to fail), and it certainly doesn’t hurt that I know where the site is headed. I should also point out, though, that these are my own thoughts on the site and not the “company line” (assuming we had one). Read the rest of this entry »
Note to Apple: People Don't Read
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 10/16/2008
I’m hardly the best when it comes to designing forms with usability in mind, but I came across one today that frustrated me for awhile before I figured it out. While flipping through channels this morning, I saw that Highlander was on. It stuck in my head, so when I got to work I bought “Princes of the Universe” from iTunes. Since I’d recently updated to version 10, the little Genius thing was new. I clicked on the button to enable it, and was greeted by the following form:
(Image lost in the Great Update of 2009)
I put in my email address and clicked continue. Nothing happend–a message to “Please fill out the entire form.” After trying a few times (all unsuccessfully), I finally said “screw Genius” and went back to my normal playlist.
Fast forward 10 hours or so. Now I’m home, and again listening to some music. Thinking it may have just been some weird glitch on my iMac at work, I tried to activate Genius again. Same problem. I think, “Fine, I’ll try my AOL login.” I switch the toggle to the second option and fill in the second field with my AOL username. Another error. Only at this point do I look at it more closely… the second field is the password field!
There’s a good chance I’m just retarded, but I feel like I’m pretty tech-savvy. If I made this mistake, I’m sure others have as well. The issue is that the two radio buttons line up perfectly with the two text fields. If I could boil everything I’ve learned about usability into one single mantra (even if I don’t always follow it myself), it would be: “PEOPLE DON’T READ.” I’m no exception. Because there was a 1:1 correspondence between the two radio buttons (and more importantly, the two logos), my brain made the (incorrect) leap that the first field was for Apple ID and the second field was for your AOL username. I’m no stranger to multi-screen login/verification forms (especially for things with higher security, like bank accounts or apple accounts with purchase power built in), so it didn’t seem weird that it would ask for my username on one screen and the password on another.
Once I actually read the form and understood what it wanted me to do, it all worked great. What I’m wondering is, though, am I just dumb? Would others actually make this same mistake?
Filler #68 in TechCult's Top 150 Flash Games
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 10/07/2008
I’ve had my nose to the grindstone at work for the last month or so (along with kicking out a few new game prototypes which I hope see the light of day sooner rather than later), but my co-worker sent this along to me this morning. As the title reads, Filler is #68 in TechCult’s Top 150 Flash Games. I’d never heard of them, but it’s always nice when someone you know in real life stumbles across something you do for fun in your digital life.
If you can't bike TO work, bike FROM work.
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 09/02/2008
Since I moved in May, my bike riding has fallen drastically. Since moving in mid-May, I’ve taken exactly one trip to Diana’s office and back (~8 miles round trip) and another trip to Stanford and back (~8 miles round trip) about a month later. That’s it. Sure, my office is still only about 9 miles away from the house… but that would’ve been a stretch goal even when I was biking to work two or three times a week. I could bike to the train station (~2 miles) and then to work (~2 miles), but the trip spans two separate zones. Even though it’s only a 6 or 7 mile trip, that means it would be $4 each way, while driving their and back only takes a little over one gallon of gas. Not an ideal solution. I started tracking my mileage on Zealog to further motivate myself, but clearly that wasn’t doing much either.
Instead of biking TO work, then, today I tossed the bike in the back of my car and took it with me. There’s a Subway about a mile and a half away from the office that we go to at least twice a week, and sometimes three times a week. Why drive? Today, I biked to lunch instead of driving. It only takes about 10 minutes longer than driving, and while it’s not exactly a massive undertaking, any little bit helps. Three miles of exercise is certainly greater than the zero exercise I was averaging before.
Now the task shifts into finding restaurants that are the optimal distance away. Google doesn’t really have the capacity to give you search results for “restaurants at least three miles away from point XYZ,” so it took a bit of creative guesswork to find some likely candidates. Unless I remember to lug the bike home on Fridays, this means I won’t be able to do any recreational rides on the weekend–but considering I’ve only done two of those in the last 5 months, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Filler at 6+ Months
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/22/2008
As of earlier this month, Filler has been out for exactly six months–definite long tail territory for a flash game. I did post-mortems at one week and one month, so I thought I’d continue the trend with another look back. I’m a bit of a stat-hound, so I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the numbers so far, as well as various other comments on the game.
Stats
Total gameplays are now over 9,000,000 (at least on Mochibot enabled versions), though the actual number is surely much higher than that. Roughly 5,000,000 of those gameplays came on licensed versions (AddictingGames being the biggest single contributor) while the other 4,000,000 or so came through ad-supported versions on Kong and the Mochi network. Daily gameplays are down to around 12,000/day but seem fairly stable around that number. Read the rest of this entry »
Google doing human search?
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/14/2008
I always thought of Google as Mr. Algorithm, intent solely on developing programs to automate anything web-related. I was pretty surprised when they announced Lively last week. The implementation had some shortcomings (a browser plugin? for real?), but it does show a little personality. I was even more surprised just now.
We’ve got a couple of casserole dishes that we haven’t used yet, so I did a search for recipes and saw this:
(Image lost in the Great Update of 2009)
Notice the little symbols to the right of the links? Essentially, you can vote up the result or make it poof out of the results altogether (really, just to the bottom of the page). This link has a little more on the “experiment.” It’ll be interesting to see if this thing disappears back into the labs or it actually improves search results.
Hero Fatigue
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/10/2008
(Image lost in the Great Update of 2009)
I finally finished playing Mass Effect a few days ago, and it was everything I expected it to be. Pretty graphics, great dialogue, good characters, fun fight system… all in all, a fantastic game. The one criticism I have of the game isn’t so much about Mass Effect as it is about the state of games in general.
I’m tired of being the epic hero.
Sure you can play the bad guy if you choose the “mean” dialogue options, but whether you’re good or bad, you’re still the epic figure in charge of saving the universe. Really then, my issue is with the “epic” part and not the “hero” part. I get it. Games now cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, so anything less than an epic experience seems like too little bang for your buck.
I blame Bioware for being too good at what they do. The dialogue system, the backstory, the universe itself is just too good to only be capable of telling one type of story. The sad thing is that’s all we’re likely to get out of them (until an equally epic sequel hits, that is). I thoroughly enjoyed playing the Star Wars-esque space opera the whole way through, but I couldn’t help but wonder how much more amazing it would be to play a Maltese Falcon or a Seven Samurai or a Die Hard or a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (I’m talking story structures, here, not direct adaptation) style game using this same engine.
The engine is already built, so they might as well squeeze as much out of it as possible. Instead of one single epic that takes 30-40 hours to complete, why not build a half-dozen or so 2-5 hour long stories using the same engine and slightly more human storylines? You could call it Mass Effect Tales or something evocative of a short story collection. By doing so, they would bring us one step closer to legitimizing games as a storytelling medium–and for a fraction of the cost!
Boulder Blast
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/08/2008
My newest game launched this time last month on Shockwave. It’s a sort of ballistic match-three game. A boulder sits on a central pedestal, which you can pull back and fire at other boulders on the playing field. Wherever your boulder lands, it wipes out all connected boulders of the same color. Just to spice it up a little, some of the boulders are two-toned (meaning a chain can pass from one color to the neighboring color). There are three “power-boulders” which affect the pieces around them: a magma boulder rotates periodically and destroys all boulders in the same row/column when it’s hit; a bomb boulder destroys all pieces within a certain radius; a “spirit” boulder destroys all pieces of a certain color. By aiming tactically, the player can further grab three more “meta-powerups” that affect the game mechanic: the aim powerup allows the player to eschew the slingshot mechanic and instead simply click on their desired target; the freeze powerup prevents any new boulders from dropping; the match powerup grants you a bonus for successfully targeting a specific color of boulder instead of flinging wildly. The game marks a number of first for me as a game developer: Read the rest of this entry »
Not Dead, Just Been Playing Mass Effect
Posted by SimianLogic in blog on 07/07/2008
Not a lot of activity in the last month, but I think July’s going to be a little crazy. My latest game, Boulder Blast, launched June 10th. I did a whole post-mortem on the game, but I’ve had a few hurdles to jump through before it was cleared by Shockwave’s legal department (nothing nasty–just had to dot my i’s and cross my t’s). I’ll refresh that a little and get that out ASAP. Later this month will mark the 6-month anniversary of Filler’s release, so I thought it would be cool to do another “progress report” post. There are a couple of cool things going on at work that are probably worthy of a post.