I’ve been doing some clean up recently.

For this site, I’ve wiped out a huge amount of spam accounts, disabled trackbacks, and some other things to stop my email getting inundated with spam nonsense. If I’ve accidentally deleted an actual human account, let me know and I’ll reinstate it. Though why you need an account here is beyond me, really!

Over on the Badgers’ site, I’ve added a game detail page for Germies! and tidied things up a bit as well.

It’s also been three weeks since Germies! was released. It’s been an interesting learning experience, to say the least!
It’s made a grand total of $0.72 in ad revenue so far… though we did manage to get a couple of non-exclusive license deals which helped get us going. We got a lot of good feedback, and some critical feedback. One of which was immensely helpful, and we’re working on an update to address some of the issues raised. I’ve also got two additional major revisions of Germies to do, but they’re likely due towards the end of the year.
We have also started work on the next game. Diving deep within my archive of game designs, we’ve pulled out another one to have a look at and tweak. We’re hoping to get the first release of that one out by the end of the month.

In the midst of this, I’ve been working on GLESGAE and it’s JavaScript and Canvas implementation, which I’m naming JESSIE. Annoyingly, it’s taking a fair bit longer than I expected, due to some technical headaches in ensuring VBOs are updated in the best way possible. As Canvas is effectively an immediate mode system, I’m filling up a ring buffer of vertex buffers on the fly and passing them along to draw when they’ve reached a certain size. This gives me a choice of glBufferData, glBufferSubData and glMapBuffer… as we’re not sure how much triangle data is coming in each frame, mapping the buffer should be the best way.. but it’s going to require some hardware to test on – and I’ve only got access to a couple of Android tablets and phones so far. Either way, recreating the entire buffer every frame is going to be expensive, so let’s not do that one.

So, lots to do this month.
And there’s a Ludum Dare sneaking in too… should be fun!

On Friday, 12th July 2013, Arcade Badgers Limited released Germies! upon the world.
Only a week late! Must be a record for me; though it’s not quite that impressive if you take a look through it’s history.

Back in December 2010, for Ludum Dare 19, I was attempting a big project.
This failed disastrously, but in true Stuckie-style, I would not be beat. In the remaining ten hours of the Jam I literally threw together a little puzzle game. It was horrific, had nasty controls, ear bleedingly painful sounds, and almost no clue as to what to do. However, it had something in it that showed some promise. You can see this abomination over here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/12/20/germies/ and even with Claire and another artist friend throwing new art at it, it still didn’t save it.

So, it was put on the back burner. It was looked at a few times as a possible project, but it wasn’t until January 2013 when we had another serious look at it. We used it as our first ( and till this point only ) One Game A Month submission! You can have a gander at it here: http://www.arcadebadgers.co.uk/projects/1gam/january/ and I’m sure you’ll agree it’s already looking better. This time, the premise of the game was more visible, so we started pulling it apart to it’s core concept and building from there.

Arcade Badgers Limited was officially incorporated on April 30th 2013. It officially began trading on 5th July 2013, and our first game was released on 12th July 2013. Not too bad, eh?

So yes, the new version of Germies! What’s this one got?
It’s got Clay.io integration, so it has a Leaderboard, and 20 Achievements to test your skills with.
It’s still very much an Arcade Puzzle game, with a strong emphasis on Arcade as it’s not easy! Though once you learn the rules, you get the hang of it and can start doing some of the harder Achievements.

Interestingly, our 7 year old daughter loves it. To the point that the tablet is almost dead from her playing it all morning and she won’t give me it back! Her highest score? 4,107. Not too shabby for an Arcade Puzzle game that’s firmly rooted in the old-school ways of eating your money! However, from watching her play it, I can see a few more improvements that we can do to it, so the adventure of Germies! is not over yet!
That, and we’ve got to get it on more platforms, as it’s currently a mobile/desktop HTML5 web game. And we don’t quite have the distribution network for it yet, so the more platforms we can release on, the better footing we will get for future products.

In the next few weeks, I transition from ESA to the New Enterprise Allowance, and start up Arcade Badgers Limited as an actual trading company ( well, depending on the bank getting back to me with my account details… )

Scary stuff.

It has almost been a year since things went pear-shaped, and it’s a good feeling to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that I’m almost there! Although the next few weeks ( and indeed, the next year at least ) are probably going to be completely insane.

I have to get our first product done and out the door for July.
That’s a couple of weeks.
That’s a lot of mad work!
Here is a quick run down of what needs to be done:

1. Server Back-end.
2. The game itself.
3. Platform support ( setting up for Chrome Web Store, Mozilla, etc… )
4. Gamification stuff ( leaderboards, achievements, etc… )
5. Marketing and other Press stuff.
6. Time to actually deploy and test it.

All that ( plus more, no doubt ) within two weeks. Oh, and various business bits and bobs.
We also have the added bonus of the kids coming off school at the end of this two week marathon. so two kidlets running around all day for six weeks or so will make doing any work a heap of fun - so it’s critical to get the first game done and out the door before this!

We’re also taking Arcade Badgers an interesting route. We’re trying to be as inclusive as possible with our games. This has two main meanings:

1. Wide Platform Support.
2. Wide Accessibility.

In terms of wide platform support, we’re primarily developing in HTML5. This gives us the (ab)use of the Canvas, which we can wrap up with a native interpreter and push to mobile platforms for extra speed. As I’ll be writing this wrapper, I can target all sorts of hardware, and add in hardware specific features to allow us to have the best performance possible, as well as use any fun hardware specifics available. This wont be ready for launch, but we’ll be pushing out to new platforms often ( as well as updating all games that use the same system.. support for all! )

The interesting one is the wide accessibility. By this, I mean allowing people who may have some disability be able to play the game. This may be anything from the minor ( colour blindness ) to the major ( locked-in syndrome ) where a lot of the time, all it takes is a few changes to make the games more accessible. For example, our first game really hits the accessibility point on the head. In terms of controls, it’s just a case of pointing and clicking. This translates to pointing and touching a screen, moving a mouse, or even the use of eye trackers or other specialist hardware which translates as mouse movement. We also have two kinds of visual identification - shape and colour - so that regardless of how you see colour, you will certainly be able to make out the shapes.

While thinking that this may constrain our game design, it actually works in the game’s favour as streamlining controls makes for a more fluid game, and allows more people to play it. It’s win-win!

Of course, with a name like “Arcade Badgers” we are going to be doing some more Arcadey style games… the fun part will be, how do we make these as accessible as possible? And there may be times where it’s just not possible. That said, we will always be striving to have our games available to as many players as possible - be that device, or accessibility.

So yes, a fun time for all coming up!