SwiftThought Games

Author: admin

  • Happy July!

    Whew, it’s Texas summer again.

    Had a great 4th, blew stuff up and relaxed with family.

    Personal Game Development is looking to have some time to ramp up on Barnyard Bonanza again towards the end of July, just after I finish wrapping up the current slate of consulting work that’s eaten the last 2 months. (a very enjoyable and challenging project, but I’m itching to get back to some of my projects)

    Of course I’d be happy if I got more projects as well.  Consulting comes first after all 🙂

    Other things in the pipeline:

    • Mobile App development,  HTML5 etc.. interesting stuff, can’t wait to do  more of it.
    • Several pet project websites need refreshes / more content (http://eatingsparrows.com/ http://slick2d.com/)
    • Irismel & BSDDoD! need some more love
    • and SuperSecret project needs a lot of datamodeling and wireframing so we can get started.

     

  • Shake the foundations

    Ever have one of those days when the status quo just doesn’t do it anymore?

    Time to step out of my comfort zone. Its time to stop taking it easy. Dreams are made to be chased. Survival is not just enough to live on.

    Yeah.  Me too.    I think it’s getting to be the point where it’s time to shake this shit up.

     

  • Hear that? That was Mayjune.. whoosh.

    Wooosh... another month gone.

    Where does the time go?

    Current development progress… in a nutshell… nonexistant.

    On the other hand, paying client work… is through the roof, and it’s actually been a good bit of fun.  Lots of high pressure API wrangling, tight deadlines and awesome cool front end WhizBang UI work and some pretty serious SalesForce.com and Convio Luminate integration into a custom data structure.

    Good times, and it’ll pay off the new beast of a work PC 🙂

    So, Other than that here’s where things stand.

    • Irismel – Still running on TGB.  basic core is getting there.  A little in limbo as I try and tweak the basic mechanic and find out what’s missing
    • Barnyard Bonanza – LibGDX android app.. is really close.  I just need to implement the bonus games and some animation stuff.  However my G2 Fried itself early may… then 4 days after getting a replacement it did the same thing (screen signal breaks.. probably due to that crazy hinge design) Now I’m using a myTouch   that seems to work but I havent gotten it to behave with Eclipse and the dev tools…
    • However as mentioned above, paying work comes first, and it’s been a really good month for it.  I wish I had more time to do more of it.  (maybe.. some possibilities exist)
    • So in the time I do have, I’ve been working through an anatomy course fromhttp://www.alienthink.com/  And it’s reaaaaally good.  and Reeeaaaaally long.. so far I’m at lesson 39..  I’m keeping a gallery of progress here: https://plus.google.com/.…
    • Slick2d.com – basic site is up but progress is limited to lunch break sized tweaks.
    • Oh and as you can tell… swiftthought.com is Sloooowly getting a much needed update.  However the move away from comicpress means that every old article needs to be manually updated… *yuk*

    That’s it for now.

    Fun things are coming in July/August I think.

  • Goodbye April!

    What a month!

    Failing motherboards, hard drives, bad ram.  And an attempt at repairing the ol PC wound up eating most of the month.  Then when it turns out that the fixed PC isn’t stable I went ahead and just said screw it and bought a Dell.   It’s a monster of a system and hopefully My PC woes and troubles are finished for the next 3 years.

    Then my phone / development test device died.

    Yeah .. great.  Luckily T-Mobile’s warrenty replacement covered it.. and they shipped me a refurb replacement in short order.

    It lasted until this Saturday when it died in the middle of sending a text.

    In the middle of all that I did manage to get a single week’s worth of productive coding.  The odds got tweaked, the individual reels now run independently so they spin in a more convincing manner and two of the four power-ups are in there and working.

    The powerup price increases every time you buy them so that balances them out a bit from overpowering everything.

    The new template for the site is now active and It seems ok  I did loose the all the splash images for each of the posts though.. not happy about that.   Maybe I can find a way to get them inserted in their proper posts.

     

  • Happy Easter – Week end update

    Busy busy week.. all freelance debugging and we development..

    So not much progress on the game.

    • Money rounding..  yeah.. lots of refactoring code.
    • Moving some more UI elements into groups so they render in the proper order and can be switched on and off.

    Anyway here’s another beta.. # 7 now.

    http://www.swiftthought.com/temp/BarnyardBonanza007beta.apk

    Download Barnyard Bonanza beta #7

  • Barnyard Bonanza – Week End Update

     

    Woo good Week!

    New Beta 6!

    • Better Odds manager (you can see it by clicking the puzzle piece on the Main Menu)
    • Reworked tons of the Odds and Money manager backside so money should be handled better.
    • Implemented adMob ads 🙂
    • Got a good start on painting the home screen .. then did it again as photoshop crashed. (FML)
    • Made the loading screen handle screen changes and stuff magically.
    • Reels are generated a bit more realistically and auto re-factor every 100 pulls
    • Started getting sound fx implemented .. not working on desktop .. sometimes on android.. :-/

    Here’s Some screenshots, a link, and a QR to the apk

    Download the latest beta (006) here http://www.swiftthought.com/temp/BarnyardBonanza006beta.apk

    Next up:

    • Turning sound on/off :-/
    • Get the Powerup Buying working
    • Maybe a mini game!

  • Midweek update!

    Man are we on a roll this week!

    Another beta,  new features behind the scenes..

    • Asset manager implemented
    • Loading screens.
    •  The beginning of the Powerup Shop
    • Better animation
    • Various internal re-shuffling
    • New UI Buttons

    Here’s a screenshot and a link and a QR code for the beta

    Barnyard Bonanza beta 5 Screenshot

    If you have an Android device you can play with the Beta here:

    http://www.swiftthought.com/temp/BarnyardBonanza005beta.apk

     

  • Nother Week, another beta.

    Not too much progress this week. Lots of playtesting though.

    Some more UI tweaks and special effects and Particles (coin fountain based on amount you win)… however Photoshop crashed and I lost a revision of the UI buttons.. so technically this is a version behind.  But it now oficially detects running out of money.  Also removed a symbol from the lineup which should increase loosness of the game but still the payouts are… way too generous (ie you really have to work at loosing).

    New buttons for “Cashing Out” and “powerups” are on-route, along with a Main Menu, Bonus Games and other goodies.

    As always.. If you have an android device.. I’d love to hear any feedback.

    www.swiftthought.com/temp/BarnyardBonanza004beta.apk

  • Latest Barnyard Bonanza Test Version

    [Edit:  Fixed the problem with downloads failing for android 2.2 users  (stoopid mime types an htaccess) ]

    Very productive evening.  Fixed the basic timing on reel spin slippage so at the end of every spin things wind up in their proper place.  Lines now generate payouts properly 🙂

    Looks like the odds need to be tweaked a bit.. more low paying  hits would be good,

    Have an Android device?

    Want to test something for me?

    http://www.swiftthought.com/temp/BarnyardBonanza002beta.apk

     

    Download the latest beta

    Next up:

    • Adding bonus calculations (5 in a row with a bonus or more as a wild card kicks off a bonus round)
    • basic sounds
    • Odds tweaking
    • A main menu.. saving and loading games
    • Bonus games.
    • Animating the icons that hit on a spin. and special FX showing winning on a pull.

  • Android Deviations

    Oops, meant to post last week’s Screenshot Saturday.

    As pennance here’s 2 screenshots from the in progress Android game, that’s coming along nicely.

    (yes Irismel is taking a little development break while I work on some of the mechanics in spreadsheet and paper form. The RTS elements weren’t working right. Now I’m leaning towards something a bit more Tower defensish)

     

  • ScreenShot Saturday!

    Look its an Android application

    Barnyard Bonanza

  • Moving, Projects, Goodies

    Finally closed on a new house so it’s going to be quiet around here until mid Feb when I’ll have settled in.

    Then it’s time for a facelift to the site and some exciting project work 🙂

     

  • Lunchtime Spriting


    Just some Random Sprites I was playing around with while eating my leftovers at lunch. No real planned use for them just practice.

  • Post Funk

    Happy Holidays.
    Tons of family fun was had and much food was eaten and celebrations were celebrated in glorious style.

    However, we’re leaving 2011 behind with an impending close and consequent move to the new house in the next 45(hope hope hope) days and a 22month old with a broken leg. So I’m just going to abandon any pretense of having ‘fun project’ time untl March 1. (outside of any lunchtime coding I can squeeze in)

    This totally sucks but, alas, is unavoidable.

    Catch ya on the flipside..

  • Yaay Death and Stuff

    So while it’s only 2 new tasks complete, there’s 2 more that are 80% there and others are planned out.

    Here’s a recap of new stuff:

    • PCs and monsters now shoot and damage each other with functioning ranged combat!
    • PCs can die!
    • Monsters can die!
    • Monster spawner behavior is 90% there
    • PC equip-able items / attacks are close to being there.
    • New portraits are almost done.. then we’ll have 3 different PCs
    • Project title finally announced:

    And Here’s a new Screenshot showing some of the things that you can see: