Galcon Fusion is currently priced at $8 on the App Store. I originally had a longer post written, but I think this App Store user review says so much about the psychology of pricing and the values on the App Store that I really can’t think of anything to add to it.

“The price stinks, but it’s worth double!” – Jacques P.

See the Ludum Dare 2010 Keynote:

Inviting all python game-devs! Even if this notice is coming too late, we’ve got a compo coming in August, December, and mini-compos every month! Just check out the website and join the fun!

-Phil

Man, I’ve been having fun with this iPad 🙂

This image took a couple hours to draw. The AMX was much harder because I couldn’t just sloppy out whatever, I had to use straight lines and try to get it looking like the original. So being “less creative” is really quite a bit harder.

-Phil

I know a lot of us really feel that society as a whole isn’t paying enough taxes right now. But don’t worry – there is a way to take matters into our own hands! Tonight let’s show the “TEA PARTY” a thing or two and have a “TAX PARTY” and contribute as much as we can! Every penny helps!

Here’s some links to help you get started:

• How do I make a contribution to the U.S. government?
• What is the 2010 United States federal budget?
• What kind of change can I expect to see?

Have a happy “TAX DAY”!
-Phil

Got a bit inspired by Monkey Island 2 swamps for this one …

Again, iPad + Sketchbook Pro + Pogo Sketch Stylus = Fun!

-Phil

I think the iPad + the Pogo Stylus + Sketchbook Pro is a pretty killer combo after all.

That took 48 minutes, I used this image for inspiration.

So Galcon Fusion is available for the iPad.

Here’s a bit of tech stuff for ya! The port itself took about 3 days. If you check out the screenshots, you can see I letterboxed the desktop version of Galcon Fusion, and used that extra area to put the iPad specific controls (the pause button, the chat activation button, and the ships % “mouse wheel”)

I don’t have an iPad yet, but I think it’s going to work pretty well. The multi-touch interface design was all done ages ago for the iPhone, so I just used that code for this. It should work great!

The biggest challenge in porting was dealing with OpenGL stack limits on the iPad which appear to be 16 levels. My GUI used quite a few Push/Pop’s to achieve various theme effects and whatnot, but that was blowing the stack. It took me a bit, but I was able to find a number of places where I was able to remove those uses of the stack and things seemed to work fine. (There are some edge cases where my changes wouldn’t be safe, but none of my code uses those, so no harm!)

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to getting an iPad and seeing how the iPad users stack up against the mouse users. This will really pit two different interfaces against each other, which should be really neat. Both interfaces have their own advantages!

As always, python proved useful in this project as I had to update all my graphical assets for the game to work with the iPad. Since my asset pipeline was written in python and pygame, it only took a couple minutes to add in the code I needed to fix a few issues. And thankfully these fixes will go forward and improve my desktop version as well, so all and all, a good deal.

-Phil

P.S. In other news, I’ve been playing with django lately for my non-games business. It’s slick!

Update: Since I was unable to test Galcon Fusion on a REAL iPad it has bugs 🙁 Apparently the multi-player game crashes and the framerate is low. I’ll be getting my iPad on Monday and fixing those issues ASAP! There’s probably some kind of “testing on real hardware is smart” kind of lesson in this somewhere …

The iPad launched today, and Galcon Fusion is ready for it! The iPad version is fully multiplayer compatible with the desktop versions, so if you have an iPad or know anyone who has an iPad or know anyone who is thinking about iPads, it’s time to buy Galcon Fusion!

Also, a good friend of mine has launched his game “Smiles” onto the App Store. It’s a super slick Match-3 game and it’s FREE today only! Get it while it’s hot!

Thanks!
-Phil & Nanno

P.S. the iPhone Galcon update got approved, I hope that fixes all the issues! Please update ASAP. Galcon Labs is still pending approval, but about a day after it gets approved, I’m going to require updates to play the multi-player so that all the users are playing together again