I think we all have a duty to produce a unique centerpiece for Thanksgiving (or your equivalent national eating turkey holiday.)

This was my Thanksgiving centerpiece from last year. Part of it was performance art – the construction of the piece as the turkey was being cooked. It was made from Cheetos cheese doodles and toothpicks.

This year, I’m considering some other options. Possibly even options that might be semi-relevant to this blog. I’d say more, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

-Phil

Wow, it’s been 30 days? That’s a long time! At least, say, compared to 5 minutes. I’ve spent the morning answering emails and trying to round up artists for this game. Again, check out my jobs page if you or anyone you know is interested. I can’t wait to see how the game is going to look with “real” art 🙂

I’m going to try and get this game “running” on the iPad. At least, compiling. I’ve got only a couple hours, so we’ll see what we can do.

– Created iPad project. Moved in all files and game assets and gave it a build just to see a big number. 755 errors! Swell!

– I set up my standard -D defines. Error count down to 348.

– Added in proper loading of the iOS OpenGLES headers. Down to 78.

– Fixed use of SDL_ defines in my code to use my generic defines for various keys. Down to 42.

– #ifdef’d out all SDL stuff based on my USING_SDL define. Down to 19.

– Created a few iOS / ObjC specific functions in a .mm file. Down to 17.

– Changed all GLdouble to GLfloat. Down to 5.

– Included “glues” a GLU for ES implementation. Down to 0!!

Now onto the linker errors. I’m starting with 6. The are all the missing audio functions. I’ll have to get my iOS audio code copied over from Galcon Fusion for this.

Got rid of those, but now I’ve got 18 other linker errors. Trying to work out what Frameworks I need, I guess. Just needed “CoreGraphics” it appears. And I’ve got a build! It’s a dummy build, in that it just shows the default bouncing box that the project includes. I’ve got to connect the iPad app to the actual game now – but having it compile without errors is always a good first step!

To wrap the game I’m creating a new file – gamewrap.cpp. The header will include some very simple functions so the ObjC code does not have to interact with any of the real game objects. (This means I’m going to have a global game variable in gamewrap.cpp. This is something which can add some level of pain for Android ports, but I’ll face that music later.)

… and … I’ve got a visual! It’s oriented wrong, and I don’t have it handling events yet, but hey – it worked! Wow!

Now if I can get it handling events and oriented proper, the game will be “working” at some level on the iPad 🙂 .. Got those working, and the game is almost working – some of the 3D rendering is still a bit off though:

Anyway, I guess that leaves me something to do tomorrow!

-Phil

It’s been a crazy month developing this game! But here it is, in all it’s beta-glory! I’m doing an open beta so that you can get the game early and provide feedback so it can be the best game possible!

Here’s a short gameplay video to give you an idea of how it plays.

Lastly, if you are an artist or musician and you want to work with me to polish this game, let’s talk.

Thanks!
-Phil

(Yeah, there was a day I didn’t blog, but I did work .. hence the jump!)

So I spent some real time working on text editing yesterday. Text editing is important in this game because the level designer is such a great part of the game. I really want users who are typing in the intro text and title text of their levels not to feel as though they are suffering. Here’s a shot to show the new features:

It took some work to get all those text editing features to work in harmony, but I’m pretty pleased with how it came out. I’ll have to do some adaption when I port to the iPad, as touch text interfaces are somewhat different, but it shouldn’t take too much messing to have it work nicely on the iPad as well.

Tomorrow I’m going to try and launch this beta a bit wider 🙂 Nan and I did a bunch of work on the tutorial levels today, so now the whole game gets nicely explained in those levels. This game is a ton of fun!

-Phil

Hey, so the game is now available for sale in what I call “super-beta-mode” .. I guess it might be pretty polished in some places, but it’s still got a ways to go. I’ll be announcing this more widely in a few days, but for now, STEALTH TARGET is available for $9.99 for OS X only on my website. No demo yet, but I’ll be posting a video pretty soon though!

Here’s some screenies:

This game was created as part of the Ludum Dare October Challenge. Which was a challenge to create a game and bring it to market in 1 month. I started a week early and got here a few days late. But pretty close! I’ll be making a more serious push with the game over the next few weeks as the features and graphics get more polish. So if you want to help out, get in the beta now and start posting your thoughts so I can make this game the best it possibly can be!

Cheers!
-Phil

So, today I’ve been adding polish to the game. Here’s my changelog so far:

– test moving lights
– better start position indicator
– pause buttons
– rotate view buttons
– better “build” level picker

Now I’m onto working on creating the “tutorial” levels. There’s going to be 10 of them and they will cover all the basics of the gameplay and controls.

But first I had to update my level building menus so I could delete a ton of junk test levels. Took a while to get this all working right, I ended up having to fix a few bugs in my GUI code. It works nicely now.

I hope to have the beta sale started tomorrow. Here’s to hoping!

-Phil

The Android market is kind of crazy! There are dozens of markets out there, and I’m only tapped into the “Google Android Marketplace”. I’d like to get a publisher or someone who could (for a reasonable cut) get Galcon onto all the other markets, and manage all those opportunities. I get lots of emails about various opportunities, but doing all that bizdev / tweaking the game to work for various other market places is just not something I can do right now.

If you know of a good one, or are a good one, let’s talk!

-Phil

P.S. if you’re an indie developer who has put their game on all these platforms and want to take on Galcon, I’d be open for that kind of option too!

P.S.S. given it a bit further thought, I think what I’m looking for is a Android bizdev person, actually.