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| Phil Hassey - game dev blog | |
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"Look, stores don't sell
costumes like this to just anyone." |
Hey,
As part of the “Community Restoration and Rejuvenation Act” I’ve changed the price of Galcon Labs for the iPhone to FREE for the weekend! This is a great opportunity for you to get all your friends in on the Galcon multi-player frenzy! So Go GO GO! Twitter about it! Facebook about it! Email about it! Get the word out!
Thanks!
-Phil
Hey,
To celebrate two crazy years of iPhone Galcon, I’m putting the game on sale for $1! If you don’t have it already, or have friends who haven’t gotten it .. well .. get it now!
Here’s a recap of where we’ve been over the last two years:
Early in development – June 2008
Original menus – June 2008, background was changed by launch
Galcon’s launch screenshot – July 2008
Soon after Galcon got multiplayer! Here’s a shot of me testing it under linux!
In March 2009, I won the IGF Innovation in Mobile Game Design award at GDC’09!
I decided to polish up the look of Galcon a few notches, and launched a graphical overhaul in July ‘09. Apparently I didn’t tell anyone because I can’t find any blog posts about it, but here are some screens:
Then in September ‘09 I launched Galcon Labs, which included 4 new game modes for Galcon!
I’m not entirely sure what the coming year will hold for Galcon, but I bet it’ll be swell!
-Phil
Yeah, you better …
This image represents the last few days of work. I have ported some 3000 lines of python code to tinypyC++ code. Fear it.
-Phil
Here’s a screenshot. This is my Ubuntu desktop of my work on a new iPhone game. Take a look at it nice and big. Below I’ll explain all of what is going on …
In short, I’m working on porting my pyweek#3 team entry to the iPhone. Here’s the details:
And that’s it for today’s report!
-Phil
My gift to you: A totally FREE iPhone game! I made this game several years ago with some other way-cool game-dev friends. In “Elephants!” you save the giraffes while jumping on a rolled up squirrel! More fun than a barrel of pigeons! For Christmas this year I figured I’d port it over to the iPhone for you 
Check it out!
From the dev side, yeah, this is my first attempt at “python” on the iPhone. Even though it’s actually restricted tinypy code. Here’s a sample of game code so you get the idea of what’s behind this game. All this code is converted by tinypy into C++ code so I can compile it with Xcode for the iPhone:
def elephant_new(g:Level,pos:List(int))->Sprite:
s = Sprite('elephant',pygame.Rect(43-14,8,28,48))
s.rect.set_centerx(pos[0])
s.rect.set_bottom(pos[1])
g.sprites.append(s)
s.ball = ball_new(g,(int(s.rect.get_centerx()),int(s.rect.get_bottom())))
s.suit = ElephantSuit()
s.vy = 0
s.vx = 0
s.jump = 0
s.facing = 'e'
s.score = 0
s.z = 1
s.state = 'live'
s.name = 'elephant'
return s
Two weeks ago, the price of Galcon @ $3, Labs @ $2, and Lite @ $0. This past week, I changed them to Galcon @ $5, Labs @ $3, and Lite at $1. I wanted to see how this would impact revenue.
…
And the big surprise is …
…
It didn’t! Much. Best I can calculate, revenue was down 10%. The most dramatic change was Lite, which went from $0 revenue to a few bucks a day, and from a few hundred downloads to almost none. So this week I’m changing the prices back to Galcon @ $3, Labs at $1, and Lite at $0. What have we learned? It seems that people who want a free game want a free game, and people who are willing to buy would rather spend less. Since I’m not going to run this sale for a month I can’t say for sure what the long term effects will be, but I’d guess word-of-mouth would be reduced as the pool of Lite players shrunk. Who knows 
Cheers!
-Phil
Hey,
So Galcon Labs is now available on the App Store! Check it out
Anyway, I just got back from 360iDev where I gave a talk about Galcon Multiplayer. The two main points made in the talk were about managing community, and test driven development. With so many devs talking about App rejections and other problems, I wanted to make sure the app was approved first time through the system. And it was, in an excellent 7 day turn-around So a real big thanks to all the folks out there who pressed me into reading the Kent Beck book on the subject!
-Phil
Hey,
After a few days of itunesconnect being down, I was able to submit Galcon Labs to the App Store. Check it out! (See Phil’s first ever video!)
On a dev note, this game was REALLY fun to make. I got to do things that completely change the gameplay of Galcon so that Galcon Labs is really four totally different feeling games. My favorites are the Billiards mode (where the planets move around) which is just a lot of fun, and the Assassin mode where instead of trying to conquer everyone, you are assigned a single player that you have to destroy first. The interesting thing about that, is if you destroy another player, or the player who is trying to annihilate you gets destroyed – YOU LOSE! It really changes up how you have to play!
As usual, testing (TDD) was a big deal. Having a network game makes it so that everything has to be tested to make sure it really works. I’m going to be doing a talk at 360iDev on Wednesday, so if you want to hear me compare UDP networking to herds of rabid animals, be sure to attend.
Also, check out pygame 1.8. It is really awesome While working on Galcon Labs I felt I needed to put more effort into differentiating the game from previous Galcon games visually. As it’s still triangle ships and planets, this took some effort. And during the last hour, I decided I needed a whole shiny new look for the planets. In the game I use a texture with 64 planet designs on it. So creating all those by hand would have been too hard. I used pygame to generate new landscapes and found the new pygame 1.8 features really helpful. I was able to use the new blending modes to trim the landscapes into circles and rotate and scale them down so I got a nice antialiased look for all the planets. In previous versions of pygame, this would not have been nearly as easy! So, not just for games, but for generating and doing automated image manipulation, pygame is really starting to shine
Cheers!
-Phil
Hey,
So I finally got a new game out! Yay! And here it is:
“The end of the world is nigh! Defend the world from the onslaught of an unfeeling universe!
“In Cosmic Nitro you must blast through nine different invasions. To play merely touch the invaders to blast them, but when things get too tough you can swipe the screen to launch a shield.
“Designed by award winning game designer Phil Hassey winner of the IGFM Innovation in Game Design award.”
So check it out, the game is only 0.99 and totally worth every penny! Be sure to tell your friends about it!
Cheers!
-Phil
P.S. I just submitted an update to Galcon to the App Store .. so keep an eye out for that in the next week or so! :)
So .. After recovering from GDC, I’m working on wrapping up my “new game” .. Which is in RC1 tonight. Hope to package it up and ship it tomorrow with a hopeful launch date of next week. I gotta get all my press materials together tomorrow so that when it does launch I’m ready. Here’s a checklist of things I need to get together:
