Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Team TYLER now in LKY Finals

TYLER is in the final round for the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition....yay! Check out the other finalists here! TYLER gets the chance to win big prize $$$ for the company so we can continue to make great games and technology!

Now begins the arduous task of convincing people to go for the award dinner. Yes that's right folks, it's MORE difficult to convince people to attend a free 5-course dinner at the Swissotel than getting them to go grab a late night snack with you.


Anyway, wish us good luck for the finals!
*Plays Metal Gear Soild 2 main theme*

"WE MUST SUCCEED!"
HERO-BOY

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Official Announcement! -> MW: Episode 1 is DELAYED!!!

Ok guys, this is an official announcement:

MW: Episode 1 (which we had planned / and announced that we would to release on 1st of July 2006) will be released instead on the 7th of July 2006. Not simply because the date is nice (7/7) but also because it gives us a good work week to do testing and add in more quests /items to the game! :-P

Set your calendars for the 7th!

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Mobile Weapon Developer Diary #29: Preparing for the big day

Before we launch MW:1 in July there's a couple of things we need to get done:

1) Need to get link banners ready.
2) Prevent "leeching" of MW:1 from our server.
3) Ready emailer for SG universities.
4) Figure out how to submit the game to MSN and Yahoo.
5) ??? - pls add

Remember everyone. Our target for MW:1 is 1 MMMmmmeeeellion unique players in 1 week from the launch date! We need to get well prepared before we launch.

Agenda for meeting this Saturday (same time and place):

1) Preparations for launch
2) SGGA www.sgga.net - what to do there and when to act
3) Funding proposals - Creative Community Singapore & MDA -progress and updates
4) Plan and Proposal for SMU Tangram web game

Sunday, June 18, 2006

MW:0 Wallpaper



Here's a new wallpaper for MW:0 I created for use in our Creative Community Singapore funding proposal. Featuring, the Avenger balanced class MAW from MW:0 and our 3D psuedo mascot, Calisto!

Click the image and grab it for your desktop now!

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Naming convention

The 3 MaWs:
==========
1. Melee
2. Gunner
3. Female

Currency
Start town
Transport town
Default male hero name
Default female hero name

Where to publish?

I was talking to a friend about Diner Dash. It's like the #1 game for casual gamers right now. And it's something any of us could program in a few days.

Are we not showing our game in the right places?

I think we need to find out how we can submit MW:1 to
MSN games,
Yahoo Games,
Shockwave,
Real Arcade,
AOL Games,
Free Downloads Center, etc.

Here are some publisher programmes we could check out too:
Oberon Media
Game Trust

Friday, June 16, 2006

Gunbot

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Mobile Weapon Developer Diary #28: Play testing the new combat system

Just a few points about the new combat system (please ammend and update this post as and when the problems are fixed or you have a possible solution or if I made a mistake somewhere):

Gamplay and graphics issues:
1) The monsters and characters should rush forward quickly and perform their attack rather than hover slowly to the target. The forward move phase should be twice as fast as the existing movement, moving back twice as fast as that (almost instantaneous).

2) Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the player and the monster attack simultaneously. They'll move towards each other and then pass each other and attack the area slightly behind the target. Is this due the algo used? Does it stop tracing the target's location half-way through the attack?

3) The algo that controls how long it takes the character to reach the target has a standard timing? I'd prefer if the sprites moved at a standard speed rather than standard time so they will hit their target earlier if there's a shorter distance to cover. Makes more sense I guess.

4) Let the interface bar flash when it's the character's turn. Don't have the whole MAW sprite flash. Alot of flashing MAWs is just confusing.

5) Positioning of the MAWs / enemies needs to be more spaced out. Perhaps the angle slightly changed. The character sprite on the extreme right is partially hidden.


Interface issues:
1) If I add in the action selection menu and enemy info display I think performance will degrade even further. I can convert some of the vector lines and text into JPG if it will help. I think medium quality is the lowest we can go without the interface distorting too much.


Performance issues:
1) How much additonal load does the jet boosters take up? I suggest the fembot keep her legs and just have the backpack booster from traveling around the map (her legs in the same position as the leg thrusters now). I battle she can stand on the floor. and activate her booster only when she needs to fly forward to attack. That should "boost" performance. :-P

Malc please help to QC the latest version when you have the time and add to this post! Thanks!

Saturday, June 10, 2006

How Original is "Original"?

Some people have been complaining on Newgrounds that our Mobile Weapon series isn't original and we've copied games / anime like Gundam, Gun Griffon, Guild wars, Space trader, etc.

Firstly, I have NEVER watched an episode of Gundam or played any Gundam game. I bought my Xbox in 2004 so I never got to play Gun Griffon. The only multiplayer online RPG I ever played was Phantasy Star Online. And what is Space Trader? I've never even heard of it.

I'm going to get a little philosophical here, but is "anything" truely original? It's quite difficult to imagine any of today's games not being inspired in some small way by some other earlier games. Sure the robot-pilot concept is not new. But we certainly did not look at any other game and say: "Ok that looks good, we'll just copy that since we know it works".

What you'll see in Mobile Weapon: Episode 1 are entirely original M.A.W. (mech) designs and an innovative battle system which we created ourselves. On the surface there will always be similarities to other games, even games we as developers have never ever played.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Mobile Weapon Developer Diary #27: Single Player Combat System Base

Yes, the base system for combat is now more or less done. This includes the following features:

- Hero Action Bar (we'll have to name this something else)
- Dynamically generated hero sprites
- Dynamically generated enemy sprites
- Hero move and attack
- Enemy move and attack
- Enemy AI attack target picking (currently there are only 2 versions of this)
- Dynamically generated attack effects
- Pop-up damage number
- Hero weapon selection (which changes the attack effects and damages accordingly)
- Enemy and Hero HP and healthbars (Yes they can die now)

Basically the whole flow for an attack goes like this - For any hero whose Action Bar is full, select the hero, click the attack button, select the target enemy, aaaaand... Voila! Hero will pull off attack based on the highlighted weapon in that hero's weapon-select menu.

So sorry that I'm unable to post any screenshots of this though, since all the generated sprites right now are bobbing square blobs of different colours.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Mobile Weapon Developer Diary #26: RPG Dialogue System

In MW:0 we only had a single level of NPC dialogue. For Mobile Weapon: Episode 1 we're going have a full out RPG dialogue system with multiple answers and depth.

Our Prototype chat system

I was thinking about the best way to save the new dialogue and I decided a tree structure would be best. We can have each character's dialogue saved as an XML document with alternating levels for questions and answers.

some rough sketches

...of the monsters?



some animal - based creatures


plus a colour shot of mech and soldier

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Mobile Weapon Developer Diary #25

Bulk testing





20 characters = No lag.

50 characters = Slight lag.

100 characters = Major lag.

Well.. until we optimise the walking code, 20 characters seems like a good limit to set on each area.