Corxas

Battle Stations Preview: New Ship designs

A Wooden ship!


A Metal ship!


I also have some bad news. I doubt we'll be able to roll out the full version before Christmas. I'll see if we can at least get a testing version with the new interface in by then.

A taste of things to come...

We'll be using a lot more 3D effects for the "full" version.

Here's an example of one of the different environments that will be available in the December release. Shown here is the Maelstorm (yes, it's actually animated) environment which can actually be invoked by the player in the form of a rare level 80 skill. The ship's booster flare is also a 3D particle effect.



I should probably state that there's no way we can complete everything we listed for the full version by December.

We're going to release a ton of new stuff for the "full" version before Christmas but it's still not going to be 100% completed.

Good night, sweet prince

Some of you might have already heard that TYLER's young and talented music composer, Reuben, has passed away after a tragic dragon boat race mishap.

The first time I met Reuben at our old office I remember thinking to myself: "Damn, this guy is a composer?! He should be a model or professional athlete". Guess what? He was all of the above.

Talented music composer, Mr. World Singapore 2007, member of the national dragon boat team, 3D artist, works with disabled kids, excellent DOTA player and all round a really nice guy. Honestly, he's achieved more in his 23 years than most of us will ever in a lifetime and doesn't brag about any of it.

Reuben scored and performed music for Mobile Weapon 1, MW:TC, Ramen Ramen! and Battle Stations. He volunteered to create music for Battle Stations even though we didn't commission any. He was very passionate about the game just as he was passionate about every other part of his life. I was also going to get him to kick start the audio section of our new MW portal.

He didn't get to see his work for Battle Stations put into the final product (that's due out in late December before Christmas) but we'll still release the full version with his work because it's what he wanted. I remember he kept bugging me on msn to find a feasible solution to incorporate the music into the Facebook game.

IMO the music he made for Battle Stations was his best work yet so I'm going to go the extra mile to make sure Battle Stations becomes my best work too so it'll do justice to his great music.

We'll dedicate the full version of the game to him and donate some royalties to the Reuben Kee memorial fund for under privileged kids.

For those of you who haven't heard his good stuff you can check out his website www.reubenkee.com which we'll help to keep live, hopefully forever.

Reuben! we were supposed to have a mega-DOTA session after my exams this week! We shall play DOTA again someday!



"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"

Class Progression in Battle Stations

Here's a quick preview of some stuff that's going to be in the completed version of Battle Stations:

Class Progression:
Players will be able to advance to better job classes from the basic 5 jobs. For example: players on the commander track will start as the Soldier; advance to Officer; then to Commander.

Advanced classes get more stat points and special abilities they can use in combat. Here's the artwork for the female soldier and officer.



Class abilities:
There will be different abilities for different classes. Here are some examples (no prizes for guessing which are the respective classes they belong to):

Preemptive Strike – you fire first during defense
Black Barrage – all weapons fire for 1 more round
Augment – repair in combat + boost to SPD, HP, ATK
Gold Cannon – deal damage proportional to your gold
Maneuver – adjust speed to stay at maximum range

The special abilities cannot be used every battle because they will require strategy points (SP) to activate. More details after my exams end...

Better? Yeah right.

Today, our Battle Stations forum got spammed by a player of some web game. Their game has more than 1 million registered players (launched Dec 2006), ours has 24,000 players (launched Oct 2007).

Let's compare traffic numbers:



We have lower traffic but it's almost on par. And we have 41.6 times less players. At our current rate of growth, guess where we'll be given the same amount of time?

This is the same web game that's been responsible for spamming a lot of other Facebook games like Warbook and Pirates.

MW.net's Alexa ranking breaks through the 10,000 level

Like the title says. I was pretty excited when I saw it: 8,150! I hope we can raise our traffic to make 4-digit ranking for the 3 month average and shoot for 3-digit ranking!

Changeable character outfits for Battle Stations

Very soon (when we're out of BETA), you'll be able to buy different outfits from a new clothing shop for your character. Check out this new pirate outfit!





All classes will be able to equip the new outfits, so even an engineer can wear the new pirate costume if they want. The hats are also now separate as well so you can mix and match hats with different outfits.

A big thank you to our contributing artist, Jonathan, for designing the new outfit as well as helping to make the changing system possible by breaking down the avatars into parts.

Most successful weekend event ever!

Last week, we had what was probably the most exciting event ever held in Battle Stations yet. A giant ancient flying fortress appeared over the dunes of Al Amraan and airship captains from all over flew in to meet the challenge: To try to sink the fortress and get one of the 3 rare weapons given as a reward for sinking the legendary fortress.

8.5 million HP spread over 3 instances was not insurmountable as thousands of players participated in the weekend event, sinking the fortress 3 times!



Here's the traffic statistics for the weekend event:
Saturday > 12K unique users
Sunday > 15K unique users

Wow. That goes a long way to helping us hit our target of 50,000 UU per month!

Embed Battlestations... just like Youtube!

Now you can embed fight replays in your blog/website/wherever just like a Youtube video! The code to embed the fight replay will appear just below the replay URL in the replay window.

Mobileweapon.net's Alexa site rank improves 2,273%

About 2 months ago, I announced we'd be taking some measures to improve our site traffic and Alexa ranking. At the time of that post (21 Aug) mobileweapon.net's Alexa site rank was 381,945 and we had never gone lower than 244K.

Last week our ranking was still about 298K and we hadn't yet implemented our SEO initiatives yet. Then yesterday, our site ranking went up to.... 16,807! with a 1 week average of 21,323! That's a 2272.54% improvement over 381,945.



Not surprisingly, 78% of the increased traffic came from Battle Stations! (our facebook game). But what is surprising is the effect that the increased traffic had on our Alexa ranking.

We'll be expecting to see further improvements in our site ranking and increased traffic as we roll out more facebook applications and when our new mobileweapon online portal is ready end of the year.

MW: Battle Stations! - traders ready!

At long last, the traders are ready and we now have the full set of characters for MW:Battle Stations!

Next on the to-do-list; More special avatar outfits to customize your character as well as graphics for all the ports, port buildings, sailing options, etc. Battle Stations! isn't only going to be the best game on Facebook in terms of gameplay, but the Facebook game with the best graphics as well!



Stay tuned for more updates!

Too late to get on the Facebook Bandwagon?

Things got interesting earlier this week when it was reported that Microsoft was considering a stake in a 5% stake in Facebook for between $300 million to $500 million. Following the news, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) shares rose to from below $29 to almost $30 mid-week before closing the week at $29.46 representing a gain of about 2.3%. More importantly, it got people really aware of the Facebook "phenomenon".

I was listening to the 93.8 live DJs discussing Facebook on air and I thought: Wow! Now EVERYONE (even those who aren't part of the usual social network demographic) is talking about Facebook!

Since we officially launched Singapore's first Facebook MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game), MW:BattleStations! about 3 weeks ago, we've been contracted by 2 other companies to create Facebook apps for them. We actually had to turn down 2 more requests because our order book was already full.

While we were working on BattleStations!, I was tracking the user growth of Warbook (another Facebook MMO) when it still had no more than 1200 users. The day after I joined, it grew by 1500+ users; 2000+ the day after that and 2500+ the day after. Beyond that, I didn't bother counting and spent more time working on our own app. With those kinds of growth figures, it's no surprise that developers are churning out hundreds of new applications everyday hoping to enjoy the same success.

However, economic theory dictates that something this good can't last forever and there are signs that it might already be too late to reap the same exponential growth that the first movers did.

Take our app for example:



MW: BattleStations! is growing at the rate of about 300~400 installs per day (~4000 in total). Active user growth is about 100~150 a day (active users = ~50% of total installs). The growth is certainly accelerating, but it's not exponential. The inertia is definitely noticeable and a sign of increasing saturation in the Facebook app space.

I can think of 2 reasons for this:

1) If you think about it, there's a limited amount of real estate on a user's profile that they are willing to use for apps. The apps that manage to get onto users' profiles earlier tend to stay there. Facebook users have also started to get sick of the torrent of invites they get all the time and now tend to ignore new invites.

2) Facebook has been trying to prevent "spam" marketing by apps and they've changed a few things as a result:
- Apps are now rated according to the % of active users they have instead of just installs (total users with the app).
- FB API has changed to prevent apps from spamming users with invites. Earlier apps could allow users to send invites to all their friends and even reward users just for sending out invites. Not anymore, the new system restricts you to 15 invites and the developers don't have anyway to track the invites and new users.

Newer apps are going find it very hard to get any traction even if they are better than existing apps. The way I see it, if you want to launch an app now you have to either:

a) make an app that's very viral and is really going to make users want to add it to their profile
b) you spend alot of money either buying ad banner space from Facebook or advertising on apps with a larger user base.

I think the Facebook Platform still has some ways to go before it hits a mature stage of development. While most of the early apps were created by individuals, I expect to see more companies with bigger budgets really going all out to push higher quality apps which will mean better quality and variety for Facebook users.

For the application owners who are already on Facebook and have managed to secure a stable user base; that user base will become more valuable as time goes by and the barriers to entry start propping up...

...which is why we'll launching 2 more apps very, very soon.

Pocket Cafe Developer Diary #5

I finally managed to find the time to review the screen renders for Pocket Cafe after my mid-term exam today. Pocket Cafe looks awesome! The sprites are an awesome interpretation of Lilian's anime character drawings.

I was just thinking to myself, hey, we should make Pocket Cafe into an MMO just like Mobile Weapon: Battle Stations! If we do that, Pocket Cafe will become the world's first restaurant MMOG!

MW: Battle Stations! - new character images!

Here are the new character avatar images for the engineers, male explorer and female pirate. Kudos to our artist, Shaoyang, rushing them out so quickly! We're one step closer to make Battle Stations the best MMOG on Facebook!



We'll have these characters (as well as the 2 commanders) added into the game this weekend so you'll get to see the correct characters for your display avatar. Traders will have to wait a while longer but don't worry about it, we'll get them done ASAP!

"Man your BattleStations!" - a Facebook MMO from TYLER

We haven't released any games for quite a while. That's because we were secretly working on this: Mobile Weapon: BattleStations! You can play the game now! just follow this link http://apps.facebook.com/battlestations/



It's our first MMO and we're pretty excited about it because we'll be launching it first inside Facebook and then later on mobileweapon.net. We've just finished an overtime, over the weekend session to get the game finished so we can launch it this week!

We've been doing ALPHA testing since 2 weeks ago and I must say that the game is really fun even though it's now just into BETA. Here are some screen shots of the game:

Explore the world!
We've made sure there's plenty to do in MW:BS. If fighting all the time isn't your kind of thing, you can go exploring or trading to make some gold and maybe find rare items. We've added more than 50+ ships, weapons and upgrades. There are plenty of secret items to be found as well.



Ship to Ship Combat!
Remember the characters in MW1 boarded and airship and flew to the Imperial City? In MW:BS you are the captain of your own airship. Airships are a big part of Sios and we decided it be fun if you get to fly your own and try to become the most powerful battleship in Sios!


It's not MAWs but finally MW players will be able to engage in PvP combat!

Make sure you add the game to your Facebook account ASAP!

If you love MW ...you love Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann!

We don't normally do Anime reviews on this website but I've been watching this one recently and I think Mobile Weapon fans are really going to like this one.

The Japanese title roughly translates into "Break through the Heavens, Gurren Lagann!". It's not your run of the mill mecha Anime and the show is a great mix of comedy and over the top action. Definitely one of the best series I have seen so far this year.



I strongly recommend checking this one out. You guys may also want to check out the Wikipedia entry for more details!

TYLER aims to boost traffic to 80 million hits per month

To achieve our financial target for Q1 2008, TYLER will aim to increase its traffic (and consequently ad revenue) to 80 million hits on any combination of our key website assets. Higher volumes of traffic concentrated on one site will allow us to get higher advertising premiums.

We'll be focusing most of the efforts on mobileweapon.net as well as our new release title "BattleStations!"

We'll be doing 4 initiatives to boost traffic to the desired level:

1) New Multi-player Content
2) Social Networking
3) Alexa
4) SEO


1) New Multi-player Content
We'll have a few new releases by end of year. MW: Battle Stations! will be released early September. While the beta version of MW: Online will be release end of the year.

Long over due is an advertising programme with ad rate card for advertisers to come direct to us if they want to advertise with us.

2) Social Networking
Su Yuen will be helping us get publicity through social media because she's more familiar with the blogging community and web widgets like twitter which I really can't keep track of.

We'll also be redesign Mobileweapon.net to have community features and allow for user submitted content. Mobileweapon.net will also have updated news from the TYLER blog by having an rss feed to show the news (instead of just the headlines as it shows now).

We'll also create a webmasters section for fan site kits and link banners to our game sites.

All of our new multiplayer games will also have widgets for blogs and social networks: Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Hi5, tagged, Friendster

3) Alexa
I'll be working on the Alexa initiatives:
- Installing Alexa tool bars in all TYLER computers and setting Mobileweapon.net as the homepage.
- Write articles for authority sites such as Digg, Wikipedia, etc
- Add Mobileweapon.net link to my forum signatures and also blog about web marketing and how we're working to increase site traffic (like that I'm doing now).


4) SEO
Joel will be handling the SEO initiatives:
- Get listed in Yahoo Directory, Google directory, etc
- Perform keyword identification and keyword density measures to ensure that search referrals are maximized
- Write articles for authority sites

TYLER's SEO, Alexa initiatives

A friend of mine, Joel, will be working with me to perform SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on all key TYLER websites i.e. mobileweapon.net, chocopets.com. We know the new MMO and portal projects we're working on will help to bring in a lot of traffic. But if there's anything more we can do to help people to find our sites and get more traffic, we're definitely going to try it out.

For the record, the Alexa ranking for mobileweapon.net was at 381,945 when I first started composing this post. The past record high was about 244K and it's been dropping ever since.

Will TYLER be able to bust into the 4 or 5 figure range by December? We shall see...

MW: Battle Online!

Hi Guys, here's an update for MW:Online.

We'll be changing the name to MW:Battle Online! to show the new emphasis on the combat system (we had a big headache trying to make the exploration system so we'll add that only later). We've got a new combat system specially for our online multiplayer version that is unlike any of the other casual MMOs out there (or any other MMO for that matter).


The 2 promotional images you see here feature the remodeled Avenger MK2 with a completely new MAW. These are in game graphics! Well, the blur effects might be slightly different depending on how we want to optimize them for the engine.

We may introduce texturing later on but for now we'll be be using the same system as MW1 which let you guys customize the colors on your own MAW.

New MAWs for MW Online

Those of you who have been following my tread on the forum will know we've decide to focus our efforts on developing MW Online.

One of the key factors in making a good online game is variety and you guys said we need more MAWs. To make sure we really have alot of new MAWs and enemies, we'll be adding MAWs from MWTC:mobile, MWA2(currently on hold), and some unrelased MAWs from MW1.

Here's a preview of MAWs taken from MWTC:mobile:

Mobile Adaptive Weapons (MAWs)

"Strider" - Assault / Anti-personnel Type
A fast, agile MAW equipped with dual gattling cannons for quick hit and run attacks.


"Rhino" - Defender Type
The Rhino embodies the typical defender type MAW; heavy frontal armor and armed with a heavy cannon loaded with armor piercing rounds which would punch right through lightly armored MAWs. The Rhino also has a MAW hammer to deal with melee attackers.


"Longbow" - Artillery Type
In large battles, mobile artillery like the Longbow are of great strategic value. The entire MAW is designed so it can brace from the recoil of firing its "firestorm" main gun. However this means that the Longbow is completely open to melee attacks with no means to retailate.



Conventional Weapon Platforms

"Goliath" Medium Tank
The backbone of the Imperial army. While not as manuverable as MAWs or as versatile in terms of armament, their main cannon packs a powerful punch.


"Impaler" Missle Tank
Often seen backing up the frontline tanks, "Impalers" provide range support fire.


We'll also be adding a few new MAWs specially for MW Online, so there'll be plenty of different MAWs for you to choose from when MW Online goes live in December!

We make some nice mobile games with Scrawl Studios

TYLER Projects teamed up with Scrawl Studios to produce a few mobile games based on their Nanoboy TV series. The games look very nice, they have good artists. Their art + our programming = good games.



I will now entertain your rants on why are we working on things like this instead of Mobile Weapon. :-P

Mobile Weapon 1st Anniversary

Mobile Weapon was launched on 7th of July 2006.

One year later, what better way to commemorate the first anniversary of Mobile Weapon than with our user counter going over 3 Meeeliiooonn.... exactly 365 days after the game was first launched (it was still less than 3mil on 6 July). Dat's right, more than 3,000,000 people (or unique computers) now know that Mobile Weapon is more than just a term for the ordinary tanks in Gundam.

To celebrate MW's birthday, here are some updates:

a) MW2 Progress - It's NOT 50% done. It's not 10% done. It's still in the ??? phase because it's going to take a long time to do it. I promised 3 times the length of the first game + console (PS2) game quality so it will take some time (meaning a LONG time).

I will say this though the graphics are SOooo much better than MW1 that it will blow your mind when you see them (I showed my fren Desmond and it blew his mind). You'll look at the "beyond god-like" 3D graphics and say: "Yes, this truely deserves to be on a console, I will pay for the full version of this game." Hehe.

Bad news is: I'm not going to show you guys anything because we still have to work out the details with our animation company. The good news is: you may be able to get a glimpse of some those gorgeous graphics in...

b) Mobile Weapon Assault 2 - We're making a commercial title out of the side-scrolling MW game. MWA2 will feature new characters, a seperate storyline, different areas, a much improved game system and of course, improved 3D MAWs.
Update 29/7 - This project has been put on hold

c) Mobile Weapon: Online - Honestly I wasn't expecting us to do this till next year but we will likely be getting some funding to do this pretty soon. We'll be using a simple turn based strategy system for MW:Online.

You guys will finally be able to beat each other up in MAWs instead of having flame wars in the forum!


Stay tuned for more MW updates!

TYLER Financial Performance

Let me try my hand at spining financial figures so they look better than they really are.

TYLER's revenue for the first and second quarter of 2007 stands at $68.4K almost double the 2006 revenue for the full year ($38.3K). This is represents a 361.38% increase in revenue over the same period last year.

TYLER's CFO, Leonard had this to say about the company's improved financial performance. "We have exceeded our growth target for the year (because we didn't have one at all). I'll have officially graduated by the 2nd half of the year so I'm optimistic that we will do even better."

TYLER plans to release 2 game titles by the end of 2007 as well as a online multi-player game service.

"I haven't stated any profit figures but I would like to ensure all our shareholders that I personally ensure that our directors' salaries rises in line with our profits to ensure that we do not have to pay too much corporate tax." -quipped Leonard

Pocket Cafe Developer Diary #4

Since you guys have been so enthusiastic about Pocket Cafe, here are 2 screenshots of our work in progress (a mish-mash of sketches, 3D, completed artwork and code):
- Above we have the serving counter screen where you have to serve the right deserts to match the customer's order.
- Below is the "recipe invention" screen where you can experiment to come up with new cakes and pastries for your cafe.

Don't worry, there won't be any vegetables or raw chicken as ingredients for the cakes when the game is complete). The ingredient sprites aren't ready yet so I just took the sprites from Ramen Ramen to use temporarily.



The character sprite is supposed to be a waitress in the game, not a chef but the chef isn't ready yet so I just used it as a substitute. The characters are done by our new artist, Lee Lian. You can visit her website at lian.exorsus.net


While we're at it, here's another one of her sketches for you to gush over that will eventually be colored and in the game.

Mobile Weapon 2: Developer Diary #6

Comparing performance of Flash AS3 and AS2

Sometime ago we were all set to programme the MW2 systems in Actionscript 2.0 since it would be a real hassle to have to get adjusted to a new syntax of Actionscript 3 (and the new quirks that might come with it like this example).

Then I decided I should at least try to find out if there was a significant performance improvement if we switched from AS2 to AS3. I think the chart below speaks for itself:



I found the comparision chart here. You can check it out for more performance comparisons.

It seems that most of the improvements impact calculations and loops rather than the graphics rendering. This will make an important consideration for us since MW2 will be more intensive on the graphics so we might want to just ignore the preformance boost in favor of being able to code faster in a familiar language.

However, better math caculations means we can do more path finding, generate larger maps, have more moving NPCs on screen. Which means that the MW2 world would be alot more vibrant. Of course, it also means we need to buy a copy of Flash 9 (a.k.a. Flash CS3 Professional), US$699! which will probably cost more in Singapore.

A document from Adobe on the tuning that has been done for AS3 can be found here. A review by CNET on Flash 9, here.

Another consideration will be if our wrapper, Mdm Zinc, will have a patch to make it copatible with Flash Player 9. A possible alternative would be Apollo. I'm guessing since it's from Adobe it would certainly be compatible with Flash 9. Here's the video primer for those who haven't seen what Apollo is all about below:

Pocket Cafe Developer Diary #3

Revamping the TYLER blog

We've been using the same blog template for close to 2 years now, so I've decided the give the blog a new look.

The new blogger layout system drove me crazy at first (I still think it was easier to edit when everything was just one big chunk of HTML), but I think I've gotten then hang of things and this blog should be fully functional by tomorrow.

Perviously I avoided using Flash for any part of the blog because of I'd have to host the Flash files on tylerproject.com and that can get quit unstable sometimes. Addtionally I don't think there's any way to fix the IE "Activate Flash control" problem if you embed a Flash file on blogger.

Do let me know if the Flash header and other images don't load properly very frequently and I'll transfer them to one of our more reliable servers.

Ramen Ramen Preview

6th of July, our deadline for the 2 mobile titles we're working on: MWTC and Ramen Ramen, is approaching.

I just finished my summer term today and worked with Malc on Ramen Ramen to try and get it up to speed. I'm quite pleased with the improvements. It looks alot more "vibrant" after enchancement.



"before enhancement"

"after enhancement"


Looks like it'll be all out MW2 development after this. Yeah!

Mobile Weapon 2: Developer Diary #5

Proposed new MW2 combat system



There are 3 different rows which characters and enemies can be placed. The player party must have 1 character per row. A maximum of 3 enemies can be placed per row (maximum of 9 enemies versus only 5 for MW1).

Different rows have the following effects:

Front Row:
+10% damage taken, +10% melee damage, +5% melee accuracy
Middle Row:
Normal damage taken, Normal attack damage
Back Row:
-25% damage taken, No melee attacks against or from the back row

Mobile Weapon 2: Developer Diary #4

New designs for MAWs

The model of the MW1 stinger shown is the original design. We changed the legs to wheels shortly after because as you might be able to tell the joint structure of the legs doesn't facilitate easy animation (actually it's pretty hard to picture it walking).



MW2 MAWs will have a more "agile" yet bulky, "built" look. It sounds like a paradox but the sketch sort of explains this. This style facilitates more interesting combat animations which you will see in the new combat engine.

You might have also have noticed the signature style of the armor shielding covering the knees and thighs is the same as that of the Luna MAW. I hope we can develop a style for MW MAWs that will be instantly distiguishable from other robot or mech series.

Your MAWs won't inexplicably change form overnight in MW2, I'll write the explaination into the story. Do expect the appearance of your MAW to change when one major upgrade is made in each episode. :-P

I realise we didn't have much info on the MAW statistics and armament in MW1. I promise I'll fix that in MW2.

Example of MAW Statistics:

Height: 4m and above in height. MAWs are slightly larger than powered armor but definitely much smaller than "mecha".

Weight: average 20 tons. Avenger and stinger are in the average weight class.

Armor: MAWs come with base armor plating but are usually outfitted with additional armor platting to protect the more delicate frame.

Power Source: you guessed it... plasma rock reactors. Additional power can supplemented from a generator.

Mobile Weapon 2: Developer Diary #3

Here's the new concept sketch for your main character in MW. Well actually it's not that new since it's the concept sketch DZ did for MW:Multiplayer even before MW1. I just modified it a little to get a different style.

Please click on the image to see a larger version. Comments?

Oh yeah, "*pinkymermaid" has started working with Malc and I on Pocket Cafe. So expect to see a number of blog posts on development updates this new game series from TYLER.

Pocket Cafe Developer Diary #1

Currently we are working on Pocket Cafe for my FYP and designing some characters for the game. So far, the characters have taken on a more anime look. We have just come up with 5 new characters sketches:


- a tomboyish looking female waitress on rollerblades,
- a farrah fawcett looking waitressing with a cute apron and frilly outfit,
- a female chef with chun-li hairstyle,
- a superhunky male chef,
- and a female manager.

We'll be outsourcing the artwork to an artist whose artwork designs we saw in indigo magazine(june issue).


Watched the first 2 seasons of Dave chapelle's show. damn that dude is funny! i especially loved the i'm rick james episode and the one on how prince whooped their asses playing basketball.

3 years back, i watched dave chapelle on def jam comedy hosted by martin lawrence and i didnt find him funny at all. in fact, i thought he sucked. but he's improved dramatically. killing me softly was hilarious!

i think he should go back and do season 3. too bad he quit all of a sudden.

Exams are over! + MWTC:mobile preview

Screenshots!


MAW and animated enemy sprites!

Mobile Weapon 2: Developer Diary #2

Meaningful Leveling
I don't know how many of you guys have played MMORPGs where you have to kill 100s (and at later levels 1000s) of enemies just to gain a level where you get just ONE stat point to allocate. This is extrememly frustrating because I really don't have the time to "farm/grind" that much just for one measly stat point.

On the other end of the spectrum we have games like AD&D where you can see a significant performance increase with every level counts and each opens up a variety of new skills, spells, etc. The disadvantage of such a leveling system is the amount of work the game developer and designer needs to put in for the levelling system. You also can't have as many levels.

MW1 gave you 3 stat points per level, increased the damage of the supers moves and unlocked new super moves at certain levels (5 and 15) but I'm wondering if that was sufficiently rewarding for amount of grinding needed.

Since we're introducing new skills and changing the overdrive (super moves) system I think we can work out a more "meaningful" levelling system that will ensure you get alot of bang-for-your-buck for each level. We can also have more quest experience.

BTW we will try to release a beta trial for MW: Tactics Command for mobile phones somewhere next month. It's meant for phones but we'll try to put it in a package you can play on PC. I'll post some screenshots and artwork after my exams are over next Saturday.

Mobile Weapon for Windows Vista

Our publishers now require us to make our games compatible with Vista so we bought 2 new workstations (with 20" widescreen monitors! Core 2 Duo Processors! Radeon X1300 XT Graphics Card!) operating Windows Vista.

I tried installing some of my games on one of our Vista PCs:
- The Sims 2: worked fine, looks great on widescreen too
- C&C3 demo: lagged like crazy. Only playable on the lowest settings after getting a driver update
- Starwars: Knights of the old Republic: couldn't even start
- Elderscrolls 4 Oblivion: lagged like crazy.

We've tried Mobile Weapon 1 on Vista and it seems to be working fine but there were some potential problems that TY discovered like not being able to find the location of save files (but they can still be loaded ingame). MW1 has rather low requirements and our PCs are quite powerful so it might actually be running inefficiently without us even knowing it.

I've created a forum topic here if you'd like to discuss the issue with us.

New MW1:Premium Wallpaper - by TY

Mobile Weapon 2: Developer Diary #1

Hi Guys,

It's March and time to start a new series of posts for the developer diary for the 2nd episode in the Mobile Weapon Series... Mobile Weapon 2!

Currently, we're working on a few things at the same time:
- Mobile Weapon 2 (aka. Main Quest)

2 mobile games (aka. side quests)
- Mobile Weapon: Tactics Command (MW:TC)
- Pocket Café.

Malc (who was our game tester now programmer) and Dz (our game artist for MW1) are now working with us full time so we can get more things done more quickly. We'll be buying some new workstations this weekend. We've also budgeted more $ for music and additional artwork this time round.

We've done a review of all the MW1 systems. We've been listening to your feedback! I have a tonne of improvements planned for ALL of MW2's game systems (combat, exploration, upgrading MAW, etc). I'll post a list of these improvements as soon as we're done coding them.

I'll be taking over the writing for the story for the MW series from episode 2 onwards so expect many more mysteries, revelations, characters' backgrounds and more infomation on what's really going on in the vast world of Sios! The landmass for MW2 is about 10-12 times that of Acero Isle (There'll be a new free roaming world map exploration system). MW1 was just setting of the stage!

As for all your inquiries about the release date for MW2. I can't confirm it. MW2's main quest will be 2-3 times longer than MW1's, have improved graphics, gameplay, etc, etc, etc... so yeah, it will take us quite sometime.

I released my estimate for the release date on our forum a few months back. I can discuss the date with you guys in the forum but we won't be making an official announcement here yet.

Mobile Weapon debuts as the top submission on Newgrounds!!!

Mobile Weapon is back on Newgrounds once more and this time we've got Daily First Place! after 300+ views MW's score was a record breaking 4.37!!! (Of course the score has fallen since then, but still.....a record high!)

Check it out here!
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/362199

MW Episode 1 Premium now available!

Check it out MW:Premium is now on sale! and we have a brand new look for the official Mobile Weapon website too!

Grab your copy today! >>