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.