Jelly Fish Character Animation – Part 1 Written on October 10, 2011, by gizmoko

This is a animated loop from my new game. As you can see and for those who played my previous game Wubble, you can detect a pattern of aquatic theme’d games that seem to be happening. Well that is purely accidental but it’s fun. This Jelly Fish animation is a rough animation of the final character that I will be drawing. I was just trying to get a quick visual of what it might look like animated. I still have to re-draw the actual drawing from paper, in illustrator and then bring it into Flash to create the animation loops, after which I can export as .pngs to use in Cocos2D.

In this animation I was also testing the ‘bone’ tool in Flash, I’m hoping to perfect the Jelly Fish movement for the final game. But so far I’m impressed by the control I can get from the bone tool in Flash.

Game Prototyping for iPhone Written on October 4, 2011, by gizmoko

So as I begin to tackle doing a new game (for iPhone may I add) I’ve been exploring different ideas and how should I go about getting those ideas from my mind and into some kind of playable format. So because of my experience with Flash (http://www.mochimedia.com/games/play/wubble) I thought that, Flash might be the best option to use but I’ve been feeling a little lazy and I was looking for an easier way to prototype a game. And so I posted this question on Twitter, “Is it a good idea to prototype a game in Flash first, then port to iPhone?” and I got a speedy relpy from @globulos who said, “@gizmoko I would not recommend it. I think www.gamesalad.com would be a better choice.” Thanks @globulos!

After downloading a giving gamesalad a go, I must say I was surprised by the ease to get a basic idea together… you know so the lazy me could take a look at my game idea on my iPhone. Gamesalad has a very Apple iWeb & Apple Automator feel, where you drag and “Rules” and layout rules and “Actions” in a workflow type fashion. This process does help speed up the game creation and prototyping development a lot. In a mere few clicks I had my “idea” on my iPhone, now that was cool. I then continued to tweak the elements and settings to add new actions to the game, this took me a little longer but the results of my actions were quick to view and experience.

So after a few hours I had a fairly decent working prototype, now what? Well I would recommend Gamesalad for quick basic games and for getting a sense of your game ideas, but I just couldn’t spend more time learning another tool. My goal within the next few months is to concentrate on developing a game using Apple’s tools (Objective-C) and Cocos2D framework. I really want as much control as possible over the game code without writing a custom game engine or framework.

So with the GameSalad prototype in hand, I started the process of redoing it all in Xcode with Cocos2D. Surprisingly I learned something very interesting, I discoverd that even thought I thought I had achieved a lot with Gamesalad, because I had to redo it all again in Xcode I really didn’t, in fact I was just avoiding the eventuallity of it all, in order to get more control and speed I had to use Objective-C. And thus I came to the conclusion that the best option for me, is to prototype in Xcode with Objective-C and Cocos2D. This option works really well because there’s no need to recreate everything again. But also I think this works best because at this point I’m not too concern about other mobile phones or other platforms.

I also would like to mention another determining fact and that is, you should build for the platform with the platform tools. These tools have been optimized for full performance and ease. So, if you you are making an iPhone game use Apple’s tools in Objective-C and if you are building for the browser use Flash and ActionScript 3, to me it just makes sense.

And again like I said this is my 2nd game, so I’m still learning and hoping to share what I learn along the way. Don’t be afraid to let me know that I’m wrong, what are your thoughts on game prototyping for the iPhone?

New approach Written on September 4, 2011, by gizmoko

So it’s been awhile since I’ve written anything on Gizmoko Games blog. Truth be told I’ve been quite busy and you know life has a way of getting in the ‘way’. I have been dreaming up ideas for new games but really not finding the time to test some out. However, the in recent months I’ve been messing around with my iPhone and iPad and I’ve decided my next game is going to be something on that platform. So with that being said please don’t expect for timely updates as with learning Objective-C can be quite a headache, but the closer I get to having something completed I’ll show it. For now check out the some wallpapers I did for the iPhone and iPad in the downloads section

Also checkout my past game Wubble

Flash Game Framework Written on October 21, 2010, by gizmoko

Game design and planning

So back in 2009 I made my first real attempt at making a game and out of that attempt was born Wubble. I was and still am very much excited by the outcome of my work. But truth be told it was a modest attempt and the lessons I learned from it has thought me a lot. For one thing in Wubble my code was greatly rushed and dirty, very dirty my main goal was to just get it working as fast as possible. Since then I’ve looked back at my code and realized that even though a lot of people both in the flash community and in other game development communities all want to make games really fast in order to gain profits quickly in the end your game suffers and is usually buggy.

So this time around I figured I would pace myself and focus on the simple fact, make a great game. And like most great things in this world it takes time and planning. So for my next game I started to plan and work out some ideas and  I quickly discovered that a lot of what I was starting to write in terms of code had already been written, so why was I written the same lines of code again.

Planning game scenes and flow

So it had me thinking in order for me to really develop a great game I needed a really great framework thus began the search and research for a game framework to build my games. In my search I found Flixel and Flashpunk both of which are great frameworks but in my opinion since I was still learning to build games they seemed too complex for my humble needs at the moment. What I really needed was something that was going to grow with my needs as I learned and something that was more like a template than a one cap fits all scenario. So I decided I would build my own.

And so my first project will be a flash game framework that I’ve called the Origami flash game framework.

The Origami Flash Game Framework

Press Play! Written on October 19, 2010, by gizmoko

Hi there, this is the first entry in what I know is going to be a big diary. Filled with every milestone I meet along this journey, this labor of love of game development. I hope to learn more than I do now and make some crappy games, some good games and in the end some great things. This format of my diary is going to be pretty much dedicate for a good while on a single game or game related project that I will work on. As I start a project I will give a brief overview of what I want to achieve and then at the end compare what I stuck to and what I decided to change. See you then.