Eseffar Preliminary Conceptualizing

I promised some information about the next game I'm working on, so here goes. The following is extracted from an email I sent to a friend recently, which sums up my ideas for the game's premise:

"Another big task I need to tackle is starting work on my next game. I have a lot of good ideas for this, but right now I'm leaning toward making a kind of simple RPG. My thoughts on this are all preliminary and subject to change, but here are the ideas I've come up with for it so far:

For this game (which I'm calling Eseffar), you create your own character, with the ability to heavily customize your character's appearance and stats, and the game then generates a random adventure to take your character on. You can continue taking your character on more randomly-generated adventures after the first one. Your stats, equipment, and maybe various story-related factors (such as NPCs you've encountered) get saved between adventures to provide a little continuity even though they're randomly generated. Eventually, if your character reaches a high enough level, the game generates a sort of 'conclusion adventure' to provide the feeling of a grand finale (since I think it's important for most games to have a goal instead of just being endless repetition). You can also create a stable of multiple characters each with their own individually preserved data if you want to try a variety of character types. The basic mechanics of the game will be quite simple (so that, even though I'll be working on it alone, I can still complete it in a reasonable amount of time), but I'll try to make them deep enough to be interesting despite their simplicity, like I did with SS. And, I'm thinking of giving the game a somewhat dark and sci-fi-ish flavor, to provide some variety after the pure fantasy and frequent light-heartedness of Sorceror's Stripes/Lanther the Unlucky."

...And that's where I'm at so far. Next step is fleshing out the details, and then to start prototyping out the basics. I'm kind of excited about that. I love game development -- it's just incredibly fun.

Now, if only we could start pulling in some major revenue so I can shrug that worry off my shoulders for a while...

- Satellite Observatory (James)

Sorceror's Stripes Windows Version now available for purchase

My blog posts have been sparse recently because I've been busy copy-protecting the game, developing our automated download system, setting up the payment system, and creating decent installers for the game. (Harder than it sounds when this stuff is all interrelated.) The good news is... that's all done now, and as far as our tests have been able to determine, it all works. If you feel like some fantasy-flavored tactics/puzzle fun with a sprawling story mode, feel free to check the game out: www.superioritystudios.com/sorcerorstripes

My brother is developing a virtual artbook application for the iPhone (which will feature select illustrations I've done for The Legacy of Aurimancy and Sorceror's Stripes), and porting Sorceror's Stripes onto the iPhone is still on the agenda, though who knows when it will get done at this point. On my end, I'm going to see about deploying the free demo version of Sorceror's Stripes to various places on the Internet to try to get a little exposure. Then, for my next major company task, I might start working on my next game. I've got some really good ideas for it -- more information to come about that in a little while. For now I'll just drop the name I have in mind for the next game: "Eseffar."

But for now, I'm tired, so I'm going to go watch some Hikaru no Go. Nothing like some great anime to wind down after a long day.

- Satellite Observatory (James)

Tic-Tac-Awe AVAILABLE on iTunes store!

Tic-Tac-Awe is now available on the iTunes store! If you have an iPhone, or iPod touch, please download our app and try it out. The price is right - free! This is the first app we have out the door (I beat our Windows game - Sorcerer's Stripes, written by James - by a few days :)

Change of plans.

Shortly after I made my last post, the port broke again. Here's just a sampling of the nonsense I've been putting up with over the past week or so:

- Getting memory access errors while accessing an array despite being 100% certain that I'm within the bounds of the array and that all relevant elements (and the array itself) are retained in memory.

- Getting "out of scope" errors on a variable on the line the variable is declared on.

- Setting a boolean variable to true, then watching as the program skips over all the code within the conditional that checks to see if the variable is true.

Long story short, my brother and I have concluded that my compiler is FUBAR and doing any development on my new computer that we bought expressly for the purpose of enabling me to do Mac development is untenable.

For the time being, since the development environment on my brother's Mac at least mostly works, we're switching the job of porting Sorceror's Stripes back over to him. My new task is finding a way to sell the completed and working Windows version of the game: a somewhat daunting task due to the fact that we have no distribution system in place. But at least I'll be able to tackle this assignment on a proven, working development environment: my beloved Windows system, which I've developed a whole new appreciation for.

By the way. "It just works"? That stupid slogan is getting more and more ironic by the day, Apple.

- Satellite Observatory (James)

Making Progress.

Whew. Finally seem to be working the kinks out of this iPhone port. The foundation is in place and seems to be running smoothly, anyway... though I'll need to actually deploy the app onto a device to definitively test its efficiency. Going to have to do the registration stuff needed to let me do that and then borrow my brother's iPod Touch for that purpose.

Maybe I'll be able to go into high-gear mode and crank out the rest of the port in a week, now that the fundamentals are finally working. Maybe. We'll see.

- Satellite Observatory (James)