Monthly Archives: May 2006

summer is dangerous for game development!

Yes it is! all the nice weather, the sun, the babes on bikini… ehm, ok I’m digressing. But is true, working during such periods is quite hard, I must admit. I think is not a coincidence that I released almost all my games during autumn/winter! I didn’t notice until I started to check each game release date:

Universal Soccer Manager (September ’03)

Spin Around & Ignazio the Frog (January/February ’04)

Universal Boxing Manager (April ’04)

Quizland (July ’04)

The Goalkeeper (September ’04)

Supernova: Galactic Wars (January ’05)

Magic Stones (October ’05)

In some cases the game was ready even before (like Goalkeeper) but I waited to release it, because having to fix bugs or deal with PR problems etc during the hot months for me is a pain, all the sweat, I can’t concentrate and I would do more damage than good… well we’re called Winter Wolves after all no? 🙂

World cup is coming!

…and so I thought to simulate it with PES5, my favourite soccer game… despite the latest version AI bugs/cheats that were pissing me too much.

I played it at 2 stars levels with Italy team: too easy, could win every match without real effort. Ok then, I’ll give another try at the 3 stars I thought.

The horror! Insane, all CPU player could simply slide into my defenses like if now my defender were complete idiots! haha too fun, at 2 stars the CPU player don’t even spring (they seems mostly to just walk on the field) while on 3 star they run (and that’s ok) and they can score so easily from a second to another. Really, whatever you do, you can’t prevent them from scoring.

How you can prevent someone to score if he can launch an attacker in front of the keeper with ONE PASS from MIDFIELD? 😀 Impossible.

I was playing with a friend who started to laugh when I lost 3-1 vs USA using Brazil (nothing against USA of course, but I think in real soccer they would have hard time to score 3 goals vs Brazil…!!).

So I decided to give up PES5 and started to play this new Phelios game, Kickin Soccer. At least CPU doesn’t cheat so badly!

Supernova: Galactic Wars update

I’ve decided to update it and release a new BETA version of this game, I’ve added a Survival Battle Mode (available only for already registered users), and also a Mac Universal Binary build.

The download links are:
http://www.winterwolves.net/games/SupernovaTrial.exe (Pc version)
http://www.winterwolves.net/games/SupernovaTrial.zip (Mac OSX version 10.2+)
http://www.winterwolves.net/games/SupernovaTrialUniversal.zip (Universal Binary 10.4+)

What’s New in 1.1.3

· fixed wrong statistic bug in the result screen
· you can quit from the fight itself pressing “Q” key when paused
· Phantom Shield now grants only a bonus of half-damage from shots (not full immunity as before) to better balance the game
· added survivor battle mode, you’ll be in control of the mothership and you’ll have to survive as long as possible! After you destroy an opponent, a new one will appear after 10 seconds. In this short time you’ll be able to pickup a repair bonus to restore some of the ship lost hitpoints.

more monsters coming…

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I’m working on several projects at once (as always!). Today worked a bit on the next expansion pack for Magic Stones, my fantasy card game. Added a new avatar, the Giant Beetle, you can see a nice picture of it below:

giant beetle For now I haven’t yet decided its parameters, but for sure will have a lot of hitpoints and high defense.

The new expansion pack will be settled in a desert (after the Ice Queen, now is the turn of the hot Fiery Plains).

Recently I’ve been thinking also to make a sort of strategy game with current Magic Stones background, monsters etc, the inspiration arrived while playing the great demo of Heroes of Might and Magic V, one the upcoming games I am waiting with more impatience to play 🙂

Also realized that is almost summer time, so I must stop playing EQ2 and spend more times outside!

Universal Boxing Manager 1.3.4 released

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After 1 week of testing I released officially the version 1.3.4. I’m not rewriting here again the changes since you can find them easily just the post before this one 🙂

You may ask, what about the other games? Alas, I wish I had more time 🙁 I’m currently working on some other projects, including an adventure for the guys at Sakura Games (yes they’re unable to program hehe). However I’m planning to update both “The Goalkeeper” and also “Supernova: Galactic Wars” in the next few months. The first one will get some new cool features (more info soon), while the latter will have at least DirectX implementation (currently works with a very old version of PTK libs that works only in OpenGL).