Category Archives: general

posts about general topics, even not related to computer games

Future titles of Winter Wolves & Tycoon Games

Today I did a plan on what to do next. Was hard since I have always so many ideas and so little time… 🙂

Anyway, here is the plan:

Winter Wolves

– working on Tower Of Destiny, a dungeon hack’n’slash RPG with first person view, character creation with party of 5 members, a general storyline, a pool of 20-25 heroes that will stay in town while you choose a party to go exploring the dungeon. The heroes that remains in town can train some of their skills meanwhile.

– thinking about doing a complete rewrite of UBM engine, as suggested by the feedback of some users in my forums. So creating first a generic engine that I can use to make both UBM2, but also a sort of “gladiator management game” 🙂 the idea could be very fun, especially if I manage to make it multiplayer

Tycoon Games

– working on a Tower Defense game using Supernova 2 engine. Not sure yet if will be fantasy or sci-fi. Imagine a tower defense game with a storyline, upgrading towers and mobile defenses like characters using special attack. Have still to decide if to do it turn-based or real-time, even if I am more inclined to do it real-time

– working on several updates for Supernova 2, like the addition of a skirmish mode, that will let the player buy ships and jump straight into the battle, without any macromanagement part. I plan also to add more ship/weapons and (probably later, next year) a sort of ship-design screen where you can design your own custom ship configurations

I am also experimenting with other languages (like Flash) and other ideas, but officially I’m developing those 3 titles/engines right now. I’m working a bit on every one, even if the game that will probably finish first will be the Tower Defense game, since I can use good part of Supernova 2 engine.

That’s all for now 😀

Supernova 2: saving in middle of the battles

I’m currently working on version 1.0.2, I’ve added the feature (requested by many people) of saving in middle of the battles. Indeed is a bit insane to play the battles without any chance to save, even if this can lead to re-trying the same battle by reloading a previous savegame 🙂

I’m also adding tons of minor improvement, not bugs but new features and in general things that help playing the game in a easier way. Expect a complete update within next week. I’m also working on the manual, but I am still unsure when it will be finished. I’ll first put it online on the official webiste, so I can update it day by day, then I’ll make it as PDF to put inside the game installation folder.

I want to thank all the people that bought the game so far, showing an impressive response. The best I can do is make a BIG update to help them enjoy the game even more. And after this big update, I’ll start working on the skirmish mode 😉

New server and introducing Tycoon Games!

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In past 2 days I upgraded to a new server (again)… actually was like a forced upgrade since my hosting changed datacenter, anyway now I got a even slightly more powerful server so I’m happy. I’m not too happy about the fact that on the new one I have troubles with some php scripts, like the contact form on my main site… so if you had problems, just email me directly (the email is on the same page as contact form anyway!).

I also thought a bit about the future of my games, and decided to start a new site called “Tycoon Games“. Why that decision? For several reason. First of all, originally I made Winter Wolves only with sports / simulation games in mind (UBM, The Goalkeeper, USM1-2). Then I slowly moved to rpg games like Magic Stones, but all are quite “casual” oriented.

Instead I felt the need to create another site, featuring really niche games. Like the upcoming Supernova 2, that will be put on that site (even if I am making it as always, without any external help). And I plan to make more wargames or complex strategy/simulation games.

Another difference is that on that site I’ll sell using as base currency the eur instead of the usd. Before you scream in horror, it’s actually a good news because I’ll keep prices lower, so even people buying in USD will find the games there not more expensive than usual.

That’s all for now – I’m still working on both Supernova 2 and Tower of Destiny, even if during summer I’m a bit less productive… 😉

Rant vs internet slowness

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Yes I’m pissed! I recently noticed that webdesigner tend to FILL the webpages with all the possible sort of flash intro, gif/png animations, huge buttons and so on. I don’t say this only because having a ISDN connection I have very long pages loading time, but also because is useless. If you check my sites, I do all in plain HTML, and I don’t think that I’m losing any customer for that. Actually I’m saving bandiwth, and I’m more likely to get a sale from a person who has a dialup connection (and are much more than what you could think about).

I saw many cool sites made in flash, and I’m quite capable of doing one (I was webdesigner for 2 years before starting my indie career) but I think they’re useless. If you’re making a flash/web game then ok, but if you just want to display a catalogue of games, why put all those useless and heavy flash stuff?

Why I choose PTK

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When I started to work seriously on indie games, my first choice went to Blitz3d (at those times Blitzmax wasn’t yet available). I made my first game USM with it. Luckily, after that I found PTK and never went back. Why? Read on…
USM was a good product, considering was done in 5 months of spare-time work. Unfortunately, Blitz isn’t exactly the best language to work on big complex games. The lack of a good integrated debugger shows off on large scale project. My game USM for example used LOT of variables, like a database of over 25k players. How I could know if there was a particular bug happening without a debugger like those present in Visual C, with watchers, break/edit and continue feature, and so on ? impossible!

That’s why I stopped to update USM and made other games with PTK and C/C++ (I’m currently developing USM2 with PTK and C, and is really another world compared to Blitzbasic!). At first my transition from basic programmer to C programmer was a nightmare. I knew NOTHING about C. I thought for example I could compare a string using:

if (jack=”john”)

quite ridiculous, but remember that I was used to BASIC language. Even nowadays I’m far from being a good C programmer after 3 years of working in C.

Still in those 3 years I was able to complete 8 games using the combination PTK+C! when I think about it, is amazing, not talking about the quality of the games (you can judge it yourself if you want) but for the speed at which I made them! the main reason I was able to make them so fast, was because I used PTK. With PTK you have the easyness of use as a basic language (blitzbasic for example) BUT you still have the powerful debugging capabilities of all the modern C/C++ compilers.

Porting to mac is a joke. When I tried it the first time, took me about 3 hours: of which, I spend 2h and 45minutes to try to configure Xcode and all the libraries (Xcode isn’t exactly user friendly…) and the remaning 15minutes to copy the files and compile the game! yes, in 15 minutes I could see the same identical game I made on pc, on my mac!!! that was quite astonishing for me!
Now things have changed a lot (2 years have passed) and several other cross-platform libraries have come out, like Torque game builder and so on. I still consider PTK a better choice for lot of reasons:

  • tested: as you may know if you read indiegamer forums, or if you just take a look at PTK showcase, LOT of games have been produced with it, topsellers on many big portals. Millions of people tried it and consequently, I think I can say is the most tested 2d cross-platform library available on the market now. Don’t underestimate this!
  • easy: well, I need to talk again about how is easy to use? if I passed from programming in blitzbasic to C in just 3 months…!!
  • cheap:compared to other libraries is quite cheap. You pay $199 and you can use it – stop, you can make even 50 games and you don’t need to pay anything more. Only exception if is your yearly income is over usd 250k, which I think will take quite a while… complete licensing info here
  • excellent support:the author was awesome to support me. Every single question I had replied quickly, and many new feature added ! of course not only because I requested it, but because several people asked for it. Check out the official forums here.
  • full source code: Ah, was forgetting, once you buy, you get the full source code! so you can even modify it yourself for your particular needs.

Well just to be clear, I don’t get any percentage on PTK sales. I’m just grateful to it, because if I didn’t use it when I started to be indie, now I would still be a part-time developer! 🙁