Indie As Hell

My thoughts over social channels

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:22:03 +0700

There’re 3 names on the list for the social channels we’re using currently for our day-to-day routine or business purpose.

Facebook
G+
Twitter

There’re others as well, but I think these are the main driven streamline for most of the traffic.

Apparently I’ve found Facebook to be “projection tool” or “go with the crowd” social interaction tool. If most of your friends are in particular domain of interest, say Fashion or cutie stuff, you probably one day will follow that path and make yourself adapting in order to be able to follow those posts and trends.

One problem is that, it’s not easy to move yourself away from friend-domain you have. Mostly the domain you have won’t suit your career goal, or motivate you that much, it usually drags you away.

I don’t say that I got bad friends or something, it’s entirely about the content being digested each day that will effect you most whenever you come up and check the news feed for things to eat on. Yeah, maybe full of 9gag, song, song-lyrics, drama story, etc. They’re just usual stuff that un-invitably makes you to read and FEEL. And as such most game developers out there have a Facebook account, but the content to be shared or thought won’t go around that much in this social line, the account seems to be reserved in order to create FB application, managing fan page or streamlined from Twitter, secret group discussion (which is far powerful for immediate effect for discussion).

I hope those guys think the same or at least in same direction of what I’ve said, and of course I really think it’s right time to focus more on other social channels that have that kind of energy and motivation floating around. Other channels ! Leave that place for group things that have purpose only.

G+ and Twitter would be great places. G+, if you know guys in game dev area out there, there’re so much of interesting to follow and read along through the discussion over some topics. One particular example of hot topic is about Double Fine got funded in Kickstarter (https://plus.google.com/112017825175832531082/posts/9zTa3nQoGt5). G+ may seem to be quite, but it makes you really follow who you love to. So this filter the garbage news feed in the first place. As well, Notch also uses Twitter a lot, so he will be much more streamlined on that instead of others (I don’t think Notch has Facebook account), and also Notch said on G+ that content on G+ doesn’t attract him much to come back frequently so this could be a reason why he sticks to Twitter mainly (I do believe that who to follows in G+ is really matter, maybe he follows the wrong guys or not enough sample to digest the feed).

Anyway anything can happen, one day G+ would be more like Facebook or inverse. But I think Twitter will remain their own concept of 144 characters. It’s no RIGHT or WRONG, just use what suits you the most for particular of time, just don’t trust all my text appearing in this post entirely, I warn you :)

My session links summary

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:45:26 +0700

The following is the summary for my session “Junk Master Series: Design Approaches, Issues, and Best practices” in AltDevConf 2012.

Contact

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wasin.thonkaew

Twitter: @haxpor

E-mail: haxpor {add} gmail {dot} com

or see at the right side of this web site.

Slide

Download slide: http://www.mediafire.com/?8mbqapwtpa3pnv3

Junk Master : The Journey to Junk Lord (PC)

Trailer (old version): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDyJwTNXIfA

Gameplay summary (latest version): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlxCwe9-qi4

Children day testcase survey (old version): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHWDi42Nz6Q

Download game (latest version, required at least XNA 3.1 installed): http://www.mediafire.com/?a4o2desry5cn37z

XNA 3.1 redistribution download: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=15163

XNA 4.0 redistribution download: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20914

Junk Master : The Quest to Glory (Windows Phone 7)

Pre-alpha version, Deep Water Mission Gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN5lpAC58X4

Latest version, Space Cowboys Mission Gameplay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXV6TLpPiN8

Marketplace: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/5bf4cca5-ba9d-e011-986b-78e7d1fa76f8

Junk Master : The Mission of Recovery (Facebook Game)

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74xpyhn-blU

Link to game: https://www.facebook.com/jankbook

Players outside Thailand can plan the game as well, but cannot participate in redemption.

I’m starting to think about sharing my paper works. It...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:55:00 +0700

I’m starting to think about sharing my paper works. It would be quite nice for those who love working with papers and pen.

So this should be #1 of my intention.

From what you see here, the left page is the gathering ideas from several iOS games I’ve played to search for ideas. The upper right is about concept to make XBox360 controller to be able to work on Mac machine. The story is that while I were working on my Mac machine a couple of days ago, I downloaded “Death Rally”, the old school racing game from Remedy. The game has an option to support the gamepad ! But unfortunately it didn’t work out with XBox360 controller. So it’s a starting of the whole story to do some research. Finally I found a great enough of information at http://tattiebogle.net/index.php/ProjectRoot/Xbox360Controller, there’s actually the one who already tried to make it work !

The story won’t stop just like that, the need to integrate that beast with the game developed on other platforms rather than Windows only is pure interesting. And I found this https://github.com/derekvanvliet/Xbox360ControllerManager, a wrapper classes on tattie’s driver above. It’s written in Objective-C and can be integrated to receive inputs from XBox360 controller, or in fact most normal gamepads which the driver supports.

Anyway as I’m working on cocos2d-x now, and I would like it to be much more open source and cross platform, I would love to see it appears in c++. May be if I have some time I should have try to port his code.

The lower right is about the concept to use cocos2d-x. If specific platforms need to have their own UI interface, in-app purchase, notifications, etc, we need to implement that code aside from the game code. If it means for UI, may be we can use cross-platform UI libraries such as GUIChain or CEGUI (these are suggestion answers from cocos2d-x forum, see http://www.cocos2d-x.org/boards/7/topics/7902?r=7904#message-7904).

Please ignore the censored stuff at the borders of the notebook, I just don’t like to involve with any commission issue :P

Just for myself, a quick concept note about coding in...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:50:40 +0700

Just for myself, a quick concept note about coding in cocos2d-x.

It’s enough to get start with essential elements in cocos2d-x.

The schedule for AltDevConf 2012, an online conference running...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:15:00 +0700

The schedule for AltDevConf 2012, an online conference running by those volunteers making game development going forwards, is out and it will be held on 11-12 February 2012 from 11.00 PST/19.00 GMT - 16.00 PST/23.00 GMT.

My session is on Sunday 12th, 15.00 PST, the last session of AltDevConf.

Pretty exciting and get a little bit of nervous as those speakers are really experts and well known in game industry. For example, a guy like Alex Champandard who organizes and maintains AiGameDev.com which has held a lot of online AI live classes in which I’ve attended so many of them also took part in speaking in this event as well. There’re also other interesting speakers in the house in which game developers would not like to miss.

I would spend my time for AltDevConf fully for both days, and it’s a best thing as my session is the last one, so I can attend all sessions without much worrying about the preparation of my own session.

Jason Harris, advisory committee for Design & Production Track of AltDevConf which is the group my session fits in, already arranged the meeting on getting used to presentation software, walk through and speeches run next week.

*For you guys interest to know more about my topic, please read along.

The topics listed there is “Junk Master Series : Design Approaches, Issues, and Best practices”. I will talk and share my experience over working on 3 games in the series.

Junk Master : The Journey to Junk Lord (PC)
Junk Master : The Quest to Glory (WP7)
Junk Master : The Mission of Recovery (Facebook)

I will share the perspective in design, issues found, and how we tackle those. The talk will focus more on design and go a little deep into design elements or compartments of the games themselves. I bet the game names may not be heard by most people in Europe, but anyway I believe I could share something with you all. At any rate, I hope you guys would enjoy the talk and found them useful enough to be able to adapt to your own works or such.

I’m looking forward to see you guys in the conference on both days !

Mobile Monday Bangkok - Jan, 2012

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:51:21 +0700

Yesterday night is another big night for people in mobile arena to gather, discuss and exchange something. It’s the event called Mobile Monday (MoMo) held at Four Points by Sheraton near BTS Asok in Bangkok during 7.00 - 10.00 PM.

At first, I were fear that I won’t be able to make it to the event as I need to finish works soon enough before heading out.

After got to BTS Asok and walked right back to Sumkhumvit Soi 17, I just saw this big sign telling the direction to Four Points By Sheraton.

I registered at the counter and get a free beer coupon, then walked right to the projector to see the agenda. I hope I would see two of three speakers which don’t come from Thailand. Why ? Why did I think like that ? It’s because Nokia Session is in need to represent Lumia brand !
*Anyway this turned out wrong at the end, too bad.

The sessions are as follows.

Tarad.com
Subject: Mobile Commerce in Thailand.

The fast growing e-commerce website in Thailand, by Pawoot Pongvitayapanu, Managing Director.
Huawei Technologies
Subject: Trends in Mobile Usage & 3G Technology

By Mike MacDonald, Chief Technology Officer
Nokia
Subject: Mobile App Ecosystem

By Jirapat Janjerdsak, Head of EDX at Nokia.

As usual after all the sessions ended, it’s time to network. Networking is the first priority one of reasons why I come here.

Opening

Ville Kulmala, Chairman of Mobile Monday, give a speech before the actual event will start.

The crowd is amazing blending with foreigners and local Thai people. Almost stand still, give a little chit-chat while listening to speaker.

Tarad.com (Mobile Commerce in Thailand)

The first session is starting with Tarad.com. The fast growing e-commerce in Thailand. He, who’s speaking, is called a king of e-commerce in Thailand :O

Mr.Pawoot was speaking. The notable things got from this session are as follows.

Most physical shops after turned themselves to sell things with Tarad.com, their sales hugely increases and can generate really big revenue compared to physical shop.
Roughly 1000 - 5000 % percent as seen in the slide as compared to the normal way of physical shop.
Tarad.com has expert teams to assist and help shops to do well on Tarad.com even if they won’t have basic knowledge about Internet or technology.
There’s also verification process by submitting legal document to identify the shop itself before being able to sell things on Tarad.com. This is important as noted by the speaker.

Huawei (Trends in Mobile Usage & 3G Technology)

I don’t get used to this company, but similarly that I’ve heard it before, shame me.

Anyway, Mike told us in various stuff about trends in mobile and 3G technology. This is more like a informal talking rather than all the facts. The things I got from this is as follows.

Data rate is going to be higher and higher, soon enough users will be able to download .torrent stuff via mobile device :S
Trends in using mobile device in Philippine for BlackBerry is that they love to hang out the device around their neck but they don’t buy data package. That’s a totally funny. But it’s true.
Data package is exist because the operator can distribute the bandwidth wisely. For example, unlimited is for limit (calculated) number of persons going to use, and other packages come in to help lessening the pressure on using only “unlimited” package and suit more widely to other users.
Thailand has the most potential in generating revenue on online game business. This is true as I’ve seen one of the notable research also confirmed this as well.
“Sexy” is one of reasons why people choose to use or decide to use such stuff. For example, “Path” is just another wrapper of social network application in which behind the scene, it uses API to do things. Path is sexy as people would love to show their friends new things.
To be able to cope and provide all the needs for the next generation users, the application should be able to
- Sync data in real-time
- Be able to share, and share with regards to Where, When, Why, with Who.

Such things as we already have seen in Facebook these days, it’s also “Sexy” in original ways.

Nokia (Mobile App Ecosystem)

The last session, and is the most attractive for something to be showed in the session itself among audience. Anyway it turned out that NO LUMIA was showed ! So it’s disappoint me a little.

Mr.Jirapat has spoken normal stuff like mobile ecosystem and how Nokia would do their internal stuff and direction to cope and provide the needs for the future trends to come.

The notable things I got from this session are as follows.

Revenue from freemium games is higher than premium games as compared between Jan 2011 and Jun 2011, the percent increased by about 25%.
There’re millions of subscribers who don’t use mobile internet yet, so Nokia is trying to make it increases as such. From the photo above, 1.2 billion is mainly feature phones while 1.5 billion is mixed between smartphone and feature phone, so Nokia is trying to focus on those two instead of just smartphones.
The question also rises from one of the audience as well that “Does this mean Nokia is focusing more on feature phone in this year ?”. This question goes stronger as the latter stage of this session, he showed us new feature phones called Asha 200.

Maybe they’re trying to give another shot beside the success of Lumia (even if it’s not wide spread just yet).

Networking

This is a sweet part. In fact, I got to the event before time and right then started to talk to people around there before the event starts. So this ending part of networking is some kind like a wrapping up for me to talk to whom I need to talk to.

Advertiser, web technology, game related companies and MoMo teams themselves are my interesting here. Too bad, not much about game related personals have come to this event, but nonetheless I speak to others as many as I could. That’s a great experience !

Yes, time to party, opps, networking !

Today I’ve planned to head out to watch the mini concert...

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 01:48:38 +0700

Sitting in my fav spot with paper

Meet Boo Mansion by chance !

Today I’ve planned to head out to watch the mini concert held in Indy In Town Park, Siam Sqaure. The reason behind is “Boo Mansion”, my friend musical indie band. Yeah, for sure, I would love to gather more idea about music stuff.

Anyway I cannot made it to watch Boo Mansion’s live performance as my work still piled up and I have to finish it before heading out. Nonetheless, I met with them while I’m thinking about my idea upstair at True Cafe, Siam Square, Soi 3. We shaked hands and talk a little.

Apart from that, I’ve met with my elder friends from Kasetsart University. There’re two guys would love to hold a Google Event in Mahidol University. Damn sure, I can collaborate and make things out for them flexibly. That’s my second home :)

The event will be held on 11 Feb, and will be focus on attracting more people to Google’s Technology. That’s a chance the event will be held in Salaya Campus, Mahidol University.

As well for my story, I got my concrete path for learning new stuff in the time ahead of me. That would be cocos2d-x along with iOS programming stuff for iOS pure application. By working on cross-platform and native one, I would get benefit from those extreme and wide spread approach. By learning cocos2d-x, the only way to know all the workflow is to publish a game on real device, and that’s my goal for now as well. After putting on hold for previous ideas and such, this time will be my revive over all things that past, I hope so.

From Lula, this is Joy Moment !

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:57:44 +0700

From Lula, this is Joy Moment !

I’ve been involved in the process of inspirational talking...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:42:41 +0700

I’ve been involved in the process of inspirational talking session held consecutively for two universities which are KU (Kasetsart University) for Department of Computer Engineering, and KMUTT (King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi) for SIT or School of Information Technology in which the topics I’ve talked is about my team’s success (JubJub), pursuing the dream, working & collaboration technique, sharing experience from being in finals in Imagine Cup 2010 & 2011 in Poland and USA, and also about my own life and the way I think to make me be like the way I am currently.

What I have seen so far from both events were amazing !

Although as you may already concerned, only small amount of people at a time can be effectively motivated and encouraged. That’s true, and it will be mostly true if and only if the motivator continuously does their job over long period of time.

That kind of approach is currently being put into use by Suthat Ronglong, my friend back in the time of Imagine Cup 2010. He currently pursue his own Master Degree, and also does teaching at the same time in KMUTT.

What he just did is he forms another small to mid size class after the normal learning schedule in University to increase the basic or additional knowledge they need to know or should know or even not being taught in the classroom. This already proved (as talked with him) to let students enjoy more content while learning in normal classes. Thus by enjoying to learn in classes, the normal hours spent in normal classes will attract them to come back and follow what University plans them to do.

In additional, duration of special class that my friend has held is in a short length around 1-1.30 hour. He stated that just 1 hour is enough to put students lost in focus. This is normal in most average students as I have seen in my school experience as well.

As seen in the photo above, he was teaching PHP class from the ground basics. Starting from the syntax and gimmick used in this kind of programming language. Why PHP is worth to learn ? It’s because it backs Facebook website to run effectively, and their engineers use this as a main language to develop their framework or work on any open source projects.

He wrapped things up at the end by using online test to test out what students learned so far. I really like this kind of idea as when the time is right, those students will face with online examination in case of pursuing certificate in technology.

I do love to see how this process would pay out at the end, it’s really magnificent !

Photo from the event today as I and JubJub team mates have...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:08:27 +0700

Photo from the event today as I and JubJub team mates have spoken to boost up inspiration for students there.

We’ve talked about our Junk Master Series, our failure long time ago with “My World”, and sharing experience from having been to Poland and USA.

Quite amazing atmosphere, and high interaction during the session.

Mark this day #Tuesday, 17 Jan 2012 @KU

Virus Wars, My Humble Review

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 09:18:00 +0700

Finally it’s time to write a review of Virus Wars, a nice and cute board game developed by Dash and Dot game studio based in Russia.

First of all, I might tell you that, I’m not doing this as part of Dash and Dot, or represent them, or do it because I got something from them, but I do this because it’s my intention, yeah that’s pure thing.

As I already told in this post, I got a chance from their own developers let me have hands on the game while in the latter process of development process. I can tell you their dev listen and keep all the suggested point and act up on it as appropriate, they did a great job.

I never thought that this game would be for all ages as the name of the game implies, but when I entered the game and see the above screen. Okay man, we will see something cute inside :)

The beginning of transition to this screen pops up a little “click” sound effect like we would open up a book or something real “click”. Yeah, it gots you attention enough to look at the animation parades gonna happen.

The game stays strong in notebook theme as it would like players to imagine themselves playing this board game like in a childhood, as we did XO, or any other types of games with friends. Although, you have to play a game for one or two matches first to feel this stuff.

Just “Tap” on the notebook, then the opening animation happens, and you got the following.

Each “Tap” on the option will play real nice opening page and sound effect. You will definitely would love to “Tap” it alot even though it won’t get you into the game !

One particular stuff I really like is to swipe through the “Start game” menu and the paper will open up and show the hidden menus inside. I remember that I did this for several times, swiping back and forth to see and hear the effect.

Option menu allows you to select your color and difficulty level. A little gimmick for me is “Credits” as when you “Tap” on it the page will slightly flip up on the edge and show Dash and Dot studio logo, tap on it again will bring you to the official site. These little animation tricks and transition parades make me go nuts and won’t like to immediately go into the game (and that’s why I won’t directly write up the main gameplay just yet, hah).

Now’s let go into the gameplay detail.

Virus Wars, with the name implies, is a board game to which you play against AI or friends up to 4 persons. The concept is to spread your “X” (or virus) across the page and eat up all the opponent or at least occupy enough slot of the page to win.

Each turn, each player have 3 time-chances to spread out their own “X” across the page. Move wisely and think carefully, the game AI is so strong, I’ve lost my first match against it. Apart from the final release (this release), their own developers really did a great job implementing AI system as I feel a bit more relax when playtested the previous beta version, but this version’s AI is totally stronger.

As you can see in the image above, each “X” will make you step closer to the opponent and you will be able to eat up their “X”. If your “X” is ate up, then that “X” will become messy and transform into your side thus it will be part of your path further for moving your virus army !

So many tricks you can play with this game either using the ate up “X” as a blockage path to cover the opponent up or playing fast and get to opponent side as quick as possible to eat them up.

In addition to gameplay, the background music while in board screen will make you relax enough just like you’re sitting under the tree and play with your friends. Damn, I thought about Japan now !! It’s CALM you know.

Before starting the game, the game allows you to select the size of the board. It ranges from small board which fits to 1 screen of all iOS devices or larger than that in which it needs of panning movement from players.

I love to play on the largest board although the panning is not extreme flexible and fluid but there’re not too many times requires you to look around too often. So it pays out for that.

After selected the size of board to play, then you will select whether you will be playing against AI or with friends. Of course, each friend can select the color as well.

To switch between AI and players mode, you “Tap” on the upper right circle. The tex label will be showed up after you did the action telling you which mode you are in. I’ve found this label some what interrupting in the process, anyway I know their developers know this as the time schedule is tight to release and pay attention to another stuff. Hope it will be fixed (although this stuff is not that important) in the next update.

I believe this game is best play on iPad even though they don’t develop this game especially for iPad screen as I need to scale it up 2x from iPhone or iPod screen. Playing with up to 4 friends on iPad will boost up experience when playing on iPad device. But you know what ! Their developers know about this and make the network gameplay available.

You can make your iOS device as a server or client and play against each other via “BT game” or “Bluetooth game”, or even play with others on Game Center through “Internet” option in the first menu.

Final word, if you have kids or hang out with friends a lot, you probably would like to have a cute and relaxing board game to play over. Consider this game. Fun, relaxing, and multiplayer options (also animation gimmick hehe !) are things you will get out from this game.

Plan in this month, January 2012

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:10:55 +0700

I’m very unproductive in the past month, really quite unhappy with that. There’re lots of activities and events I need to carry out in good shape, so this month would judge my performance.

The following is the list of activities and events awaiting for me in this month.

Develop / Publish a simple free game over iPad
The things get worse and worse since I’ve lost my productivity because of no human resource especially an artist to help out creating my art stuff. I switched this thing to my own solo project, and need to get it done within probably the mid-month.

The whole simple idea is needed to be thought of. Anyway other misc stuff like Apple Developer Program for iOS and setting up initially base code, and testbeds are already in place. I just need to head out with implementing and finalizing.
Guest speaker for inspirational purpose at KMUTT, and Kasetsart University
For KMUTT, this is a 2nd time I’ve invited from my friend there. This time I’ve planned to change the content of the presentation up side down, making it the best speaking session I should give to the students there. Of course, it’s about the path to be game developers, the path to reach your goal, your dream. The date is not set yet, but it will be around mid-January.

For Kasetsart University, I will head out with my JubJub team speaking about our team, our games, and inspiration of game development path similar to the previous topic I would be spoken at KMUTT. Anyway this session would be more in term of Imagine Cup and Microsoft Student Partner area.
Volunteer of house building in Ayuddthaya
Just have been invited from my senior friend again a couple of hours earlier to join this great event to help building houses for people in Ayuddthaya. I guess it must be about the recovery of flood occurred in Thailand during the past several months. I don’t have any additional information right now, but already accepted to join. This event will be happened on 15 Jan for the whole day.
Making 2nd Jingle of Thur’sday band
The 1st Jingle of my indie band “Thur’sday” is out already, and now we’ve planned to make another one. The couple of demo for this 2nd Jingle is ready and known within our members. Probably we would do it again in the end of this month.
Pursue the founding of company related stuff
It’s real stuff now, and this is a main course apart of others. I will be talking with other members in the next week for the first project we gonna make. This is just a starting.
AltDevConf preparation
AltDevConf is an online game developers conference taking place in the Internet. Everyone can join and listen to the topics they interest. I’m still preparing for this kind of stuff and need to hand in to the head of Design Track, Jason Harris, for the next two days. The real conference will be taking place in the mid-February, but the rehearsal process will be taking placed online within the Design Track Speakers in this month.

That’s it for now. I hope I can boost up my productivity before it’s too late.

Til next time.

Draft accepted, no flaws, ready to go !

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:07:27 +0700

Back on 27 December, I received the msg from Jason Harris regarding about reviewing my draft over the talk of Junk Master Series + Approach, Experience and Best practices in AltDevConf 2012 which will be taking place around mid-February.

There’re no flaws ! Everything looks great, and the only essential thing to add into talk is the energy to making Junk Master Series. Ohh yeah, no problem Jason, I can do that for you :D

Jason will appoint the rehearsal session over the course of next month, so I could see what’s actually happen in AltDevConf. The timeframe doesn’t affect me much, in fact, not at all. California time -8 GMT which means -1 hours from my local time in Thailand.

I’m getting to prepare the real presentation content probably tomorrow following my planned in draft version, it should be fun ! I would love to add more video and graphics stuff and of course real deal from experience from working process. These stuff developers really like to see, and take away without question whether it’s true or myth.

The hand-in due date for final presentation is within 8 Jan 2012. I’m totally looking forward to this, time is getting closer and closer, AltDevConf.

Til next time.

Done an experimental simple game project on iPad with...

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:01:00 +0700

Done an experimental simple game project on iPad with cocos2d-x around 2 days ago.

As seen here was adapted from the original cocos2d-x tutorial but I have additionally include to test out the following feature as well.

Animation
Particle system
- Using it with predefined classes in cocos2d-x originally. There’re quite several classes ready to be used and the resulting effect is quite nice.
- Using with .plist file. With .plist file, it’s much more embedded sense.
The configurations are there in the file, along with embedded image data ready to be used.
Using CCMenuItemImage (2 states, and 3 states including disabled state)
Switching between scenes with effect
I use CCTransitionFade when transitioning from in-game to game over scene, and use CCTransitionFadeBL when transitioning from game over to in-game scene again.
Drawing text label using CCLabelTTF
Using CCLabelTTF is slow than other two options as stated in the document.
CCLabelTTF has ability to draw text label flexible without the need to specify additional texture of font, it uses True Type Font to draw pixel of the specified text.
Other two options are CCLabelAtlas, and CCLabelBMFont need to specify additional font texture.
Special fire
Spawn projectiles for the full length of screen height, and limit ability to shoot to 3 times.

This is also the experimental plan to port Junk Master Series to iOS device. That would be great.

The reasons behind deciding to use this framework to work on is Multiplatform and C++ as a developing language.

See my milestones during these time.

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:48:00 +0700

777, nice number !

Weird tweet

Really high number of likes !

MCOT mentioned @haxpor

Dramatic spreading of Pages

See my milestones during these time.

Recently I have been participated in testing “Virus...

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:07:16 +0700

Recently I have been participated in testing “Virus War”, a really nice and cute board game on iOS developed by Dash And Dot, indie game studio in Moscow.

I have a talk with their artist, Ksenia, who allowed and invited me into the process. Although the game is initially developed for iPhone based but scaling to iPad device isn’t bad at all.

In the process I received 2 builds, and each subsequent build sending back feedback and quite glad that they’ve found them really useful.

Anton, lead programmer, just send me a message to give me some of redeem code for the game !! Ohh god :D

Yeah, working and being in the game industry like this, no matter how far we gonna reach, we can collaborate as need. Really happy to work in this kind of industry after all.

“Virus War” will be released on App Store very soon, so stay tune to their announcement. Great work guys !

Busy days, weeks, and months !

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:31:28 +0700

Turning down my head at the papers, and in front of the terminal typing things and stuff for the event / games what would happen for a next couple of months from now.

After the news of grants program being turned down, clearer goals and paths ahead waiting to be pro founded.

AltDevConf

The event I’ve accepted to be part of. The actual event will be happened in February 2012. Right now, I have submitted the outline to Jason Harris, head of Design Track.

You can take a look at my session via big flowchart here.

It mainly consists of 3 games as part of Junk Master series along with the issues/best practices I would like to share directly from working all those projects.

The complete presentation wil be finalized in the early of January, 2012.

Junk Master: The Mission of Recovery

After I’ve prolong worked on this project since around mid-4th year in University, on 22nd December this game will be announced publicly.

JubJub team mates and I along with our beloved mentor will be going to Kasikornbank, Paholyotin on that day and announce the game with guys from Microsoft, deans from Mahidol University and guys from Kasikornbank itself.

There’s a gap of 15 minutes for presses to play through our game. That’s probably more than enough at this particular of time I guess.

All major bugs and some suggestions gathered from players in beta testing period are fixed and applied to the game already. Anyhow, I’m fear in some sense that when reasonable high level of active players playing in Trade Center feature, this would drag me to look at it again. Nonetheless, this is game right ? Its actual life cycle wouldn’t end easily, maintenance and immediate response is like a policy to perform. Accept the changes, that’s all.

Check at my team page for more information about the game, or direct to this page for application page to play when it’s live. The game targets people in Thailand, it’s up to the policy from the bank in registration process whether they allow you to sign up or not. So check back when the game is live.

Craftmaster

This is my personal project working on since nearly a month ago.
It blends many style or gameplay together. Particularly similar gameplay to Battle heart, but applies the strong customization in crafting weapons and more strategy oriented.

Players will be playing as a supporting role who crafts weapons and assign to the peer army.

It’s for iOS and targeting on iPad.

This is my first attempt on making a game on this kind of platform switching from Windows for a while. As part of doing this, I’ve learned the ecosystem and how to work in this such environment.

I’ve got a guy for designing oriented, and another for 2d artist working with me.

At first, I’ve planned to finish it as soon as possible as you may know releasing the game in time of Christmas is a better choice than others. But now, probably I can’t make it happen, at least the demo will be out before new year.

I will keep update more about this game for next months to come.

…

Back to work now guys, have a happy time through out the year.

Next week to announcement, Junk Master on Facebook

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:21:07 +0700

After a prolong of development of Junk Master on Facebook, a so called game “Junk Master: The Mission of Recovery”, it’s now ready to get announcing.

MThai is the first to know this kind of news as they directly engage in asking us before the actual event come next week, see it here.

Check at my JubJub team fan page for more information.

I am preparing myself for maintenance during live period of the game now. Hope everything will be fine.

I’ve found 2 new techniques in using iPad just a moment...

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 03:37:38 +0700

I’ve found 2 new techniques in using iPad just a moment ago, and I will share with you here.

Group application icons together
Instead of messing around and trying to find your applications among unrelated other application out there via page by page.
If this is a first to create a new group, then just hold tapping down on a particular icon and drag it to a target icon to group together. Then you can name a new group. Finally the group (like folder) will appear, and those two applications will be inside.
Adding more icon into existing group is easy, just drag a particular icon into an existing group.
Take a screenshot
Press Home + Power button together at the same time, it will take a screenshot of the current screen of your iPad and save it to Photo Library.

Just finished the very first step refactoring my...

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 23:06:00 +0700

Music and Software stuff

Another side of the room

Just finished the very first step refactoring my garage.

Software, Game Dev, Music, and books, you named it, they’re all in this room.

FYI:
I mostly spent my days in this garage for nearly more than 12-15 hours a day, of course due to flood occurred in Thailand these times as well, it keeps me stick to this things.

For coding stuff, after split working desks like this, it gives you more space to write and put other stuff on the side of computer. In addition, it’s kind like your worlds are split up to Windows side, and Apple side (hmmm, maybe it’s not the case), and give you more focus on the stuff you working on. In fact, it’s not like splitting the world, but be able to separate things like this will give you with a sense of boundary and working environment for each platform. Yes, this sounds great enough.

For drum covering stuff, after re-arranged things like this, now I’m able to record my own actions along with the track with great flexibility. I can use the camera from iMac shooting directly in a side direction to me while playing drum. Of course, the output line from drum kit can reach iMac with ease than previous times.

Happy building stuff guys !