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I’ve been more or less keeping Mini Tower updates to twitter, leaving this site for the screenshots but I have a little announcement to make!

All the basic and special towers have been programmed into Mini Tower. That’s the guts of the game finished now. I’ve been tinkering away today and I’ve even added (well, adapted) the snow engine from Tormishire/Lunnye into this. Making it the first lines of coding that I’ve taken from another project – everything else is new. But snow is in. I love snow. More games need snow.

So the roadmap now is

We were told the wind would be strong, and it was!

But then it did that so we had a hippie party celebrating the Cloudgod.

3 effects from Mini Tower, complete with placeholder background graphics! They all run at 30fps (All at the same time too), V-Sync enabled on an ATi x1600 underclocked to 200mhz so it runs well.

Another one of the Amiga’s popular titles, Superfrog was a platform from the same nest as Sonic and Mario. A couple of years later Team 17 were to make Worms and their fate was sealed to that series. But around that time they produced a number of hits including Project X… a tough as nails SHMUP which was parodied in Superfrog’s bonus missions. The game also had a cameo of Putty from the parent-infuriating toy and Amiga game.

DOWNLOAD (80MB)

Next week I’ll select something from the lesser known regions of the Amiga’s library, I swear

I drew this in 2004 during a dinner break at college! And now it looks like it’s coming.

Speaking of delays. Tormishire might have something to do with something happening soon. You’ll hear it here or from my fellow collaborator.

Fun times will be had tonight!

Ys Seven (Limited Edition) finally arrived after weeks of waiting. A boo at Xseed for not publishing this in Europe, but a cheers for publishing what I hear is a very good action RPG.

I feel some pride with the Amiga console – it was the first real games console I really stuck with. My parents bought me one at aged 7 and it survived as a regularly used machine until I was 15. There were some real classics on it but its talent lied in the music department. The soundchip was fairly advanced supporting modular music – an improvement on Midi in that musicians could use their own sound samples. It wasn’t until CD-Audio came along that game music was improved. Which is a fairly awesome legacy.

So hopefully, without running out of game soundtracks, I’m going to upload a new ripped soundtrack every week.

In the first episode we’ve got… Turrican! A platform shooter series developed by Factor 5 from 1989 to 1993 (the 3 main games), Chris Huelsbeck was the musician. It was the Amiga’s answer to Metroid. The download contains the soundtracks for Turrican 1, 2 and 3. Couldn’t think of a better way to kick this off to be honest!

DOWNLOAD (180MB)

Not so long ago I discovered Ludovico Einaudi, a pianist who unfortunately only has 1 Audi. Various songs from the first album I found (Una Mattina) inspired me to make a game that would fit to his music (though ultimately to write my own soundtrack to it). I just got hold of another album – Nightbook. Coincidentally on this album there’s a track called The Tower.

Many things have still to be decided upon and tweaked by some things that won’t be changing;

• 960*640 resolution.
• I’m basing the minimum specs on my weakest computer. So I’m hoping for a minimum of 2ghz C2D, Ati x1600… basically if your computer is also 4 years old you should be okay.
• Pixel art slapped around by shaders, visually similar to the Wake menu.
• Mouse control, might squeeze in Xbox 360 controller support too.
• Each level consists of 7 “arenas”.
• Dark/authentic setting, something I’ve never really tried before.

Still working out the story. Still dealing with WIP graphics. Still sorting out the formulas for upgrading/selling (aka how generous I want to be with them).

Considering;

• Co-op and versus matches. Still trying to come up with a way that can incorporate such play but to still fit in with the flow of the game.
• Online highscores. It’s just a matter of isolating areas for this kind of thing.
• Achievements. It’ll probably use a similar system to Dissidia rather than the typical Xbox/Live/Wake method, something that runs off stats to unlock things rather than having a shiny popup.
• Story. I’m torn between dialogue heavy moments and no dialogue at all, in a post-apocalyptic kind of thing.
• DLC. I’m not entirely sure what to add here but I’m personally a fan of events like L4D2 etc, where the developer releases a challenge every week. Or I might just release new weapons and levels as time goes on. This is something to consider much later down the line.

I’ve basically got until September 2011 to do whatever I want, to live out little goals until I’m back in the education system. I’ll be doing small courses up until then but mostly I’m my own man. A king of Europe!

For a week or so now I’ve been working on a little tower defence game. It’s not the big one I was planning those months ago, no sir it’s smaller. The name is Tiny Tower for now. Originally it was a little gameplay demo but it seemed to work, so I’m adding onto it to produce a full game. Also got an iPhone version in sight along with a few other iPhone/PC games for next year.

It won’t be a bog standard TD game either. Something a little different, like all TD games. Inspiration was mostly taken from Ludovico Einaudi and his brilliant music.

The reports of Boss Baddie’s death were greatly exaggerated.

Found a backup of photos from my Motorola ROKR, circa 2006.