Adobe Flash EOL

Well, Adobe has given us some poor news a while back.

Even though it had become evident over the past few years that flash was a dying platform, they finally set the timer for the true end. According to the Adobe blog post found here, flash hits end of life in 2020. This means the end of the platform that all of our games are made in (only exception being that one test 3D first person shooter, never mentioned on the blog).

While this news isn't greatly unexpected, it means a difficult change for us here at Time Bending Games. As lead developer, college has slowed development on Battle Ball and others, as can be noted by the long time between small releases. Additionally, Co-Developer Nick Jensen has (mostly) moved on to a career in professional software development, having little time or ambition to continue his projects (mostly referring to SpaceShipCraft).

Q:   Is it the end????
A:   THIS IS NOT THE END! The bad news stops here, as plans are still being made. In fact, last week I worked on implementing a whole new update check system for Battle Ball in an attempt to shift towards a standalone game. With the change in market, players are looking to different outlets to game. No longer do we see the era of web browser based games. Instead, we are seeing a migration back to downloaded games, in the form of the now giant Steam.

Q:   So you are moving to steam? Is that the future?
A:   Not exactly. What I do know is that we need to get out of browser development, and have it happen as quick as possible. While Adobe did mention the end of Adobe flash, it mentioned that this has no bearing on the end of Adobe Air. As some of you may know, Battle Ball and Space Conquest are now on ActionScript 3, and are perfectly publishable to Adobe Air (and thus, standalone exe and mobile apk format). This is the future of our games. If all goes according to plan, I am going to try to get all of our projects running on ActionScript 3 and have them published to exe format and (hopefully) mobile. Steam, however, is a whole different can of worms. Steam charges $100 to publish, an amount of money I can't afford to invest so heavily in games I make no money from.

Well that's all for today,

As always, Cheers. Even cheers to the bad news :)

Jordan

Space Conquest v.6

What has happened?? Is this the apocalypse? Have the walls caved in on reality? No my friends, this is actually a Space Conquest update, with the last update over 4 years. We had pushed it to the side for quite a while, and when we tried to revisit it about 2 years ago, effort seemed futile because it was written poorly, had bad performance, and was in an outdated language called ActionScript 2 (Just like SpaceShipCraft still is, hint hint).

However, ActionScript 2 days are gone for Space Conquest. With this version, we have migrated all of the code to ActionScript 3, enabling the future option of exe versions, full-screen, and mobile development. Additionally, through the conversion to ActionScript 3, we have done some rudimentary code cleanup to make the project somewhat manageable (more on that in the next version). As a byproduct of the conversion, we have seen a much more stable frames per second, which is very encouraging.

Here are the release notes:

• Code migration - as mentioned above, it is running on AS3.
• Code cleanup - this release decreases the amount of lines of code dramatically 
• Level addition - this release has added 4 more levels, all of which are unique and add some great new enemies to fight.
• Main Menu - Space Conquest now has a title! Additionally, we moved the buttons to the bottom to reflect a more balanced main menu.
• Cursor - the cursor now changes depending on if you are clicking, as well as changes between menu and regular game-play.
• Balancing - this game features a ton of balancing. You can find this in about 6 different achievements, where we have lowered some of the pack pickup requirements, while increasing a few of the damage dealt achievements. Also, we have started off new games with more health, faster health upgrades, more energy, and slightly higher fire-rate. A few more balances were made to other upgrades as well.

As with any major change, there may be some bugs in this release. We tested pretty thoroughly, but I'm sure a few bugs slipped through the cracks. Please help us exterminate them. Until next time,

Cheers,

Jordan

SpaceShipCraft

Hello Everyone!

As many of you already probably know about, we have a game called SpaceShipCraft available on our main site.


But why haven't there been any posts about it?
I feel that it is now time to mention its existence as the extent that the project got to surpassed our expectations and now deserves a mention on the blog. We do not currently have a versioning system in place for the game either, which also contributed to me not posting any updates about it. However, these reasons are no longer strong enough to not give it a good mention. Here is an overview of the games mechanic, and some possible future features:

Game features:

• Fully designable, paintable, and expandable ships. Our ship design system includes a wide array of spaceship parts, meant to have full customization through independent key binding.
• Ship editor - Ship editing takes place on a 32 by 32 grid, with the only restriction being all parts must connect to the bridge, and the ship must have a bridge (bridge being the 'command center').
• Online multiplayer - The main focus of this game is online multiplayer in which you face off in free for all with your ship against everyone else's. This is where your design starts to really matter, and design efficiency really starts to shine.
• Physics engine - albeit inefficient in rendering, the game has some very 'lifelike' two dimensional physics, all thanks to my brothers efforts. This makes the game both difficult and really fun. The physics extends not only to maneuvering the ships but for bullets and collisions too, allowing for real-time collision and part destruction. This is the heart of what makes the game fun.
• Import system and ship sharing - Not only can you save 10 ships locally, but you can share them using the import/export feature. to accompany this, we have created a global google doc to let players try others ships. This document can be found at this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M17L8X5wY_ubVdjId0elQZoOWq6d0VPoujsF_dXt4FY/edit?usp=sharing

Development Status:

Currently I would like to consider this my brothers project. He was the lead developer on the physics of the game, while I assisted in menus and did most of the server side extension coding. He also helped with the game concept, as to what parts we wanted to be available to the player, how to balance game-play, and what we wanted for the future. I was in charge of all of the in game art, from parts to the star parallax to the (rather basic) menu layout.

We did work on a development version that introduced multi-room online gaming, but the future development has been put on hold since our lives have become more busy.

I hope we will someday be able to return to development of this promising game, but for now, I would like to leave at least a shout-out to its existence. Like always, feel free to comment with any suggestions you have.

Cheers, 

Jordan

Battle Ball v0.9.110 Beta

Well, all I can say is it has been a while. A long while. College has stunted our progress on our games. However, I was able to get this update polished off finally, and it has some pretty cool features. Here goes:

• Make skills tab flash at 5+ points
• Shine to the Battle Ball logo
• Smart wall collisions
• HUD goes translucent when the ball is behind it
• Smart enemy collisions
• Smart portal awesomeness

This update was focused on implementing a new collision system, as well as some new rendering techniques I learned that can have some really cool effects. Of course, I cleaned some old code up too that was really bugging me.

Cheers,

Jordan

Battle Ball v0.9.109 Beta

Hey guys. 'Nuther update! Here are the notes:
Features:

• Is performance really a feature?
• MOBILE PERFORMANCE!
• Im calling that it a feature. Heck ya.
• RAM usage at 1/2 of previous release.

Bugs:

• Fixed boss button roll over handler
• Fixed while dying, switching levels you still die again.
• Fixed when killing a boss, unlocking a new level, and chosing level select when already in the level select menu, the game broke.

Be on the lookout for LOTS of bugs, I re-wrote the entire rendering method.

Cheers,

Jordan

Battle Ball v0.9.108 Beta

New update rolling out today for mobile and browser.

I just love saying those two in the same sentence :) Integrated mobile browser in one codebase.... no versioning issues.... Easy release....

Anyway, I'll stop drooling on my keyboard. For now. Have some release notes:

Changes:

• Joysticks (mobile) - control the ball and turret with joysticks. (beta!)
• level unlocked menu - shows up when you unlock a new level. It gives a short description and a picture of the level.
• background - has a cool texture. tiny change but has a big effect on the 'feel' of the game. (added background panels, but they are disabled)
• Halloween themed logo - BEWARE!

Tweaks:

• Visual - hud bars have a grey-ish background gradient now
• Gameplay - adjusted boss xp values

Bugs annihilated with Raid (no copyright issues intended):

• Application activate deactivate is better hopefully.
• Fixed level 6 background color
• Fixed xp bar scale
• Fixed tutorial not showing if you click the achievement or upgrade in game notifications.

Cheers,

Jordan

Battle Ball v0.9.107 Beta

Great. I forgot to change the GameisMobile boolean to true for the mobile release, thus v0.9.107. yippy 2 updates in 1 day.

Battle Ball v0.9.106 Beta

Woo update after a while!!  If you want, you can take a survey on Battle Ball via this link:

http://goo.gl/forms/VFBysaVVW8

Blah blah blah, here are the release notes:
Features:

• Tutorial - introduces basic gameplay and menus
• Clear data - button in save load menu, allows you to reset all save slots

Bugs:

• Fixed respawning on same level breaking everything
• Fixed TBG logo not weird box

Cheers,

Jordan 

Battle Ball v0.9.105 Beta

Small update out today. The changes are as follows:

Features:

• Increased value of killing (most) bosses
• Added pause menu to multiplayer
• Tweaked Small Button Color in Multiplayer
• Added settings menu
• Volume Slider
• Quality - Low, Medium, High
• Background Detail - Low, Medium, High
• Particles Slider
• Desktop Only:
• Control Settings - WASD or Arrow Keys
• Mobile Only:
• Control Settings - Tilt or Joystick (Preview)
• Accelerometer Calibration - (Preview)
• Credits
• Diagnostics - log that shows any issues battle ball encounters, or used for debugging
• Deleted mute in pause menu
• Deleted background adjustment in pause menu

Bugs squashed:

• Fixed xp generator and health generator not on ball
• Fixed pause button in multiplayer breaking everything (mobile)

Cheers,

Jordan

Battle Ball v0.9.104 Beta

Incremental update for Battle Ball out today! You may ask, why skip v 0.9.103? The reason we did this is because when publishing to the Google Play Store, the app got flagged as insecure due to it running on an old version of adobe air. This forced me to get a new version of adobe air, and increment the version number on mobile. So, here we are at good ol' 104 due to that. Anyways, this minor update includes:

• Multiplayer - The previous version had a very small glimpse at the upcoming multiplayer. This version expands on that preview exponentially:
• Server side accounts - added a new create account and log in mechanism, allowing battle ball to save data to the server so you can play your multiplayer account from any computer.
• Rooms - you can now create a room (with a few settings) that online pplayers can join from the lobby.
• Room Interactions - you now have the ability to see a players readiness, kick players (if you are the admin), and start a game.
• Multiplayer Gameplay - a very minimalistic preview of online gameplay is bundled with this version. You have the ability to move and aim as well as see all of the other opponents. Shooting and Scoring is not yet possible. The game concludes and puts you back in the Muliplayer Menu.

• Singleplayer - Minor improvements to the ball visuals and movement itself.

Remember, if you have an android phone, you can join the Battle Ball Beta on the Google Play Store, just follow this link and opt-in to the beta program:

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/air.com.TimeBendingGames.BattleBall

Cheers,

Jordan