As it’s not always my projects becomes actual games – or become massively delayed – I prefer to work silently and not speak up until I have something to show and is pretty confident that I’ll actually complete what I’m working on – and that’s the reason for this post…I finally have a new game out soon. Yay.

My upcoming game is called “The Speccies” and is a remake, for the 48K ZX Spectrum, of the classic puzzlegame “The Brainies” (or “Tiny Skweeks” in Europe) which is available for the DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, Apple II, Mac, Amstrad CPC and SNES platforms.

Here’s the logo of the game.  Click it to go to the “official” page with more information and more pictures.

• It’ll now save its settings directly to the Documents folder, so it’ll now run directly from the dmg file without throwing up an error as before.
• I’ve also added a check for closing the game using ctrl-q and the red close button. It should work most places in the game (but not in the “instructions” menu…I think I forgot that).
• I’ve also fixed the automatic “search for updates” function that is run when scores are synced. Unfortunately I hadn’t expected as many entries in the sql table that holds the version numbers, so the game would hang when scores were synced, but that works now too.

That last problem, though…I think that problem affects all my older (osx) versions too, so I’ll be going through them sometime in 2013. :-/

Find the updated, v1.1, osx version of Black Widow here: http://tardis.dk/wordpress/?page_id=445

A new game – but sometimes things just take longer than expected. This game was supposed to be out a year ago – in December 2011, but I ran into trouble, got annoyed with it and didn’t spend as much time on it as I hoped I would have, and so I left it for a while and only just finished it off recently.

The game, Buggerman: The Xmas Heist is basically a remake of the old arcade classic, Bagman, only re-themed into a (sort of) Christmas game. My third. The game is as usual available for both Windows and Mac OSX.

So, here it is – my third Christmas game…only delayed by one year. I’ve done much worse.

Enjoy. And please let me know in the connects or in a mail, if you like it.

Since my games tend to grow bigger and more complicated with each game, I felt like making a small and quick remake. Something so simple I could never have time to get tired or bored with it. So I asked on Retro Remakes;

“Suggest me something I can remake? – something simple I can do in no more than two weeks, and it can’t be a vector game…but I’m going to make it into one”

A few suggestions were put forward and I chose to remake the ZX Spectrum game, Arcadia.

Two weeks later and it’s done. It’s small, it’s simple, and I had a blast making it. I actually poured more love into it than I expected to do, and while it’s nothing special I think it’s pretty good for the time I’ve spent on it.

I hope some of you out there will find it interresting enough for a couple of good shooting-sessions.

Read more about it and grab downloads for Windows and OSX here: Arcadia.

Not too long ago (in 2008) I had a 4:3 monitor that only ran 1024×768 natively, so games I’d made until then were also in the 4:3 format – and I was happy with it, so therefore it didn’t occur to me to  make my games scalable or widescreen-y before then.

By mid-2009 I’d changed to a 16:9 monitor. It wasn’t the best monitor – it was cheap and had a max resolution of 1680×1050. But more annoyingly it didn’t center a 4:3 game in the middle of the screen – it would stretch games to fill out the whole screen so that everything became wider. Actually, I didn’t mind much – I guess I got used to it, but I could see why other people perhaps wouldn’t like it.

I must have bought that 16:9 monitor around May 2009 while working on Omega Race 2009 because I remember starting out in 4:3, but since that game has those silly widescreen options that all my vector games since has had, I must’ve gotten it while making that game. The idea was to let the user set the right format from the options menu so the game could center the game in the middle of the screen, so that, if the game is run in fullscreen it would keep the right aspect instead of stretching the graphics (if peoples monitors was as bad as mine).

Personally I don’t mind much if a game only runs at 1024×768 as long as it fills out the screen when it’s run in fullscreen mode. It’d be different if a game is run in a window – then you’d end up with a small rectangle in the middle of the screen. And all the vector games I’ve done since 2009 (Omega Race 2009, Star Castle & Black Widow) all has the action centered in the middle 4:3 section of the screen anyway, so all that extra room at the sides wouldn’t have been used anyway, so making them fully scalable HD wouldn’t make much of a difference …unless I change the gameplay a lot, but as you probably know – I try to avoid changing my remakes to much compared to the original games.

I was asked: “It’s vector graphics – why don’t you just re-code the games so they scale better?”.

Sure, it would without doubt be better if the games would just scale properly and run at the desktops resolution, but take Black Widow – I started coding that in 2010 and had it perhaps 75-80% complete when I put it aside for more than two years, and when I began working on it again I just wanted to complete it as fast I as could. Sure, since it uses vector-graphics it’s relatively easy to scale up the graphics, but there’s also a lot of calculations and math on which the gameplay is depending and that would have to be changed too, and making such changes to a game that is as complete as it is – well, that’s just too much work and too much can go wrong. Keep in mind that this is old code, it’s for a game that will be given away for free, and I’d want to finish it as soon as possible. Re-working code so drastically this late in development could potentially screw things up badly and make it take even longer to finish (which happened to me on Rip Off which I started developing in 640×480 and changed to 1024×768 in mid-development).

Since then I’ve upgraded to a nice 27 inch monitor that runs Full HD. Unfortunately my current batch of projects that I hope to finish over the next 3-4 months are also all old projects, so they’re not getting a Full HD upgrade either.

But at some point I would like to develop something that scales better and uses my new monitor fully (and yours too ). I’ve always had a soft spot for Tail Gunner and might remake that one day. That’s also a game that will better utilize the whole 16:9 screen, so it’s not a bad choice. I’d have to develop some new core routines instead of just re-using old ones, and I’m looking forward to starting from scratch and enter the HD age.

But all-new stuff will have to wait a while…there’s some old stuff that needs finishing first.

So, without further ado: may I present to you – Black Widow.

It’s a vector arena-shooter that is heavily inspired by Robotron: 2084, but with insects instead of robots. Like Robotron, Black Widow also has lots of strategies for scoring and getting further into the game, but what those strategies are is something only plenty of play will reveal.

I’m very proud of this remake – it plays very well (if I may say so myself) and is absolutely ‘up there’ among the games I’ve done that are closest to the original game in playability and features. The main feature here (probably) being the updated glowing vectors, but also the usual stuff like an online highscore board and normal D-pad and twin-stick joypad control supported.

If you’re a vector-purist and don’t like my style of intense glowing vectors you can either disable the background picture which has been designed to maximise the effect of the glow, or disable the glow completely and use only colored non-glowy vectors.

I don’t normally let people test my games during development, but I did with this game and it turned up several bugs (haha) and improved the overall playability/difficulty of the game, so thanks to them …and of course to Bruce Merritt who is the designer/programmer of the original arcade game, and Atari who released it back in 1982.

…if you like it then please tell me in the commentbox below.

Over the last month I’ve been working on 4 of my games in progress. That would under normal circumstances be crazy, but they’re all so close to completion, so while I’m waiting for the final graphics, music or some feedback one one game I can usually tweak something on another game.

First game to be finished will be Black Widow. It’s basically finished but I’ll wait the rest of this week to see if I get any feedback that needs attention, then compile the final version during the coming weekend. It should be out next week.

My third Christmas game, Buggerman, is also largely finished – I just need to tweak the music a bit, but as it’s a Christmas game I’ll hold its release off until December.

Hopefully I’ll also have X-Quest 2 done before the end of the year. The coding is mostly done and bar some small tweaks here and there all it needs are new graphics and some better sounds. I can do the sounds myself and I’ve found a guy that wants to do the graphics, but he’s a tad busy at the moment. I’m really hoping he can find the time soon, so I can get this game out there.

Finally I’ve also been getting back into my vector Invaders game, Neon Invasion Earth. The last time I worked on this was in January 2011 when I began adding a “classic Invaders mode”, and I’ve been finishing that over the last couple of days. Yay. That still leaves the main game to be finished, but this is also mostly done with mostly some smal bugs and a whole lot of gameplay tweaking and testing left.

So there it is; my roadmap for the immediate future – two games already finished and two more very close to completion, so check in again soon …there’s a good chance that there will be something new to download.

I’ve also decided to open up the site for comments again, without registering as a user first, but if the spam gets to bad I’ll put that limitation back. But let’s see how it goes for now.

So, yeah, I haven’t been terribly active lately, but the last 3 months I’ve been getting back into development again…and I must say it feels pretty great to be working on something that’ll result in a finished game very soon.

For a couple of months a little while back I was working on a new Spectrum game, but then I decided – about a month ago – to put it on hold for a while, to just work on something else for a change, so I decided to continue working on my remake of Black Widow which I put on hold about two years ago. I’ve now been working on it for about a month and it’s very close to being finished. At this point it’ll probably still be a couple of weeks, but I think that’s the timeframe.

I’ve got one (hopefully easy to find) bug to fix, one small (and easy enough) function to be written, and some music to sort out, and  apart from that all that’s left is tweaking the gameplay and difficulty, and that shouldn’t take too long.

So, keep your eyes peeled for a new remake in the near future.

Black Widow – old WIP screenshot.

However, I have made a bit of progress on my Christmas game in these 3 months, and not a lot is left to do really…but inspiration (and time) only comes in small chunks, but hey - I’ll release it when it’s done – I won’t wait until Christmas.

And the artist I’d hoped would help me out on X-Quest 2 disappeared off to make his own game, but now it seems he’s putting the finishing touches to that and he’s been in touch to tell me that he will have more time again soon, and I have to say that I’m quite exited about that. That game is (also) almost done and would benefit immensely from what he can bring to it. So I’m looking forward to that. :)

I’ve also done a bit of Z80 programming lately – but again…not a lot, but I hope to finish a new Spectrum sometime later this year (although I haven’t started on anything yet). I have no specific plans about what to make yet, but it’ll probably be an original game and not a remake.

Basically I just wanted to say that I’m still alive and let you know that I’m still working on my games (or at least trying to ). Just keep your eyes and ears open – suddenly there’ll be something new here.

…and because I wanted a picture to go with this post – I found this. It almost fits…but my name is not Sakurah, so it WILL happen.

Don't know who that guy is, but I can assure you - more games WILL happen.

While reconstructing all the links I added a new “Downloads” page to the site, where all the games are listed in one place, and where it’s easy to see what games are available on what platforms. See it here.

I’m also happy to say that my remake of Dingo for the ZX Spectrum is reviewed in the latest issue of Retro Gamer Magazine, and it has scored an impressive and very satisfying 91%.
(I’ve blurred the text – just in case – so I don’t get into trouble for posting a scan from a new magazine).

Dingo scores 91% in Retro Gamer Magazine.