Black Widow — Tardis.dk Remakes

Updated: Black Widow (osx only).

December 28, 2012 By Sokurah

It turns out there was a couple of small problems with the OSX version of Black Widow, but they should be fixed now.

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

Filed Under: Updates Tagged With: Black Widow

New release: Black Widow

October 8, 2012 By Sokurah

Nice! I’ve finally managed to finish one of my projects that has – by now – been in development for quite a while…almost 2½ years in fact. However, due to a long stay on the WIP-pile the actual development time is “only” about 4 months.

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. 🙂

Filed Under: News, Remakes Tagged With: Black Widow

Nine months without new games. That’s about to change.

October 2, 2012 By Sokurah

After what seems like a long time without any notable news, or new games, I’m finally at at point where I can safely say that “Yes, there will be more games…and soon” 🙂

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. 😉

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Black Widow, Buggerman, Neon Invasion Earth, X-Quest 2

Coming soon: Black Widow remake

September 6, 2012 By Sokurah

Argh, almost 5 months since last update…again. *sigh*

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. 🙂