Snowtel Released
If your a regular reader of the blog you’ll know that a good friend of mine, Tom Bradley, is my partner in developing tools such as Particle Designer and Glyph Designer. He was also a technical reviewer on my book. Well, he has been burning the midnight oil and completed his first action game, Snowtel, in time for Christmas.
Apart from the music Tom has done everything on this game including generation of the graphics. Considering what my developer art looks like he has done an amazing job. Under the hood there are some 71Squared game engine classes but also some amazing additions and new features he has made enabling him to generate all levels of game play from XML, with no programming required. This even allowed him to create a desktop Mac level editor app.
Enough about the technology, which I always get excited about, the game itself is really good fun to play. It’s fully touch based and can be picked up and put down easily. Its a really good example of a great casual game.
The game is of the genre to basically smash and bash as much as possible as fast as possible. This may sound easy, but it’s hard to master and the 30 levels get increasingly more difficult. As you get to the higher levels there are also some power ups which have been implemented really well, but which I will leave you to discover ;o)
If your already fed up with snow and snowmen then give this a go, it’s very therapeutic.
Great job Tom
Mike
8 Comments
Trisect Development on December 11th, 2010
I think that a 71squared engine is a great idea.
Please bring it on Mike.
Simon on December 12th, 2010
Shielded Snowman
Tougher than usual these snowmen bring shilds to protect themselves.
spot the mistake! (shild) – just thought I’d point it out :) On the snowtel website
al on December 13th, 2010
Mike,
I just brought ur learning ios game programming book, and when i start my xcode, i do not see the es1 and es2 render classes…why is that? im using 4.2
al on December 13th, 2010
Mike,
I just brought ur learning ios game programming book, and when i start my xcode, i do not see the es1 and es2 render classes…why is that? im using 4.2
Tom on December 13th, 2010
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your great comments on particle designer and ideas on future developments. We have had the same thoughts about making a desktop game editor and maybe even an entire game engine! Snowtel has allowed us to test out quite a few ideas ;)
One of the coolest features is all the level data for Snowtel was loaded from a web server during testing. This meant we could make a quick change in the editor, save to the web server and hit a refresh button in the game to play the changes. No recompiling / deploying the game to see the results!
@Simon, Thank for spotting the typo!!
@al, Try checking the books forum to see if your question is answered there (link below). If not, start a new thread and I’m sure you’ll a reply. Thanks
al on December 14th, 2010
thanks, I see ppl are having problems due to the templates…how do I run your code from the book though in my sdk, when i’m using version 4.2? I can’t get xcode to run…
Simon on December 15th, 2010
@al,
try the forum dude, or at the very least be clearer.
I’m pretty sure what you’re asking has been answered there.
A short answer would be open the project file with xcode. The file ending projectName.xcodeproj! Although I suspect you’re looking for a more detailed answer than that :)
There is a link to the forum on this site – click community at the top of the page.
Dan on December 10th, 2010
Not had a real look at this yet. Any chance of this desktop map editor being converted for use with other games and being released under the 71 squared brand?
Im a large fan of the Particle Designer (no chance to use it in a game yet though i have had hours of fun) and think this (if it is physically possible) could be a nice alternative to Tiled.
Then again, I could be seriously over-estimating the actual bit of kit!
While im banging on about 71 squared brand. Ive been giving Cocos2d a look recently. Its good yes, but very complicated (imo anyway). You should consider releasing your game engine to the general public under a similar licence to Cocos2d?
Would bring one or two more visitors to the site. The game engine is a cracking place to start!
Keep up the good work. :)