Final results

I've embedded the game in my various websites, I created a game development blog, I created widgets at Widgetbox, ClearSpring and iGoogle and I've emailed friends from all over the world. And looks like it worked!

I've received several e-mails from people asking about the development platform. I've received congratulations and more than one person asked me about Mac support (a call to the developers here!). I tried to reply all of them and asked them for their votes and eventually it paid back.

At the end of the game jam I was really disappointed with the results. I really liked the Brains game. When the popular choice opened I had big hopes and was expecting the top runners to be Brains, In Space It Only Rains Space Rocks and Shoved.

I guess that there were no incentives to continue Lava ball or Cement tower, in which I had seen a lot of potential too. Too bad. I was also disappointed at the other winning teams not pursuiting their creations. Bumper Bash had some fixtures but what happened to Save the boy?

I never really understood Lost soul but it has very polished visuals. I guess that the promotion through the development blog also helped there.

And from here to infinity, and beyond!

The obscure API

Reading (a.k.a. reverse engineering) Wild Pockets code some times is very funny when you see something like this:

ToolJoint = makeKernelClass("ToolJoint")
docs([[
hidden class ToolJoint
God knows what this is.
]])

More games?

So, what now?

The idea would be to continue the development and do more games. But I'm uncertain about that.
A problem I face is that most of the ideas I came up with would require features not present in the current engine.
The major stopper is the lack of some kind of storage/communication system.
How are we supposed to save game states, player progress?
Another stopper is the performance of the engine in some complex scenarios. I would like to be able to play with more of less complex blocks. My games used only stacked simple boxes, but when I added a lot of those I lost a lot of performance. My approach is to load a few things at a time (and prevent the player from going further). In a racer game, where you move at high speed, I can't figure out how to load all the scenery when it contains elements to interact with (as stacked blocks).

I have two game ideas:

A futuristic racer with physics elements. Think about Star Wars pod racing meets Need for speed.

Role playing game. I have devised a simple turn based combat system. Think about Pokemon meets Zelda.

User feedback

I'm pretty happy with the user feedback so far.
I've received numerous votes, a couple of comments and a couple of people even contacted me with development questions.
Thank you guys!
And about the technical questions, I hope I resolved them. Again, you can get all the information you need at www.wildpockets.com.

Promotion

After a game has been developed and launched, next step is its promotion and marketing. And that's the phase I'm at in this mini simulation.
I've created a few widgets, sent the URL to some game developing forums and also let some friends know about it. Now we'll see.

SF Game Jam People’s choice

The voting for the People’s choice award for the SF Game Jam is open.

I’d like to invite you to play my games and ask you to vote for them.

http://www.wildpockets.com/bounceemdown

http://www.wildpockets.com/thetank

Improvements and Suggestions list

No game is ever "done". There are always improvements to make. There is a point where the game should be released, but if the developers care and the game has a solid and supportive public, there are going to be updated. From bug fixing to graphic improvements to difficulty balancing. I'd like to talk about Starcraft which has had patches regularly for over a decade.

The following lists were made after the initial submissions at the game jam. This is the current status.

Bounce'em Down game

• Add colors to the wall tower
• Add decoration blocks on sides
• Add block textures
• Explode wall in colors / freed colors go to the player
• Add effect of black particles on enemy fire
• Grass
• Mountains
  
• Clouds
• Colors to the ball
• Sounds
• Background music
• Control position when on mid-air
• Roll on ground
• Allow mid-air spinning
  
• Add better splashscreen and instructions
  
• Add colors in the health/status bar
• Fox restart on death
• Gain health on level end
• Adjust inverted pyramid difficulty
  
• Add more levels
• Game promotion
  

The Tank game

• Add block textures
• Add stylized blocks and enemies
  
• Sounds
• Restart on death
• Better instructions and splash screen
  
• Background music
  
• Bug with direction (partially solved, going right in the beginning)
• Bug with loading levels (partially solved)
  
• Particles on enemy fire
• Add more levels
• Promotion