Blog for Ward De Langhe at GarageGames.com

game video

Ward De Langhe — 2007-11-14T23:04:50+00:00

Time to reveal the gameplay of my new game! I uploaded a little video to youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLIYaJHe2Rg
I call it "match-3 with a twist". The video shows a bit of everything: the menu's, the gameplay, the quest, highscore screen, etc
The game isn't 100% finished yet, but its very close now. Still didn't start the closed beta testing, should be able to do that soon.

Alchemist progress (TGB game)

Ward De Langhe — 2007-10-15T20:29:13+00:00

The game I'm working on is nearing completion. There's still a lot to do, but if I can keep up the pace of the past 2 weeks, I should be able to finish it by the end of next month. I think by next week I can put together a beta version, ready for a serious test-run.
For my last game a couple of people from the GG community tested the game. It took 2-3 iterations to fix the bugs, and make the needed improvements.
I would like to do the same. So if anyone wants to volunteer to test my game and give me feedback about bugs or things you want to see improved, send me an email with your computer specs, your age and if you are a developer or a game player. Testing will be done in 2-3 iterations, probably a couple of weeks in between the different builds.

Anyway, time for some screenshots. I'm not ready to show the gameplay yet. That part is done, but I don't want to reveal too much. So, lets say it's a match-3 game with a twist.

Here's the main menu:

Here's the land of Pellinore. You are an alchemist, and your goal is to visit the 8 castles and produce enough gold to rebuild the castles. I'm not really satisfied with the graphic. The image is lacking detail, but I ran out of budget, so, it's possible this part will stay like this.

An example of a dialog/panel screen. Everything is in the same style, even the dialog panels:

The highscore screen:

Time for another blog post...

Ward De Langhe — 2007-07-06T18:57:01+00:00

First off all... sorry folks... no screenshots or freebies this time ;)
Today I want to talk about some business related stuff rather then game development news. First some bad news:
About a year ago I started www.firstrategames.com together with a partner. The idea was to have my own portal where I could sell my own games without being reliable on publishers/other portals, and have an extra income selling other peoples games. One year later, we decided to close it down. I won't discuss all the reasons here in public. It was an expensive lesson.... creating and promoting a site like that, obviously that didn't come free. Luckely we were able to do most of the work ourselves, so all in all, the loss is acceptable.
Later this month I'll be pulling the plug. I will keep the URL for now, because I am considering resurecting this project in another form.
If you want to know exactly why we are closing down, or you want to take over the site (offcourse I cannot give something like this away for free... and like i said, I'm considering keeping the URL), you can always mail me.

As you may or may not know, I am currently working on a new game, and already have one planned after that. Development went slow for a while, but that's about to change now I have some time off from work soon. More on that on another blog post.

Anyway, I came to realize that using my own name for publishing my games is probably not looking too professional. Up till now it was cool, I'm an indie after all. But I want to do things a bit more seriously from now on, so I was thinking about a name I could use. And oh boy, this is hard. Everything I can think off seems to be taken already! So please give me some input on the following company names.
The perception people have is important to me. Once I've chosen a name, I won't be changing it any time soon. So it has to be good. I do more then just games. Rich Internet Applications, Flash and Flex, interactive CD-ROMS, etc. So I need something that works for all of this.
First I thought about "flambeau" or "flambeau interactive media lab" in full. This is the french word for torch. Sounds cool, and has a meaning. Lots of potential for a powerfull/catchy logo. Problem is, there are already are a couple of companies called like this, even a media studio. Its also the name of a town or area if I'm not mistaking... so I quicly dropped this idea.
Second name that came to my mind was "e-Motion Media". I like the double "M" sound in this one. A cool name I think, but I soon found out there's another company around with this name too.
Third: "Azur" or "Azure media". Also taken!
And last but not least "Very Interactive People". Giving a whole new meaning to the word VIP. This one wasn't taken, and I even bought the URL becuase it was still free, and had a logo made for it just to see how it could look. Go check it out here: www.veryinteractivepeople.com.
If I decide not to use it I can always try to sell the URL and the logo. The only thing that worries me about this one is people might find it arrogant. Especially if you pronounce it as "VIP". Or do you think people will see the humor in it (becuase that was the intention)? Does this even make any sense (english is not my first language)? It is also a bit long. But I think people will remember it anyway. I would apreciate some feedback... and if any of you have any suggestions, I'm listening!

Next week I'll post some new screenshots or illustrations from my new game. So whatch out for my next post if you're interested in seeing those.

New game & some freebies

Ward De Langhe — 2007-04-22T13:18:13+00:00

In my last blog post I promised to announce my new game. I'm not ready to show the gameplay yet, but I wanted to post something anyway. So...

New game: Alchemist (working title)

A couple of months ago, I started working on this new game. It's a casual math-3 game. Some of you will probably say "oh no, not another match-3 game", but this one is very unique. I'm not ready to show the gameplay yet, need to finish it up some more and replace the programmer art. So, a little bit more patience for that ;)
The story of the game goes like this (will hire a copywriter to write the final story):
You are an alchemist, working for a king. However, in the 10 year you are working for the king you haven't produced any gold. After a few failed harvests, the country is becoming poor. People are hungry, the king can't raise anymore taxes, so eventually he decides to ban you. You can only come back if you find a formula to create gold. And to prove it, you have to make the country rich again.
So one day, you find a way to make gold, you return to your country, and start your quest (from city to city, untill you arrive at the king's castle).
For now I'm using the title "Alchemist", but I'm not sure. Maybe I'll change it into "An alchemist's quest" or something like that. Any ideas?
I already hired an artist, to start replacing the programmer art. This artist is doing a great job. Here's the main menu screen. The buttons will come horizontally at the bottom. The sky in the background is animated (scrolling):

As an indie, paying for the artwork hurts (coming out of my savings), but in the end it'll be worth it. I want this game to look as good as my last game, hopefully even better ;)

"Portfolio" back online
I used to have an online portfolio showing work samples like 2D/3D art, products, sites, etc. Its been down for 2 years, but the webstats indicate people are still visiting it. So, I really needed to put something online again... I didn't have time to create a decent looking design. But this week, I decided to just upload a gallery of some of my old 3D work. Becuase that's what most people used to visit the portfolio for. Becuase I didn't have any time, I just downloaded "simple viewer", a free flash gallery applet, configured it, and voila... www.multimediaportfolio.net
If I find some time I will create a design, and add more galleries (2D,3D, programming.... yeah, I do a bit of everything).

Freebies
I guess most of you are reading this becuase of the word "freebies" in the title of this blogpost ;)
While cleaning up my hard-drive, I found a lot of skybox collections. I made these over the years for my 3D game experiments, but never used them in a finished game. First I thought to create a content pack, but I decided to give them away for free. I have a lot more, but I picked out the best ones. I also have some texture packs, but those would kill my bandwidth heheh.

Skybox 1: colorfull fantasy skybox big planet

Skybox 2: space/night skybox, red nebula/fog

Skybox 3: space skybox with spacestation in the sky

Skybox 4: dusk skybox

Skybox 5: snow/storm skybox

I am giving these away for free, but they are not public domain. I keep the copyrights. You can however use them in commercial or non commercial projects. I would appreciate mentioning my name in the credits, or a small donation (details are in the eula.txt file), but you don't have to do this.

That's all for now. I hope to finish the gameplay of my new game soon, so I can post some screenshots or maybe even a video.

__________________________________________________

TGB projects

Ward De Langhe — 2007-03-28T19:34:59+00:00

It's been quit a while since my lost blog post, and becuase I have been using TGB a lot lately, I thought it was time to post something here.
One of the projects I've been working on will be announced soon, so watch out for my next blog.
The other project was at my dayjob, Indie Group. Indie Group (Interactive Digital Experience), is a Belgian multimedia company, and one of its business units is "Indie Gaming". The games we make are mostly adver-games, and educational games.

Anyway, we were doing a project for the castle of Wijnendaele (in Torhout, Belgium). The project was a game for kids, to learn about the castle. One of things that had to be made were 2 games to run on touch screens.
Normally we would create this in Flash, but I thought it was the perfect opportunity to introduce TGB. So, I did a short test to see if TGB would run on the touchscreens. Even though they were significantly slower then a regular pc, TGB was running fine on them. I'll post the specs of the machines we used tomorrow, don't have that info with me right now. After that we bought a commercial license, and 2 days later I had an almost complete version of the first game. The first game was a simple memory game. The player has to match 2 items, and if a match is made, the game tells you how many items were in the castle. When all items are matched, the game gives the player a codeword, that word has to be used to continue. Here's a little video showing what I had after roughly 2 days of work (all texts in dutch):

(click the image above to load the video)

The graphics aren't the final graphics, and the timer was removed later on.
Besides this game, we also made another, similar game. No video of that one though.
Anyway, overall this was a good experience. Fast prototyping, short development time. We didn't use all the power of TGB, but that's how it goes in this business (deadlines, budget, etc).
Not everything went right though. As you can see in the video, in that first version I had a lot of trouble with the font rendering. I just couldn't get it to look sharp. It is a lot better in the final version, but still not sharp enough (even after I got help from some community members). If anyone knows a good tutorial somewhere on how to use the textObject, please let me know.

Ok, that's all for now ;) And like I said, watch out for my next blog.

What i've been doing lately

Ward De Langhe — 2006-10-22T10:21:32+00:00

I don't have any big news this time, but I tought to just post another blog here, to keep people informed of what I'm doing. Also because the feedback I got on my previous posts here turned out to be of great value.

Anywhere here's what I have been doing the past month:

Magic Pearls 1.1
I made a new version of Magic Pearls. You can download the demo here: http://www.firstrategames.com/gameinfo.aspx?id=1. It still doesn't have everything most people asked for, but it does have some nice things added to it:

* A-star pathfinding:
You can now drag/drop the player. Using A* pathfinding it then highlights the path it will follow to get there, and once you drop the player, he goes to the assigned location. This should help people who play using the mouse. The next step would be drag and drop the shells. But I'm still struggling with that algorithm, so I'm not sure I'll be able to do that anytime soon (if people implemented something like this before, let me know. I think its possible by extending A* to check if the box can be pushed in the direction, and doing this each time you open a square)
* 200+ extra levels added
I added over 200 extra levels. Only available in the full version though. I will probably add more over the coming month, to make it more interesting for people to buy the game.
* unlimited undo levels
The number of steps you could undo where set to 20. I removed this limit, don't know why I put that limit in there in the first place :)
* Addedd sound for undo
* ...

Here's a screenshot of the pathfinding in action (I'm dragging the player here, the highlighted tiles are the path the fish will follow when released):

New game
I started working on a new game. Didn't make much progress yet, so nothing to show for now. When i have something to show I'll post another blog. I'm thinking of using the art assets from Magic Pearls. Mainly becuase right now I don't have enough budget let someone create new art. Do you think people will notice the artwork (background drawings) are the same? Do you think that will bother people? Its not like MP is a big succes. The demo was downloaded around 400 times this month, so I think there are few people who would know. But... it will be released on the same site (firstrategames.com).

Free mini games
I'm also working on a series of free mini games for firstrategames.com. The idea is to make a section with free flash games, and promote our games on the side. We hope this way the advertising costs will go down a bit.

Magic Pearls

Ward De Langhe — 2006-09-14T07:37:46+00:00

Finally! Magic Pearls, a little 2D puzzle game I've been working on for too long now is released to the public.

Quote:

Your mission is to push the Magic Pearls into their assigned slots in as few moves as possible. The pearls can only be pushed, never pulled, and those slots can seem to have a mind of their own sometimes!

Sounds simple doesn't it? That's what we thought too.

Think you've got what it takes to beat this fiendishly clever game? Download the free game demo now and find out.

The game is released on FirstRateGames.com

You can read all about it, and download the demo here:www.firstrategames.com/gameinfo.aspx?id=1

Here are some screenshots:

I know this game has a very select public. I'm hoping people who like puzzle games like sudoku, sokoban (it is a sokoban clone), etc will like it. If you know any people who are into puzzle games, defenetly send them the link. Or if you have a website and want to link to it...that'd be great.

So now this one is finally out the door. I need to start working on a new game :) During the development of this game i came to realize that even the simplest game ideas take very long if you want to it right (and by yourself, and on a tight budget :) ). So the next game won't be too complex either, something I can finish in a month or 2. Maybe after that, I'll finally look into making a 3D game (with TGE or TSE).

Update

Ward De Langhe — 2006-07-29T19:22:31+00:00

Sorry folks, no images this time ;) Just a quick update on what I have been up to in the past couple of weeks.
Will add some extra images to the next blog post to make up :)

So, what have i been up to?
First of all, finishing up Magic Pearls. The game is done now, just need to finish up the level editor, and test it on mac (should work in theory, but haven't checked yet, so it probably isn't working on mac heheh).
I'll publish this game myself on www.firstrategames.com. I didn't think I could get publishers interested in a small puzzle game like this, so I didn't really look very hard for interested publishers. And, I wanted to launch my own game portal site for some time now, so this was a good opportunity to actually do something instead of dream about it :) My business partner is currently programming the e-commerce system. The site should go live in the coming weeks.

I'm also playing around with some new game ideas, and actually started doing some graphics for the next game already. It'll be a "match 3 game with a twist"... won't say more at this point, I will post screenshots and more info when I start coding. I know.... i can already hear the "oh no, not another match 3 game"... but wait untill you see it. It's quite original, and I believe it'll be really fun to play.
I'm not sure if I should use TGB, or stick with Flash. Both have pro's and con's.

I'm also thinking of taking down www.3d-resource.com Even though it doesn't cost me much to keep the site running.... it doesn't generate much profit either. If anyone is interested in buying the url or even the whole site (asp.net with an acces database, using paypal for payments), feel free to make a bid, but be quick (if I take it offline, it'll be in the coming week).

Still not done... but really close now

Ward De Langhe — 2006-07-09T16:38:26+00:00

I'm still working on "Magic Pearls" a little 2D puzzle game. After the testround I got tons of feedback, which made me realize, even though the game was almost finished, I needed to rewrite some parts of the game, and touch it up a bit.
Here's what's changed so far:
-I hired someone to make 10 background drawings. I found this guy on rentacoder.com, and I'm really pleased with the quality of the work he delivered. His name is Popa Cristian. If you like his work (see example below), and could use some artwork for your game, you can post a project for him on RAC here: www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/SoftwareCoders/showBioInfo.asp?lngAuthorId=2091612(post exclusive project)
-Changed the graphics a bit to fit better with the new backgrounds
-made it so you can now either only the mouse, or only the keyboard, or mix them. Before not all commands had keyboard shortcuts, and the player couldn't be moved by the mouse. Now all of that is possible
-made some changes for better usability (auto focus on level list, auto selection of new level, ...)
-20 undo steps instead of 1 (makes the levels a lot easier, but this was requested by almost all of the testers,.... so i couldn't ignore this)
-fixed some bugs
-Changed some sound effects
-Removed the windows skin (I'm assuming its causing slowdown of craches on some machines)
-...

Anyway... Here are some pics:

In the next month I'm planning on setting up a site to sell this game (and some other games). I already bought an url (www.firstrategames.com), and I found a "business partner", so things will go a little faster then usual ;)
This doesn't mean i won't try and see if any publishers are interested too... anyone know any casual game publishers that might be interested in a puzzle game like this?

I still need to do a lot before its 100% finished (games are never "finished", but you have to stop sometime):
-create 35 more levels
-get the mac version going
-finish the level editor
-make a demo version, and make a serial activation system for the full version.

Done!? ... well.... almost

Ward De Langhe — 2006-06-15T22:02:22+00:00

The 2D puzzle game (sokoban style game) I'm working on is 99% done now.
I changed the name to "Magic Pearls". Not very original, i know, but better then the first title I came up with (check my previous blog post about this game if you want to know why I changed the name).

Anyway, since last time I changed a couple of things:
-The name
-Music, you can now configure it to play an mp3 from your hardrive instead of the standard music loop
-Settings (audio volume, music volume, path to mp3.... and these are now saved to a file)
-If you are playing the original pack, you must play one level at a time. Solving a level now unlocks the next, and so one. You can't skip levels. If you load a level pack other then the original one there's no limit, in that case you can play any level from the pack.

Things I still need to do:
-Fix some small bugs
-Design 55 more levels (so i have 100)
-Finish the level editor (not on my priority list, might even finish it after the release)
-Make a Mac version (shouln't take much time)

Like I said, its near completion, so if there are any volunteers out there for playtesting, let me know (have already a couple of people, but could use some more testers). I prefer people who already played this type of games before.... becuase i want some input about the difficulty and fun factor of the levels. (still need to design 55 more levels...damn)

Here are some pics: