News Archive June 2006

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Thursday June 1, 2006 - Latin voters?

The voting results were roughly 3 to 1 for the winner of Thursday's vote. I was kind of hoping for a closer result, but I guess the choice wasn't as tough for my visitors as I thought. The results are for my TileDoKu game, which is being developed from the ground up on this site. This week's contribution to the project is the actual plans for the TileDoKu game.

Friday June 2, 2006 - Coffee Maps

Chapter 2 of Making of Coffee Quest examines the way Coffee Quest uses maps. While this may not sound that important, maps and the manipulation of map data is a vital part of any role-playing game. Reading this chapter will give you a basic understanding of how a bunch of seemingly random letters in a text file can become what appears to the player as a three dimensional world. Of course, chapter 3 will be where we actually start rendering that world by exploring the painters algorithm .

Saturday June 3, 2006 - Storm link

I am a bit rushed today as a thunderstorm appears to be heading this way (and I don't like using electrical equipment during thunderstorms). It's Saturday, and on Saturday's I showcase someone else's stuff instead of mine. I should have a game this week as last week was an application, but one of my visitors emailed me this link, and as it's the only suggestion I got since starting to have a weekly third party link, I figured I'd post it. It is another Flash alternative that produces .swf files and is open source. It is http://www.openlaszlo.org/ and looks like a possible solution for people who want to develop for the Flash player but can't afford Flash.

Sunday June 4, 2006 - Weekend Poll

I've moved the remainder of April's news articles to the news archive. I am also having a poll as there are no projects that are finishing up this week. Quite simple, should I continue posting on weekends (which aren't much anyway) or should I just post on weekdays?

Monday June 5, 2006 - Talking with elevators

Last week I posted the open source version of One of those Weeks episode 5. This week I am posting the Chapter from my Making of One of those Weeks eBook that discusses how the episode was made. If you were having problems with this episode, the first part of the chapter covers all the conversations and includes a walk through explaining what you have to do to complete the game. I am hoping to have episode 18 next monday, but we will see next week.

Tuesday June 6, 2006 - The Devil made me do it

Couldn't resist that sub-title. Sorry for the late notice, but I am not going to be updating the site for the rest of the week for reasons that I will not go into here. I could post the Fleet 2006 work I have done, but am not going to. Instead I am going to have a poll. You see, I just looked at the site statistics for the last few months and it appears that my move to daily updates is not doing too well. That combined with the early results of the poll I had on Sunday has me thinking that perhaps this daily thing should be changed. So I am going to get your opinion. Should I keep daily updates? I don't know when the next update will be, but I should be back by Sunday. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Sunday June 11, 2006 - Can't please everyone but will try anyway

When I looked at the results from the poll on Tuesday I was not too surprised to see that most of my visitors seemed to feel the same way I felt. While updating daily is nice, when you only have two people (and quite often only one) working part time on a site, there isn't very much to post on a daily bases. As a result, the releases were frequent but fairly small. People seem to want substantial news, so I am switching back to a weekly format. This will be every friday, though this friday will probably be a double post. For those of you who do want to see the minor updates, I have some ideas that may satisfy you as well. Keep an eye on the coming soon page. Now, before I leave, let's vote on what Action game you would like me to work on?

June 11, 2006 (coming soon blog)

Now that Blazing Games is reverting back to a weekly format for releases, there is still the 40% of the people who like the smaller, more frequent updates. These people also tend to be people likely to try out early releases of software. This is exactly what I need. To keep these people up to date, and to help with testing of newer games in development, I am going to have a development blog. Right now this is just a web page (the coming soon page, though I may rename the page on the side links), but if there is enough interest, I will add a separate RSS feed for this page. EMail me ( webmaster@blazinggames.com) to let me know what you think.

Unlike the home page, the dates used for these updates will be the actual date when I write it. I will try to post frequently, and will certainly post when one of the four projects in development (one from each category) is updated. I am going to set up testing pages for most of these so you will be able to try beta versions (and occasionally even alpha versions) of most games. Some games, such as the One of those Weeks series, will probably not have public betas and will only be released when it is finished. I will still have news on the status of the games.

June 12, 2006 (coming soon blog)

No feedback about having an RSS feed yet, so either there is not much interest or nobody has looked at this page yet. Still, I am going to try to update my blog every day even if nobody but me knows it exisits (as it makes a nice journal if nothing else). I have a seketon of Fleet 2006, but am not going to release it. as an animated title sequence and a bunch of empty coming soon screens is not really that interesting (though if you are interested in seeing it, email me and I may change my mind about posting it). I have set up the development page for this game and in the table games index have listed Fleet 2006 as in development. I am going to do the same thing with all the main game index pages over the next week. To be honest, though, the games that are probably going to get the bulk of my spare time are One of those Weeks and TileDoKu . With OotW, I want to rough out the entire series and send the alpha version to Mary so that there will be a small chance of the fourth through seventh days having decent artwork.

June 13, 2006 (coming soon blog)

I have started posting some of the material that will officially be announced on Friday. Those of you reading this (assuming there is actually somebody reading this) can access the second half of the Holeman Set 4 walk through. Tomorrow I will try to get the first half of set 5 posted, and thursday will be when the remainder of the holeman walk through is posted as well as a special animation for sunday.

June 14, 2006 (coming soon blog)

I actually managed to finish writing all of the bonus set strategy guide. I had a lot of problems finding a consistent method for finishing the broken level and when posting yesterday feared that the remaining 3 levels would also prove to be problematic when trying to find a consistent way of beating them. This was not the case, so I was actually able to post the entire walkthrough for the bonus set. Tomorrow I will be posting the animation but at least the readers of this blog (if there are any) got early access to the walkthrough. I am hoping that next week's game will be ready well before the thursday evening (here, friday morning most the world) weekly post will be available significantly early for people reading this.

June 16, 2006 - Cleaning up and going fishing

What can I say. Those of you who have been following my blog on the coming soon page will already know what I am about to announce, with the bulk of the announcement having been posted for a few days. I have finished all of the Mr. Holeman strategy guide (including the bonus set). That of course is only half of today's release (or 3/4 depending on how you count). The other half is for sunday, which is Father's Day. For those who are wondering, the coming soon page will not only be about pre-release of the weekly release, but will also describe how the four games that are in development are coming along and will have links to beta releases (this page will only have final releases).

June 18, 2006 (coming soon blog)

Never accomplished anything this weekend, though my Dad did catch 4 fish (and for those who couldn't tell, those were fish on my father's day animation). As it has been a week, I am removing the poll with the winner being my old escape pod game. One plus about this is that the game is in a mothball state so once I dig it out, I should be able to finish it fairly quick. That being said, I have officially set up the TileDoKu page which you can see on the Brain Game index page. I am hoping to get to get OotW 18 into a release candidate state late tonight or tomorrow evening as that is what I am hoping to release this friday. The problem is I just have not being in the proper mood to work on that game.

June 20, 2006 (coming soon blog)

I haven't got much to say about work as I spent yesterday playing with Flex 2 instead of working on OotW like I should have been. Flex 2 is part of Adobe's plans for the future of Flash. From what I can tell, they are planning on having Flex become the programming environment for Flash., with Flex programmers able to create stand alone swf files using Flex's XML markup language and Action Script 3 code. It actually reminded me of Open Laszlo so I am thinking that as Adobe wants to push me in that direction anyway, perhaps I should consider Open Laszlo for my future development plans. Both produce flash output, but Laszlo can also produce DHTML output. My decision is hardly close to being made, but will largely depend on what is going to be happening with the actual Flash tool which is apparently going to be getting a name change. If Adobe does release the free Flex SDK compilers like they say they are going to and if Flash 9 (or whatever they call it) still allows for decent programming support, then perhaps I will stay with Adobe. Now that I have that off my chest, perhaps I can concentrate on getting OotW18 done so I can release it early to the person who actually reads my blog.

June 21, 2006 (coming soon blog)

Well, I am at least able to get the episode out a day early. It is located here for those of you who are reading this blog.

June 23, 2006 - One of those Quests

I know that this episode took me far longer to assemble than it should have. Yet despite that, I am going to try to make sure that there is at least one new episode of One of those Weeks every month (in addition to chapter releases from Making of One of those Weeks). In fact, I am going to be spending this weekend and possibly even the Canada Day long weekend making sure that I have a month's worth of content ready to be released. The reasons for this will be noted next week. As for this week, the release today (which actually was posted early for people who read my blog on the coming soon page) is Episode 18 of One of those Weeks.

June 25, 2006 (coming soon blog)

So far only one person seems interested in this page, and I don't know if it is worth creating a RSS feed for just one person. I might play around with PHP when I get time and have the xml file that the feed uses converted into text for this page (killing two birds with one stone). With php this should be easy but I have never used the xml functions that php has so will have to learn them first. OotW 19 is coming along great, but I want to create a new dialog system for the game. This has to be done before the end of the Canada Day long weekend for reasons that will be explained on friday. If I can't get the new dialog system working, I may decide to use the old one just so that the episode gets released in July.

June 27, 2006 (coming soon blog)

I have finally dug out my Escape Pod Mission Luna code and have actually posed a copy of the game on the site. While this is an alpha release that was posted, it will give you some idea about what the game is going to be like once it is done.

June 28, 2006 (coming soon blog)

It appears that I forgot to update the Story Game index when I posted the OotW 19 page. Yes, that was my plan and I guess I was in too big of a rush. The big news today has nothing to do with my site (at least not directly). Adobe has released Flex 2. More importantly, they have released the Flex 2 SDK for free, which means that I will actually be able to post my Flex 2 game. Adobe has also posted a beta of Flash 9 for Flash 8 Professional owners that essentially adds Action Script 3/Flash Player 9 support to Flash 8. There is no word on what exactly their plans for Flash 9 are (or if that is going to be the name of the tool even) but they did say 2007 would be the release date. I am going to give Flex a bit of a go and suspect that I am going to have a hard time deciding between Open Laszlo and Flex 2 for future directions. To make things more interesting, word is that Java will be open sourced within the next few months. For browser based games, however, I still think Flash is currently the better standard, but I do like Java.

June 30, 2006 - Happy Holidays

Saturday is Canada Day, while Tuesday is Independence Day so to all my Canadian and American visitors I wish you a happy long weekend . Last year around this time I released the Open Source version of my Canada Day flag game. This year I am releasing something for my American friends, even though they let me down on Net Neutrality. Still, today's release is the Open Source version of the Independence Day flag game. I should probably point out that the weekend is going to be partially spent making sure I have enough content ready to last me for the month of July. This is because I am going to be going into what is known as crunch mode to finish a project for a third party (not game or site related) that is due by the end of July. I probably don't need to go into crunch mode, as I appear to be ahead of schedule. Still, I would rather finish a couple weeks early then be late. Sadly, the games that I will be finishing will for the most part not be the ones officially under development for the site as most of those are too far from being complete.

Billy D. Spelchan
President, Blazing Games Inc.