Puzzle Strike Randomizer (PSR)

Hey everybody,

Recently, some friends of mine have been playing a game called Puzzle Strike: Bag of Chips -- a board game created by Sirlin Games. The game is very addictive and we end up playing a couple of round nearly every day. http://www.fantasystrike.com/forums/index.php?portal/portal/

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANY RIGHTS TO PUZZLE STRIKE OR ANYTHING CREATED BY SIRLIN GAMES. I AM SIMPLY A FAN AND I WANTED TO MAKE AN APP THAT HELPS MY FRIENDS AND I SET UP THE GAME FASTER.

This particular post is not so much about Puzzle Strike. It's more about the iOS application that I made for it. The application is a utility app that speeds up the setup process. When we play, my friends and I randomly select characters to use and puzzle chips (extra abilities available for the game) This can end up being a long process since we have to put chips in a bag, select them, then re-organize the chips before we can play. With this app, we can keep our chips organized and setup the game much more quickly!

In its current state, the app has a couple of configurable properties. You can configure the number of players in the game from two to five, and you can also set names for each player, making it simple to tell which character was assigned to which player. In addition, those names are saved across sessions, meaning that players don't have to re-enter names if they are playing with the same group of people. We found ourselves occasionally loathing the results of the randomizer, so I added a quick re-roll button that regenerates the list of characters and/or puzzle chips.

Here is a video preview:

Please note that the art for the chips and the characters was not done by me. I got them from Sirlin and they own all rights to the assets.

I have some more plans for the application, including an encyclopedia where users can view information on characters as well as puzzle chips and basic strategies and also including options for the third edition of the game (my friends and I have the second edition, but the third edition is right around the corner and includes new characters and chips). I built the app so that adding new chips and characters is very easy. The trickier part is adding options to filter chips and characters based on certain criteria or directly.

In all, I will continue working on this app as long as my friends and I continue playing Puzzle Strike. I am going to post on the Puzzle Strike forums regarding PSR and if I get a positive reaction, I will polish the app and place it in the app store for download!

If you have feedback, questions, or comments, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email!

Thanks!

UPDATE: Added a video preview of the current version of the game. The encyclopedia is complete!

Codename: Stars

Finally, a post about the game I am working on!

As I said in my previous post, I am trying to make a game from start to finish, including design, art, and engineering. I have already come up with a name and fiction for the game, but I think I will keep that under wraps until the game is in its final stages. Until that point, i'll refer to the game as Stars.

We'll start with a lone screenshot:

Stars

Stars began as a free-running game. You were going to be an animal escaping from the zoo and as the player, you would have to dodge obstacles and avoid hazards to make it through each stage. I put a lot of thought into the original idea, but decided to change it since it didn't quite hit every point that I wanted in terms of a mobile game with a certain fun factor. So Stars is no longer free-running... per se.

So after looking at the image, you're probably saying to yourself "What the hell is this?" Allow me to briefly explain. So, the character that the player has control over is the viking character in the middle of the shot. The character is constantly moving. You have some control over the character's direction, but you are not free to move around as you please. The stars and space-y backgrounds that you see are actually parallax backgrounds, so as the game scrolls, each layer moves at a different rate, giving the effect of distance and depth. 

The red circular images you see on the screen are buttons for input. The button on the left is acting as a joystick so that I can tweak my character's movement while I develop the game. The buttons on the right are no longer functional. I was originally using them as an attack and jump buttons, but after tweaking the core gameplay, those two buttons turned out to no longer be needed.

So, Stars is coming along pretty well. I want to give more information on the premise and gameplay, but I don't want to reveal everything right off the bat. As I implement more core mechanics, I'll show you more screenshots and make some videos of the action so that you guys can watch the game grow along with me =]

Thanks for reading!

DISCLAIMER: I DID NOT MAKE ANY OF THE IMAGES YOU SEE HERE! SOME OF THEM ARE TAKEN STRAIGHT FROM THE INTERNET AND OTHERS ARE TAKEN FROM THE BOOK SOURCE THAT I AM USING (cocos2dbook.com) THEY ARE ALL PLACEHOLDER AND WILL NOT BE USED IN THE FINAL VERSION OF THIS GAME. 

Back in Business!

Hey Everyone,

So I took a bit of a hiatus as far as blogging. I had some important things to take care of. I finished up school and started a new, exciting development job and it was taking up a lot of my time. But now I am settled into my routine and I have found some free time to start doing my own development again!

So in the near future, you will start seeing posts about the new game I am working on. It is an iOS game and my goal is to do the game from start to finish, complete with art, design, and development, then drop it into the app store and see how it does! Reviving this blog will keep me motivated as far as developing and help me get this game out the door!

So, stay posted!

Neuro Notes

Hey everybody,

Neuro Notes is a fun project that I have been working on. I built it in order to make notetaking in the classroom a little better and efficient. I know that there are many times when I miss something that the professor says and then I spend so much time trying to figure that out that I end up missing some other stuff. This software is meant to solve that problem and make notetaking streamlined and more efficient.

I built Neuro Notes using C#.NET, windows forms, and an SQL database in the backend for storing simple data. Hopefully, you'll be able to see an android app soon!

Buddy-Me Android Application

Hey Everybody,

I just completed my first individual Android project, titled BuddyMe. The intention with Buddy Me was to create a network by which people could quickly and easily identify which of their friends are in their vicinity and locate them. This app would be a great asset for any socialite who is typically found traversing the streets of a popular city on any given night.

The app itself is, of course, written in java with help from the android libraries. The information regarding friends is stored on a server running ruby on rails. When prompted by the user, the app retrieves relevant user data from the server, processes it, and translates it onto a google map, allowing users to see where they are, and where their friends are.

This is an example of a friend that has been located.

More integration and features to come! (as well as an iphone version?)

UPDATE: The backend originally used Ruby on Rails, but due to limitations, I decided to build a backend in Python. Python hosts a web server with a unique WEB API. Requests are formed in the android application and sent to the webserver, which takes the appropriate action, whether that be retrieving data from the SQL database, updating data in the database, or returning information to the phone.

Scirch - Language Compiler

Scirch is the name of a programming language I built. Scirch was made in order to make it easier for people to simulate simple logic circuits and gates. Using Scirch, users are able to quickly hack up a circuit complete with subcomponents, and run them from within a main circuit. They can pass in as many inputs as they want and see the values of those inputs at any time.

The programming language is very simple and has similar syntax to c. The language has a defined syntax and source code has to be put into an extra file. Scirch was built using ocaml and ocamlyacc and has the ability to execute both native Scirch code as well as fake bytecode.

Making the project.

Running Scirch with one of the test files -- test-gates.sc.
This test file prints out the truth tables for each of the supported gates: AND, OR, NAND, NOR, NOT.

Running Scirch with another test file -- test-callfunc.sc
This test file checks Scirch's ability to create and call functions.

Running Scirch with a third test file -- test-setvatrs.sc
This test file stores values in variables and uses those stored values in arithmetic operations.

Pong Revolution

Pong Revolution is a game that I worked on with some of my friends. As the name implies, it is a game, coded in Java, that runs over a network. Essentially, it is pong in a circle.

The game is played with up to four players on a network. Of course, there is a client application and a server application. The server runs and the clients connect using the IP address. We used Apache Thrift in order to implement the network code and send the game objects.

There are two teams: Red team and Blue team. There are two players on each team. Balls spawn out of the middle of the screen and players score points by hitting balls and having them bounce outside of the screen. Players are able to make their paddles jump in order to intercept balls from opponents. Players can also combo to each other and get extra points for bouncing the ball between their teammates. The game is unfinished and we still have some work to do, but the core of the game (volleying balls, jumping, and collision detection)

Update: The java version of the game is complete!