development
Hamster: Attack! Video Previews
It's time to start showing off Hamster: Attack! I've made a couple of really short game play videos; you can see them after the break. They're early levels (simple, no sounds yet), so they'll get a lot more punch by the time we're finished with them.
Development has been moving along quickly; most of the features we plan to include in the first release are now in the game. We have a couple of more characters to add for our heroic hamster to rescue, and some other minor things like making all the buttons work (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but we're getting really close.
Graphics Optimization Using Texture Atlases
One of the ways I've learned to improve performance of a game is to reduce use of video memory through the use of texture atlases. A "texture" in a game, in this context, is a bit of graphics that will be drawn to the screen as part of the game.
A texture atlas is a set of textures that have been cropped to the size of the actual image I need in the game -- when image files come from the artist, they usually contain a great deal of blank space around the image, and those blank pixels take up valuable video RAM, which can slow down the frame rate during game play.
Writing an Engine
When I started to work on my first indie game under the Recharge Games banner, I wanted to start with an existing library. I’d just spent almost six years working on the Playground SDK for PlayFirst, and was sick to death of writing game engines.
After doing a survey of what was available for Android in May of 2010, though, I came to the conclusion that none of the contenders would do everything that I wanted. And so I started working on my own engine. It couldn’t take that long, right?
The Final Stretch
We're approaching the final stretch on our first original game -- close enough that I want to finally announce its official name:
We had a great response to it at GDC. Angel and I showed a pre-alpha version of the game with animations, demo levels and game art.
New Team Member!
I'm happy to announce that Angel Inokon has joined the team working on our first original title!
Angel has a distinguished history producing hit titles like Dream Chronicles 2: The Eternal Maze, Dream Chronicles: The Chosen Child, and others for PlayFirst, where she worked with Tim. At Recharge Games she will be taking on the role of Senior Producer and Lead Designer for our first independent title, and we're all excited about the energy, experience, and design expertise she's bringing to the project.
Expect messages from Angel on this site in the near future, including information about our upcoming game!