Situation point

I've been unable to work for a couple of days due to an injury at my back while I was weight lifting. Nothing bad at all so here I am.
Talking with Filo we decided to finish the arcade part and even before to fix all the last parts (menus, details and small things) and record a video-demo which will be sent to software houses along with a complete presentation and storyboards of the game.
I've been playing the game just now and I haven't seen any remarkable glitch or bug. All seems to be ok. I need to code the phrases of all the enemies (what they say while you play) because so far only the first enemy (stagnus) tells you something.
And it is what I will start to do after a little meal...

Final screen completed, arcade...almost

The final screen is finally done. I made it separate from the game itself and then I integrated it in the main code.
If the player defeats all the enemies will get the congratulation screen: very acid music and colors, with a space landscape where fireworks fired and the titles appear in a Sci-Fi movie style.
Meanwhile the camera slowly zoom on the mountains of the landscape giving the effect of a camera running forward.
Do I like it? Yes, quite a lot.
Could I make it better? Probably yes, but considering the lack of time and especially the little memory it has to fit in...it does its job.
In the weekend i will post few pictures of everything, I wanted to post a clip but is not smart to post the final congratulation screen if you have to sweat so much to get it once you play the game!

Final screen

Despite the fact there are few things to fix in the arcade procedure and few more to finish I decided to work at the final screen, which is what the player sees once he defeats all the bad guys and gets crowned as the iPong Master.
Even if it might not seem anything hard to do we need to cope with the absolute lack of memory we have left. I need to do something nice and catchy that won't take memory, won't take space and won't make the final file too big. And here is the hardest part.
I'm trying to do fireworks done with primitive particles (so almost no memory will be used) with a nice spaceart background. The background needs to change color a bit every time the firework exploded to make it more realistic. Plus the sound needs to be added, a simple congratulation music and all the tiles...I finish the resources already...

Testing android

I got stocked in few issues in the developing of the final scene once you win the tournament and finish the arcade. I have really little memory remaining but I don't want that the final scene you get after so much playing looks like a crap. Therefore I want to find and use till the last bit of space to make it look nice. Just now I have issues to find the right locations.
I had to look something else and I decided to watch the game (at this stage) on Android.
After few failed attempts in compiling it I managed to play it on my sophix tablet I use to test android's games.
It looks good, no bugs whatsoever, the game is smooth (it doesn't have the same issues of the network system on Android) and it looks nice (not as nice as the iPhone one but basically because of the lack of hardware)
Now back to code the game... I want to make fireworks out of particles. Stay tuned

Arcade almost done

We are really close. Yesterday I managed to make work the whole arcade system passing from a character to another when you win and showing the arcade timeline with all the people you defeated and the one you have to challenge. Every level the computer tells you something to wish you "bad luck" and everything looks cool.
I tried to play the way it should be (without helps, aids and cheats) and it is quite challenging also for myself (the creator!!!).
The final screen with fireworks and thanks and titles needs to be done (in case you win the tournament) and needs to be done in a really small amount of memory...
Plus we have to decide in case the player loses if he has to start all over or he can just restart from the point where he lost always or only just for a couple of credits.
Every character tells you different things during the game and the phrase list of each character haven't been done yet.
Still a lot of work but game-wise all is set.

Keep on working on the arcade version of pong

I've been so busy coding and testing the new pong in special way the arcade part that I haven't got time to post all the development news yet.
The game now is totally glitch-less, the animation of the background works great, few backgrounds has been substituted with new items because we noticed that the blu-like background gives better overall results to the game.
All the little bugs regarding the new power-ups has been fixed and the Arcade session is on its way to be completed. Once it's done I'll record a quick video and I will post it here to show all the new things we could put into the game.
Back to work now... 

Talking enemies

The new feature is live and works well. It really gives a little touch to the whole game. The icon with the little avatar telling you something comes out in six occasions:
- at the beginning
- when you get a magneto power up
- when you get a gun power up
- when he's leading by at least 3 points
- when you have a match point
- when he has a match point

every character will say something different and this is just...cooool

goodnight!

Special feature on game

I'm working on a special feature that Filippo suggested as a normal idea and now will be almost reality. Basically any particular moment of the match (such us the beginning, or a special shot or a match point) the little avatar of your enemy comes out in the corner and tells you something (like "you will lose", you can't beat me or "one more point" and so on) to improve the "arcade spirit of the game. I made few code to see if it's possible and it seems to work. Now I need to do it well and I start to run out of memory...no more ideas :)

Arcade procedure

Yesterday night and this morning I've been working on the whole procedure that starts when the player hits the button "arcade" and goes till the real match.
Everything atm is related to the first level (therefore the first match) only but I'm planning today and tomorrow to modify the routine dynamically in order to fit all the matches more or less in the same part of code.
The final result is very nice. It starts by asking the player name, then the player (the only human attempting to raise the charts of the space pong) needs to choose between the 8 available avatars (4 males and 4 females) ... unfortunately in this moment GMS don't allow yet the use of the device camera or of the device storage so, for the moment, the avatar cannot be chosen from personal photos. Hopefully in the next release of the suite.
Once you pick the avatar you can see a recap of who you are and the timeline of the matches with unveiled the enemy's avatars that you have to play against or that you defeated already. Another tap of the screen and we have the final Player-name Versus Enemy in "fighter-style".
Then the game will start.

We are thinking with Filo to add also some message during the match in comic style where your enemy is provocative to you. Let's see if it fits...

Today's duties and recap

Yesterday has been a big day of work. The final mark on the game has been given, all works smoothly and the new features are giving a big plus to the overall aspect of the game. The arcade part starts to be part of the game, I have all the avatars, I have the base structure of the game, the "arcade-timeline" (as I call it) is already there and now the only thing to add is the link between the arcade story/tournament and the game itself.
Today I won't work full time on this because we have some urgent issues to fix such us the new Amsterdam's Casino promotion (for the newbies I remember we used to work in the gambling market not even long time ago) after the dutch shut down.
I keep you up to date on the things I will add to the arcade game. Meanwhile I wanna thank you a lot again for the 8k+ download that yesterday The Labyrinth Pro got as a free promotion for two days. Thanks, thanks again.

Working on the arcade

Everything for the arcade section has been written hands down on paper. Is time now to move it in the digital world.
I'm working now step by step to all the features that will give the best pong yet....keep you updated in this post:

- arcade choice and choice of the name   done
- creation of the avatars to choose and set them in the game list    done
- creation of the grid of avatars you can choose and map it    done
- selection avatar which goes to a unique global variable      done
- intro and presentation of the tournament      work in progress

Amazing performance of The Labyrinth Pro in free trial

As we said yesterday in this post we decided to give for free for just two days our game The Labyrinth Pro the way it is, no extra money, no limitations and no ADs. The performance of the app on iTunes yesterday has been extraordinary: more than 1000 downloads in just few hours and we are looking for tomorrow to see how it is performing across the whole day of today.
Thanks again for the support, and if still didn't do it...download it now for FREE.

All power ups set and dynamic backgrounds

All is done, the code is written, the game is tested and all seems to work fine. The asteroid blast, the magneto routine and the guns are now working properly and the few bugs I've noticed before are fixed. It is actually quite funny as well and of course it will need more play testing but so far I really like the result.

Then I added a very nice touch to the graphic of the game. Before the backgrounds were statics ... now I created an effect that makes the background moving. Basically I change (a little) the value of the xscale, yscale, rotation and alpha of the object background in order to have a nice dynamic effect and now everything looks even more elegant and technically impressing.
I like it!

Laser Gun effective

The laser gun power up now works and it is effective on the game. You have 10 automatic shots once you get the power up. If you hit with the laser the other pad this will start to roll for one second standing still creating a big handicap for your challenger. Same to you if the challenger's laser will hit you.
With the laser you can also destroy the asteroid but you won't get any new power ups.
It work quite well and it is a big plus to the game. I'm testing it now to make sure all runs smoothly.

Promotion: The Labyrinth PRO for FREE

We decided to give away a nice promotion for all our blogger, twitter and Facebook followers by let them download FOR FREE The Labyrinth Pro for iOS systems (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch). This is a unique opportunity which will last today and tomorrow (22nd and 23rd of October) and the game will be totally ADs free exactly as the original Pro game is.
Don't miss it then, download FOR FREE The Labyrinth pro for your apple device.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-labyrinth-pro/id692231326?ls=1&mt=8

Laser gun alive

Here we go, after an afternoon of testing and coding the game has got the most fancy power-up: the laser gun.
Ok...recap. The asteroid comes in, if you hit it it blasts and it will release at first a rolling magneto that if is cough will give you the magneto power: next time you touch the ball with your pad it will stick on it until you will shoot it by tapping the mid of the screen.
The second time an asteroid is blasted it will release a rotating gun: if you catch it you will get a little cannon on your pad which will shoot 10 (at the moment) laser beams across the screen. What the laser beams will do? I don't know it yet....but they will do something, most likely they will paralyze the challenger's pad if you hit it.
Now the game is quite full of stuff, some  moments you have the screen quite full considering you got the ball, the pads, the smoke clouds, an asteroid and the laser beam you are shooting. All is very fluid and nothing slows down so far which is very good. I tested on my iPhone 5 and on PC/windows.
Soon I will port it also to Android just to check it.
Little pause now...

Laser Gun power up

After the magneto power up I've been working over the week-end on another power up: laser guns. Basically it comes always by destroying the asteroid after the magneto power up has been released.
The rotating gun after the asteroid blast is already there as well as few new sounds. Now I have to finish the magneto "tap to release routine" in order to make it work on mobile devices and then I start to work on the gun power up in order to be complete and playable by the end of the day.

Magneto power up

The magneto power up is available and it works. The asteroid comes in randomly and bounce on the screen, if gets hit by the ball it explodes and a rolling magneto will go toward the pad of the player (or computer) who hit the asteroid. If you catch the rolling magneto with your pad a sound fx will tell you "magneto!" and that's allows the ball to stick on your pad and you just can release it whenever you want accumulating other power ups and speed.
It works very good and that is very nice...impressing.
Good night!

Power ups

So far we have an asteroid rolling up and down for the screen, if the ball (comet) hits it the asteroid explodes and the ball bounces back. Very fancy but it doesn't give really a lot more to the game.
The idea is, once you hit the asteroid, to obtain extra power ups (beside the 2 given by the smoke clouds), something like the old arkanoid power ups...we work on it, stay tuned

Asteroids!

While I'm waiting for the new drawing tools to be installed I'm working on few new features we want to add to the game. All of the sudden came out one object: ASTEROID!
Yes, I'm trying to fit asteroids into the game.
I already created an object that controls the asteroid sprite which will pop up into the screen randomly and will start to move around the screen rotating.
If the ball (the comet) hits it the ball will bounce to the opposite direction and the asteroid will explode.
The feature is already in the game, didn't take really a lot to add it. Now we just need to make it nicer, calibrate it and decide if we should keep it or not.

Clean up and getting ready for the arcade

To start coding the arcade version of Pong I will obviously start from the base of Pong 2013 lite but I have to do a quite big clean up first.
I didn't delete anything yet because I don't know yet for sure what might be still be useful or not, but I put apart all the rooms with the intros, the company logo, the old presentation, the advertisement objects and so on just to avoid all the unnecessary code (at least at this stage) that is going to make me lose a lot of time.
Right now as I try the application the starting menu pops up first nice and clean.
I need to rewrite a lot of options but our "art responsible" Filo is very busy with the release of a new web template and I need to make it work on my own. Unfortunately he normally uses Fireworks while I normally (the rare times I design) Photoshop therefore the compatibility of the two is limited...long story short I have to install on my Mac (Filo uses PC) the latest version of Fireworks and paying a new license (because we have a windows license and not a Mac on).
Lot of time lost :(

Keep on working to the arcade version

The work in progress at the arcade version of Pong 2013 carries on full time. We are defining all the steps, all the menus and all the options that the user will see once is playing the final version. We are also thinking to change a bit the name with something that I can't tell yet.
Plus we are thinking whether or not the network pong might be an in-app of the arcade or an app on its own.
We might ask you via social network what would you like the most.
Anyway on paper is all set...on paper. Just to let you know I shoe you a "little" note handwritten:

Not a lot I know.....You'll see much more soon.

Pong pro arcade version - new steps

After we defined the storyboard and the characterization I carry on to the next point: how to visualize on screen the effective arcade, tournament levels, avatars and whether or not making the characters interact with the player with few sentences before the game.
My approach will be on paper, then I will discuss everything with filo (my biz partner) and then I start to work on the code to make it happen.
I'll keep you updated on every news about it.

Pong arcade characters

Hereby few avatars of the characters that we are going to challenge in the arcade version of the new Pong Pro, if you wanna know more about the breeds and the families just read this post.

This bad guy is a Troll and the name is FILUX

This one is a very strong one and the name is TAURUS, he's a Manimal.

And here we have Gargo a very bad guy from the Skulls

More are coming but we won't show 'em or else there will be no surprise....

Pong 2013 Pro - Arcade characters

I wrote the basics of the challengers that the player is going to challenge in every single level of the arcade mode.
Based on the storyboard (which we wrote so we can even modify in the future before release) the known space is dominated by four known breeds: humanoids, trolls, manimals and skulls. The hierarchy of them is based on the results of the space-pong tournaments. Humans are considered a weaker breed because they don't have any good pong player and you are the one who has to change the situation.
For every character we have a different avatar. The humanoid for the records (level 1) is our friend Simon who's here in our offices in these days and he helped me already with few sound effects.
Description of breed, description of characters, hierarchy and avatars are already defined. Now we need to make them real.

Collision bug solved

The collision bug that was bothering me in Pong Network has been fixed. As I predicted was just matter of calibrate very well the collision system based on the dimensions of the two sprites (ball and pad). The glitch was also magnified because of an imperfection of the sound system which was repeating (sometimes) the same bouncing sound for the time of the two sprites colliding.
In fact the movement-collision and bouncing is managed stand alone on the device BUT the sound reproduction is managed by the object of the client or else only one device would play correctly the sound. Therefore the same collision routine must be duplicate on the client object in order to play the sound (only once) when the collision is detected: more complicate to explain it than what it is in real.
Anyway this is fixed. I put on hold for few minutes the network collision to start to work on the artwork of the arcade version of Pong. We are choosing avatars, characters and writing down a kind of storyboard.

Pong 2013 network collision system

Have been quite busy these days on personal stuff therefore I couldn't work properly on the network routines. Finally all is set so I can be back to work full time at Pong 2013 Network and the main version of Pong 2013 Pro - Arcade.

In these days when I could work I tested a bit the demo I've been working on connecting different devices between iOS, PC/Windows and Android. I noticed that on the device that runs as server the game is always way more fluid regardless the kind of device. If the game is hosted as server by iOS or PC (base setting) the game on the client device is way better than the same solution but with Android as server. The worse combo is two Android devices connected together.
It might be due to my test tablet which is not that powerful so before the release we need to test it on other devices. I'm really surprised (in positive) on how well the iOS devices respond to the network routines.

Anyway I'm working now trying to eliminate few bugs that bother the game in the collision control between ball and pads. The collision cannot be detected as usual (hardware way - language native functions) and as it is on Pong 2013 base because of the timing differences between server and client. The collision must be detected knowing the exact position and the dimensions of the two sprites in order to be calculated every screen refresh in both the devices connected.

This make the collision routine more inaccurate and it needs a good calibration to be glitch-less, which is what I'm trying to do now. Stay tuned.

Working at the sound FX

Today i'm spending some time to fix all the sounds of Pong network. I want to add some new features, new sounds and I will get profit out of the presence here of our friend Simon to record some very good sample which will be used probably for the server connection moment and for some other events.
He just recorded the following sentences: "waiting for player two and player two connected". He's got a very radio-speaker voice which will give a good touch to the game.

7.5k twitter followers. Thanks everybody!

Today we reached the notable amount of 7500 followers on our twitter account. This is the best satisfaction we can get to see that you guys appreciate our work and what we do. We opened our account not even two months ago and being followed by so many active people is a honor for us.
So thanks to everybody and stay tuned!

Back to work

The silence of these days was due to a little break I had to take from the coding to fix other internal things in the company here in Curacao.
Today a lot of work on the social network again, the new campaign facebook for The Labyrinth Pro has just started and many researches to gain new followers on our twitter account.
This afternoon I will keep on working on Pong 2013 Network.
Keep you informed, stay tuned.

Pong networking: goal routine integrated

After fighting for at least two hours i managed to import in the new pong network the old goal detection routine from pong 2013 lite.
The main issue is always the same: all the detections that need to be shown to both the players needs to be done client side and synchronized.
Now when the ball goes into the net behind the pad a big colored "GOAL" appears in the middle of the screen (like the old version) with a crowd screaming for a second. The score will be increased and we start again as it was in the normal version.
The original game had also in the same routine the control needed to determine when the match is over, when there is the batch ball and when the last ball is played. I didn't import it yet. I will.
Now i spotted a glitch of the ball that bounce on the pad line (rarely) even if the pad ain't there. I need to fix it ... now. 

Pong 2013 lite for iOS updated and available

Apple just reviewed, accepted and published the new update of Pong 2013 Lite which was already available for android since one week ago.
The new upgrade gives the user one more rolling background with a great new space art item and manages better the battery saving of the device.

You can download it for free here: PONG 2013 lite iOS

Pong 2013 network - phase 2

The networking of Pong 2013 is indeed got in the second phase.
The networking itself now works very smoothly and I don't see glitches in the network routines.
The game itself is far away to be ready but now I can focus on porting as much as I can of the old game into the new network version.

Before getting in the second phase I added also the new background (see last update of Pong 2013 lite) which is already available for Android and under review by Apple. I took the chance also to fix an old little bug where the background started to roll even if the game wasn't started yet. Now All is ready to build the game itself around the engine.

Just that we spoke about Pong 2013 Lite I wanna thanks our friends of givemeaps.com for the positive review of the game. You can find it here below with also video-review:
http://givemeapps.com/pong-2013-lite-for-ios-next-generation-pong.html

Thanks to our followers and to whoever bought The Labyrinth Pro

I wanted to thanks in behalf of Soloweb NV, myself and my colleagues for all the people that are supporting us on all our channels.
In just a couple of weeks we had a lot of active followers on twitter, many likes on our Facebook page and the stats of this blog are showing really an unexpected interest for what we do on a daily base.
More over since we opened our social channels we have seen a big increment in the downloads of  our apps inclusive The Labyrinth Pro which is, so far, our only published paid app.

Thanks to everybody about it, your support is the most important source of motivation for us and for what we do.

Coming back to the sheer work today I've been working as you can imagine to our network channels and I'm starting now to get back to Pong 2013 network...we are close to the green light. I keep you up to date with new posts during the afternoon.

For whoever didn't subscribe yet our channels here the quick links:
Facebook Page
Twitter Account

Cleaning code and names

I've done a big cleaning of the code: a lot of useless stuff of the initial engine's routines has been trashed along with a lot (but really a lot) old sprites, images I used for initial tests and so on. Now it's more essential and it seems that also the networking speed gets its profit out of it. Everything looks more fluid and smooth. Plus we have much more memory to spare.
I'm sure I might save some more memory by redesigning the data buffers but honestly everything works well enough right now and I don't really feel like going back in the pure networking code just to structure it better. As I said atm it does it job! Enough for me.

Once I finished with cleaning the code I came back to the pure game and I added the score table at the top of the screen: in the original game the player was just Player one, and the challenger wa just the Computer. Now because server player and client player must insert their names (for recognition in the connecting screen) we don't just have player one and computer but the real names inserted by the players at the connection menu. Cool stuff.

Keep working on Pong 2013 network

Yesterday and today I've been very busy in coding the new pong 2013 network around the network engine itself. It is such a hard code (for me at least) which I really need to work in full immersion on it with no distractions. And that's why I haven't posted a lot of words here on the blog in the last two days.
What happens is that slowly I'm basically re-coding the all game around the network engine, trying to save size, memory and data as much as I can and trying to use the old routines as much as I can. Pong networking will be basically all rewritten comparing with the normal game even if probably no-one will notice the difference.
At the moment I'm cleaning the code, deleting the old unnecessary items which is always a hard task and very risky because you may delete something you shouldn't.
keep you posted.

New updates, pong 2013 and the Labyrinth pro

Yesterday I've been busy with all the bureaucracy that concerns when you run a company...meetings, paper works, documents and almost nothing related to the real development of any projects.
Back to the code today but before working on Pong network as I was doing in the last 10 days I'm working to release a new quick update of Pong 2013 lite. I noticed that the downloads are a bit less so we need to push it a bit more. I will add some backgrounds in the new version, and I will fix some routine in order to make it work better.

Labyrinth Pro is performing very well on iPhone so we will keep on promote it in this way.
Our new twitter account and Facebook account are also getting a good feedback which makes us happy.

15:55 startup sequence and details

15:55 - Once I synchronized the sound of the ball I decided to give the product a better and more complete visual appeal ... deciding that was the time to move the whole start up sequence (3-2-1-go!) as it was in the normal version also in the networking version. Was thinking was an easy task...but all the issues with the synchronization and data floating around for the net didn't make it easy at all. Anyway now it works just right after the connection of the client and it appears exactly as it is in the original pong 2013 game. Along with the sequence also the background music is playing and the rolling background...rolls. I just have to fix few alignments.

16:10 -All the alignments are fixed thanks to the powerful tools of GM Studio master suite....now I start to clean up the code and the data buffers...hard task.

12:15 sound fixes

12:15 - Been working in the synchrony of the sound fx of the ball bouncing (against limits and pads) while playing in network. Now it does work better even if is not perfect yet. I can't say, so far, if the little imperfections are due to the network itself that makes the playing room running at a slower frame rate (to be honest the room runs at 60 frames per sec, but every object sent via network uses 1 cycle (1/60th of sec) to be red, drew and managed. With 3 objects (the amount atm) sent back and forth the real refreshing rate is one third of the original.
Now the background is changing like in the real game.
Now the whole code, especially the part of the buffers, needs a clean up to save memory and speed.

Work in progress: network - sounds and new features

I will work the whole day to Pong network (friendly nickname). I will update this post time by time if anything will be added or changed.

11:30 - I started where I left, so now there is a kind of playable demo with no scoring, one background, temporary control system but with the chance to connect the devices via Internet with sprites of pads and ball (with relative comet effect) transmitted and working. The sound is now there (only for the bouncing) it works but is not precise yet. By far no power ups whatsoever and I'm not even close to fit them in the network. The connection interface is temporary as well.

Quick update

Not too much has been done today. However I compiled a PC version of pong 2013 lite (as it is, only added the keyboard and pad controls) to be sent to an Italian gm forum.
The game has got a good feedback and a forum member gave us some ideas for new power ups...not bad at all...I guess I'll be working on it!

Sound while networking

The whole afternoon has been spent behind the synchronization of the sound while playing on the network. It would be impossible to send the sounds to play through the net because too big so I need little data of bits that trigger the sound on the client object. Even for very basic sounds such us the ball bouncing against the pad I need a routine client side that tells me the collision has been verified (or else would be only available on the server/client device) and then one specific bit goes to 1 and is sent. The client knows that every time this bit is equal to 1 the specific sound (for this example ball bouncing against the pad) will be played.
I just fit in the sounds ralated to all the kind of bouncing and it works, needs a good tuning/calibration but it works.
I see the amount of data starts to be quite high so next priority will be to delete all the unnecessary from the code, sprites, etc etc, everything that uses memory.
Then I need to check what else needs to be sent back and forth and once the idea is complete I need to make the final buffer as clean as possible.
All this work of cleaning and re-ordering should be useful for a better speed while playing on network.

Pong 2013 Network system

Now that the engine is more or less done and is working I can concentrate to make the PRO version of Pong 2013 working on the same networking routines.
It is nothing easy but because the network itself has been developed thinking of Pong there are good chances to make it happen (let's be optimistic).

I left yesterday with some improvement with the interface of the game, the players (whether server or client) have now some messages from the system that tell them what is what (waiting for connection, client connected, hold on etc etc).

Camilla just gave me her voice for a moment to sample some sound fx (like it happened with Labyrinth)  modified with Audacity in order to look like computer spoken. Exactly the computer will tell the server "waiting for player two" and "player two connected". Then the game should start....

Test on the ADs for the free apps and networking

I've been checking really a long list of app advertising systems to use in alternative to the actual one (we are using adMob but lately has got issues due to the migration to the adword system).
Honestly is not a lot about the money you can raise out of in-app ADs: unless you don't have  an app that makes millions of downloads the earned amount is quite low. However often you can re-use the amount you earn as publisher by advertising on the same system and this can become interesting because you earn by promoting free apps and you will promote yourself the paid apps.

I selected few and we will run few tests within the week as quick as they review and activate our business accounts.

I worked just a bit on the network engine, focusing especially on where I can save space in the data sockets I send back and forth to make the network game possible. Few ideas came out. I will test them and let you know asap.

Advertising system

We are checking our advertising system on the free apps, the way it performs and the potential (quite low actually). We are looking for new possibilities in order to reinvest in promotion for the "Pro" apps.
Topics of the day: ad system, ad provider and how to display ads on the games... unfortunately we can code the best software ever but without working on promotion and advertising we can't make any profit out of it.

Network update

As usual lately I'm going to close the blogging for today with something regarding....the network engine we are developing.
We worked all the afternoon trying to squeeze in old routines and graphics of Pong 2013 lite in the room of network demo which is getting visually, at least, a bit better....starts to look like the origina game.

I did work on the connection interface: now whoever creates the server stays on hold in the room waiting for the client to be connected and a system message tells him that.
If the client gets connected the other pad will be displayed, the ball (inclusive of the comet effect) will be displayed and another message tells you that the connection of the two players is about to happen; few secs and the game start (very early phase of the game tho).
All looks much more smooth now.

I made an executable for windows of the demo to try to run it on different PC around the office. As internal LAN it worked only where the internal nodes are connected, or else you can't see the server but this is a limitation of the internal network and not of the system.

We will need to test it on open internet, normal house routers and 3G. But before is better to keep on working on the game.

Tomorrow is another day.

Monday blogging...

Got back to the office, fixed few things I've been working yesterday and along with Filo we tried the demo on a different network than yesterday. We tested it on an iPhone 5 and an Android tablet and all works. I know all the glitches are in there so I will fix that but the most important thing is that it works and it doesn't crash. Very simple but effective.

I'm preparing few promo codes of the Labyrinth Pro to send to iSpazio.net, an Italian online magazine which will follow live the Apple event of the presentation of the iPhone 5C/S.

Working for the twitter and facebook promotions. In the afternoon I will come back on the network coding.

Network progresses ... part 2 of the day

After the discovery of this late morning I faced the fact I have another mountain to climb.
I spent the whole afternoon trying to write and send buffers of data in the way the system will work and the network won't overload.
Right now it's 22:15 and I managed to have a little room where the two players connected via internet can play the basic of Pong (no animations, no goal counting...only 2 pads and the bouncing ball)
It works! The are tons of glitches which I will fix but we have something to see and eventually play...at least.
Goodnight.

Network progresses on Pong 2013

Updates in real time:

12:03pm: I implemented the ball in the playing room to see if we can interact between the pads and right away I found a problem. In my mind I wanted to send (back and forth) less data possible. For a pong game I was thinking was enough to send the y coordinates of the pads and all the rest could run in local. I didn't deal with one major issue: every single machine works at his own speed. Took me one second to see the pattern of the ball bouncing on the PC was different (whether faster or slower) than the ball bouncing on the test android device. I'm afraid this will lead to only one fix: all the data of the sprite generated must be sent back and forth through the network, nevertheless the ball which can't be managed locally but by the server and sent to the client. A huge amount of work and data...

11:00am: something very similar to the control system of the original Pong 2013 lite has been fixed to control the pads in the networking playing room. I tested it on 3 platforms: iOS, Android and windows all as server and clients and it works with all of them. Atm you can see the first background of pong 2013 with the fields lines and the two pads which are controlled via network and they move properly responding the commands. Also the field limits has been implemented and they work through the network. Above the pad (temporary location) you can see the name of the player (inserted in the connection menu) which moves along the pads. On top there is the number of players connected (which will be max 2 for the nature of the game) 

9:45am: a bit distracted from the F1 GP of Italy which is in the background of my mac I managed the connection in the main room of the game (the one which will be used for playing). Once connected the two pads are shown on the screen in the right place (more or less) and a primordial control system has been added (just to check the how the pads move and show on display)

9:00am: from the temporary menu of connection the user can write (type) the name and decide to be a server within a button. If someone else is already connected as a server the user can see the list of the awaiting servers (IP and name) and can click (or tap if mobile) the server to play against him (as client). It works.

Back at work

After one complete day off (yesterday) I'm back here working mostly at the networking routines. I left two days ago very happy because we managed to make a first data communication between 3 different platforms. I will work now from the point I left trying to integrate as much as I can the new routines to Pong 2013 which will be the first game using this system.

I leave this post open in order to update it.

Networking Engine

There is a light at the end of the tunnel!
I manged to send data packages back and forth between platforms of different nature. Actually between PC/Windows, Android and iOS (iPhone 5 test).
Every "potential player" can insert the name and decide to be the server (and client of itself automatically) or to be client of someone else listening as server waiting for connection.

Just for test purposes (because the first network game we will publish will be Pong 2013 Pro networking) I stole the pad sprites from Pong 2013 and use them for the test and it works well.
Pads are moving on the different devices connected and along with them the name written on top.

Good day indeed. Tomorrow I will fix all the instabilities and  will try to implement the original controls of Pong 2013 lite in the new system.

Exciting....

Friday App Giveaway Contest

Soloweb N.V. has organized a little contest for all the Facebook fans, Twitter followers and Blogger readers.
Every Friday we will launch a little promotion which will make you gain something for free.

This week:

Download Pong 2013 Lite for iOS (iPhone, iPad or iPod) or for Android, rate it and the authors of the first 10 rates/reviews will get a promo code to download and play The Labyrinth Pro free of charge.

Pong 2013 lite iTunes link
Pong 2013 lite Google Play link

Other updates on the network issues

Being working the whole day on the networking system for multi-player on multi-platform.
As I said already in the other post I managed to get connected the devices but organizing the data to travel back and forth is another story.
I'm using binary buffers to organize the data to be sent but every device responds in different way. The road is long but i'm on it...

First network archivement

I managed to connect via lan 3 devices of different nature. To be precise an iPhone5, an Android Sophix Tablet and a PC with windows 7.
This is just the connection routine which works properly, but they don't send yet any data and there is no data back and forward yet.
Any machine can be the server and the server will be displayed on the client's machines along with name and IP.
It should work on the open internet too because i'm using the TCP-IP system. Now I'm studing the way to send buffers of info.
For the records the routine can connect up to 32 devices. For pong 2013 2 devices will be more than enough.

Some updates from Android

While I was working on the networking system came out, again, the issue that from Curacao Google play merchants can't sell yet. So we have to find a new solution. We decided to host our own mini-ecommerce site on our soloweb's site and sell our apps on our own (via Paypal).

It happened with The Labyrinth Pro - Android version that now is available for sale directly from our site for 1.5Eur or equivalent in other currencies.
Here you can buy and download the app.

Unfortunately this change made me re-code the "go pro" part of The Labyrinth Lite, which has to link the new selling point page to upgrade the app to pro.
I got the chance also to clean a bit the code.
Back in the networking now.

Networking engine

In order to make Pong 2013 Pro working on network I'm developing the engine for the connection of two different devices.
Beside the fact that networking is always the nightmare of the coders, here the challenge is even higher because the goal is to connect devices of different nature: PC, Android and iOS.
The first way I used was to create an external server (based temporary in our office) where all the devices could connect to as clients.
This option has been, for the moment, put apart because it's much more easier (user-wise) that a device itself can create a temporary server and another one can connect as client. The server device will be also client connect to itself.
Most of the multi-player game I've been testing have some limitation:
a) they don't offer multy-platform networking at all
b) most of them ask the user to type the IP of the friend you're trying to connect to and your IP too.

Way complicated if your are not a geek....

So I'd like to make it as much as I can user-friendly.

The GOAL: the user one decides to be the server, he just type his name and press the button "create server" and all the other potential clients can see his name and IP in the server list. You just touch it and the connection is done. So easy to say...so hard to do....

Updates soon.

Twitter and Facebook accounts

Not just pure promotion but few more channels where everyone can contact us that we just opened:
Our Twitter account: @SolowebApps
Our Facebook account: Soloweb Apps FB

We will give away 10 promo codes for The Labyrinth for whoever follow us from this blog

Open projects, coming soon and work in progress

In the last two months we have been working hard to re-boot the company and turn it to a proper web/app developer company.
The first 2-3 months has been needed to release 4 products developed for iOS systems and Android. My normal approach is developing and testing on iOS first (I use an iPhone 5 but all the games are compatible with the whole bunch of apple devices) and then to port everything to Android.
Atm I'm using mostly the GM: Studio master suite which allows me to do object coding and it is way easier to work multi-platform. I like to do also few things in XCode and simple C# especially for the windows versions.
The 4 projects already developed (which i like to call "open project" because we always try to make then better and to update them) are:
- The Labyrinth Lite: puzzle game where the user tilts the device in order to play - Totally FREE
- The Labyrinth Pro: same game just better: more levels, more options, no ADs - Only 0.99USD
- Pong 2013 Lite: reboot of the legendary pong game: very good looking game: Totally FREE
- Sheepy the Sleep Aid: funny and simple app which should help you to fall asleep: Totally FREE

I will describe better these projects in the proper description page.

Between these projects Pong 2013 is the one we are dedicating most of the time right now. The Pro version of the game will come soon and will be hopefully amazing with a big arcade part and, especially, with the possibility to play against each others just connecting by internet. At the moment I'm developing the networking engine which will be quite big due to the fact that we want to interact throughout the different platforms the game will be developed: basically if you have pong on your iPhone you might play against a pong player on android or against someone who has the PC version.

Another work in progress is a fighting game with the temporary title of "The rise of the fighter". Will be developed for PC/windows and mobile devices, will present big animated backgrounds, 3D stages and digitized characters directly from our own photo-studio. A first studio to decide whether or not the game was possible to realize has been traced by the diary in this blog: Making of a fighting game.

Soloweb NV Apps and Games

Hi everybody. This is the first post of this brand new blog that will follow the development of all the projects related to the Company Soloweb N.V. for the section Mobile Apps and Games.
Soloweb is a company based in Curacao (Netherlands Antilles) that, after 10 years of experience in online gambling industry and promotion, decided to switch to Web, Apps and games development.
The blog right here is the diary of everything that concern the mobile and gaming part of the company.
My name is Ivano and I am the coder and the project manager of most of the apps and games we develop. Feel free to follow us on twitter for any news and promotion, to check our website Soloweb NV Apps and to contact me through these channels (inclusive this blog) for any question.
We have a youtube channel as well where often we publish new games or previews.
Hope everyone will enjoy our work.

Kind regards

Ivano