Level Design

After dabbling in Photoshop, I decided for exchange reasons to use OpenOffice Draw for the basic layout of our levels.
Tip for Mac users: when trying to drag-copy and paste an item in OO Draw, use the "Alt" key, not "ctrl" to drag-copy an item :)


I am working from rough to detailed, thus laying out a rough concept of the structure, exchanging it with Ed and adding illustrations where possible and required, then moving on to flesh out the details.

At this point its interesting to add story "locations" and events to the layout, so the game flow can be demonstrated.
Its equally important to make as many annotations as possible, so the team can work from that instead of guessing.

Emm


Ed: Well I am working on making the atlas packer faster now, this will be for the tile reservoirs and allow us to make as best use as possible for all our tiles. I will be increasing the tile reservoirs tile areas to 1024  by 1024 for this purpose. On the while the system will now work quicker and more efficiently with the new packing system over the old one once I get it to my satisfaction I will be sending Emm a new build with the new file systems and tile systems.

Its coming together

Just played the latest build of our new game, and it really comes together wonderfully.It also has that excellent mix of intro anim and menu that I love.I hear already the title tune in my head :)
Last night Ed and I  exchanged memories of games we used to play and love, and I guess we have planned "the next big thing".
Sooner or later You will find our games on any platform we can support, Xbox360 included.
The future is bright.
Stay tuned.

iSmashem Galactic release iminent !

Not much longer, and You all can enjoy iSmashem Galactic on Your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad :D
We just got the message that our baby has been greenlighted and should be available in the appstore shortly :D
Hoooray ! Stay tuned, as for all interested, we will post a little post mortem in best Gamasutra style here soon ! Learning from others' mistakes is a pretty good thing !

The way to Appstore

I just wanted to give some hints for people trying to get their product in the app store and have problems.

1.Read the PDF that guides You through the steps.Its actually quite good and covers most of the important steps.But remember it is not completely up-to-date, as it sometimes tells You to do things that are not on screen, like "Add Profile " when onscreen it says "New Profile", or "Choose File" instead of  "Upload File" or stuff like that.

2.Don't follow the video thats on the Development Portal site, as its outdated and will just irritate You.

3.Make sure all Your provisioning profiles are in place AND still valid.Even if Your remote working buddy uses an expired profile, RENEW it, just in case.Make sure Your are using the correct DISTRIBUTION Certificate, and have a DISTRIBUTION PROVISIONING PROFILE.

4.Use Codesign to verify Your myapp.app.zip BEFORE You try to upload it, thats faster and gives You less headache.Open the console, enter codesign -dvvvv or just codesign -dv and drag Your myapp.app (not the *.zip) into the console window.This spits out either a good or bad result.No need to get that message in red from the Application Uploader :)

5.Make sure You build for DISTRIBUTION, not for SIMULATOR.

Hope that helps.Keep watching this site for more info in the future.

App is on its way

This little message took me 4 days to reach.But finally, we could upload our app into the app store for review.

[ED EDIT]

Heres hoping that its approved and released ASAP its a good feeling when something is out there :)

Me and Emm have been wracking our brains getting this released, now its onto the next one :)

[/ED EDIT]