Design document for Bootworm Drop released!

Have you heard of Bootworm Drop?  It's a tiny Flash-based minigame I wrote today, over the course of two hours.


Here's a screenshot:


You can play it on Seeds of Time Online (if you have an account there), or on Kongregate (even if you don't have an account).

Having played it, you can also check out the entire design document here-- I strongly recommend you play the game first, or you may not understand the intricate details of this design document.

Starting to enjoy Flash game development

After originally being almost opposed to Flash game development, I've come to actually enjoy it.



You'll notice that Seeds of Time Online has several Flash minigames now, the most recent being a virtual pet sim called "Monster Resort," pictured above.  In this minigame, your active monster from Seeds of Time Online is imported into a small field to run around and play.  You take care of the monster through three buttons: feed, play, and bathe.  Keeping your monster content in all three of those areas (without overdoing it) will increase its Happiness rating.  At the end of the game, your monster receives real experience points (in Seeds of Time Online) according to two things: how well you took care of it, and how high your character's level is (the higher level you are, the faster your monster will level up).


There are four things I like about Flash game development:

• Development is rapid (the above minigame took only two days to write)
• Flash minigames can be integrated into larger browser-based games, like Seeds of Time Online
• Browser-embeddable functionality makes it easier to reach an audience that wouldn't otherwise bother to download and install a game
• Such games can also be uploaded to Kongregate and other Flash game portals, further increasing profits

Flash minigame development for Seeds of Time Online also gives me more variety in work, rather than simply coding PHP for Seeds of Time Online all day.


I'll be working on more minigames in the near future.  I'm also speculating a complete Flash remake of Seeds of Time Online at some point within the next few years.  We'll see...

Super Orbulite World pre-release demo available now

Click here to download a pre-release demo of Super Orbulite World (17.2mb), a game based on Seeds of Time Online.  Read the information on that blog entry before proceeding.

Seeds of Time Online gets its head above water after financial difficulties

Expenses are down

It's no secret that Seeds of Time Online was recently undergoing an economic crisis (along with the rest of the nation and world, come to think of it).

The cause was simple: the player count steadily dropped from around 400 down to about 200 active members* (that is, 200 people playing on a daily basis), which barely wasn't generating enough ad revenue to cover a server that was much more expensive than it needed to be ($125.00/month).

* That doesn't necessarily mean people were quitting the game more frequently.  Due to the current circumstances, I believe it was more because not as many new players were registering as before.

Now, there is new hope.  The game is now on a new server which has cut the operating costs in about half.  That's quite amazing.  What's more, the new server is potentially faster than the old server -- compare 1.80 GHz to 2.4 GHz, and it has twice the RAM (though the game isn't very RAM-intensive, to be honest).


Donation system is on the way

This is something many players have suggested in the past: a donation system.  Many players have expressed interest in supporting the game financially, with or without benefits.  I will be adding benefits of some sort to reward the players who contribute financially to the success of the game.  I'm leaning toward the often-suggested Energy Potions in exchange for donations (as long as limits are in place to protect against players joining one day and reaching the top of the charts on the next*), among other things like novelty items and minor conveniences.

* Then again, if that were to happen, that would also give a huge boost to the game budget, resulting in a large amount of new content quickly available for all to enjoy.  Gotta weigh the good with the bad here.

Monster farm capacity to be increased?

I'm also considering eventually increasing the capacity of the monster farm by a large margin.  As it currently stands, each of your accounts (one main plus two alternates) is allowed to hold 10 monsters.  Seeing as how disk space is barely the issue I originally thought it might be, I'm considering increasing this limit to something like 50 or 100 monsters per account (and potentially an even larger number, like 500, for donators).  Making this all possible will require a large rewrite of much code, so don't hold your breath just yet.

Ultimate Tower Defense is back in active development

As my last post may have indicated, Ultimate Tower Defense is now back in active development.

Previously, it had taken the back burner several times, so to speak. I actually started work on the game in January 2007-- yikes, considering we're now halfway through September 2008-- and it's still not yet finished. Programming has been in a state of virtual-completion for over a year; the design phase (along with artwork and sound/music) is what has really been slowing me down. Toward the end of 2007, I decided to take a break on Ultimate Tower Defense so that I could work on Seeds of Time Online instead. I started working on it again for a while in May 2008, but I ended up taking some more time off until now.

But the game is back in active development now. In my free time, I will be dividing work between all three of my current projects: Ultimate Tower Defense, Seeds of Time Online, and Super Orbulite World.

Today, my work consisted of drawing the Crab monster from start to finish. That may not seem like much, but drawing pixel artwork is actually a long, tedious task: breaks removed, I estimate that it took about two hours to draw and animate the monster. Additionally, several small changes were made to the design (mainly balancing) today. All this in preparation of the upcoming beta test..

The time is almost here for beta testing of Ultimate Tower Defense to begin.

This will only be the first round of beta testing. Testers will test a very short part of the game and offer feedback on balancing towers and monsters. If you're interested, check out the sign-up thread in the Seeds of Time Online forums.

For more information on Ultimate Tower Defense, see UltimateTowerDefense.com.

New game has been named: Super Orbulite World

Super Orbulite World is now the official name for my newest title. This game is a freeware 2D platformer based on my world of Seeds of Time (made famous by my game Seeds of Time Online, the first game in the series).

This rendition of the world allows you to play as an Orbulite, a purple blob monster from Seeds of Time Online, as you run and jump through familiar locations adapted from the Seeds of Time world. In total, there will be three "zones" (segments of the game), each comprised of two levels (dubbed "acts") and a boss. So that's six levels and three bosses total-- a relatively short game, as it was always intended to be.

So far, four of the six levels are complete (aside from storyline and sound/music), and the second boss battle has been started. It's a fairly large percent complete.

Expected release: sometime this month (August 2008).