Blog: Fresh Ideas in Gaming
Status Update: Nov 3, 2011
Wow… the knuckles have been cracking like crazy here in the studio… There’s been a lot of different things going on over the last month, so I’ll try to hit the highlights:
1: Creeper World: User Space Success
Creeper World: User Space finished a strong second place at Kongregate in September! This was a huge achievement and a testament to the endurance and commitment of the Creeper Nation. You see, September wasn’t any regular old month at Kongregate… the prize money was doubled during September. So the best of the best showed up and made runs for the prizes. For a second flash release of the original Creeper World game to finish in second place was absolutely astounding.
2: Custom Map Thumbs
Custom maps for CW2 have continued to pour in. There are a spectrum of ideas and some really neat maps have been created. One of the things I’ve been asked for has been some way to provide a ranking or feedback. So, I implemented a thumbs up and thumbs down system on the custom maps. Be sure to thumbs up your favorite maps!
3: Creeper World 2, the flash game
I often get asked about when there will be a flash release of CW2… something along the lines of CW:Training Sim. Welp, the good news is I have forked the source tree and am working on it. If all goes well, you’ll be blasting some Creeper around the time Santa is making his rounds.
4: ChopRaider
Bet you didn’t expect me to ever talk about that little flying helicopter again did you? I’ve dug up the old source code, and started ramping things up for a desktop release. Bigger screen, more game play options and weapons, custom graphics, and your very own map editor? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see how it all goes….
5: iOS and Android
So AIR3 is finally out and I gave CW1 a whirl on the original iPad. The results were….. well, not the best. It ran… for a bit anyway. But at 5-10 fps unscaled, it is clear that AIR 3 isn’t the way forward for Creeper World on mobile. But I never give up that easily…. oh no. When something doesn’t work, I find another way. Have I found another way? Yes.
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Game 3 Update – Infrastructure and Terraforming
about 2 weeks ago - 114 comments
Development on Game 3 has been moving right along. Below is a new screen shot that shows some new cool features. First, you’ll notice three ‘Command Nodes’. Command Nodes are like the city in CW1. They get dropped down from orbit at the beginning of a mission at locations of your choosing. You can drop
CW2 is in the Top 100 Indie Games of 2011!
about 5 months ago - 3 comments
The Creeper Nation has done it yet again…. Creeper World 2 has made it into the top 100 games on IndieDB.com! The race for placement in the top 100 is now on, so head on over and make your mark yet again.
http://www.indiedb.com/games/creeper-world-2-redemption
You can view the top 100 list here:
http://www.indiedb.com/events/2011-indie-of-the-year-awards/top100
We’re in the “Real Time Strategy” category.
Creeper World:Evermore now available!
about 5 months ago - 9 comments
Play it here!
http://www.kongregate.com/games/whiteboardwar/creeper-world-evermore?referrer=whiteboardwar
As always, your 5 star vote is appreciated.
Features:
A new mission daily, procedurally generated using some fancy math.
Lots of stats with online database.
Survival mode. Last as long as you can!
I’m looking forward to discussing the new Survival mode on the forums….
Creeper World:Evermore
about 5 months ago - 3 comments
If all goes as planned, Nov 21, 2011 will be the launch of Creeper World: Evermore. I’ll follow up with a new post once it is live on Kongregate and ArmorGames.
Q: What’s this you say? Another CW1 based flash game?
A: Yep…., you read right.
Q: What’s new you say? Have I not already mastered the Creeper
The Final Battle
about 7 months ago - 16 comments
People laughed. ”Fools” we were called. In the early, primordial beginnings of Creeper World no one believed it could or should be done. How in 20 years of real time strategy game design and development had a new and fundamental game play mechanic simply been overlooked?
“It was”, I said, then the work began. Others scoffed
Creeper World 2 Update 0343
about 7 months ago - 6 comments
I’ve been very busy biting my fingernails watching how Creeper World: User Space does at Kongregate. So to take my mind off of it, I thought I’d do a little coding on Creeper World 2 and add a new feature! In the middle of fixing some bugs, I added the ability see through the terrain.
Status Update: September 1, 2011
about 8 months ago - 30 comments
So now that custom maps are out, people are asking ‘What’s Next?“. Don’t worry, Knuckle Cracker still has plenty of Knuckles left to crack… we’ve only just begun our quest for galactic domination. After all, the 10 thousand year galactic empire has to have gotten started somewhere… Oops, I’ve said too much already.
As for more
Custom Maps and Moderators
about 9 months ago - 50 comments
I know everyone has been anxiously awaiting custom maps for CW2…. so have I. I’ve seen some amazing maps during the beta program and I believe they only just hint at what is to come. I’m in the final days before the next release, so we are very close.
I’ve been hard at work on the
Status Update: July 27, 2011
about 9 months ago - 56 comments
The last two weeks have been very hectic… I got called away for a week and a half for an emergency and work all but ceased on the map editor during that time… But, the good news is that I am now back and working double time to finish off the map editor and the
DRM and an Interview
about 10 months ago - 27 comments
Recently, the topic of DRM came up in regards to Creeper World 1 and 2. I’ve always thought of myself on the “good” end of the whole DRM spectrum as I do the minimal that I can get away with for the Creeper World games. The games only require the entry of a key that
about 6 months ago
YAY! another way!
can’t wait for the chopraider stuff. gonna be so awesome!
about 6 months ago
Be sure to think really hard about the AIR iOS / Android options: it’ll never run good if you just take the desktop AIR and republish for iOS and Android, you’ll need to do some work and research, and then you’ll be able to do quite a lot more then you’d expect at first.
Still it’s way easier then learning Objective-C or something and rebuilding in Objective-C and Java and maintaining 3 codebases.
about 6 months ago
There are numerous problems with getting the AS3 (air) version of CW1 to work on iOS/Android. First, it’s memory heavy. That creeper array, background images, etc eat up a chunk of memory. It’s trivial on the desktop, but real easy to go above 150M on mobile and get killed by the OS. Second, and even more important, the run time performance just isn’t there. The CA simulation that runs in CW has to iterate over a 70×48 array (an AS3 vector) and do lots of reading from other locations. This just can’t keep up on an iPad 1. I’ve been over and over this code optimizing it, but lots of array access in AS3 just ain’t fast.
For comparison, I ported the algorithm over to C# and ran it under Unity3D…. We’re talking at least 500 times faster…
about 6 months ago
Not surprised at all. Given the memory overhead of the CW games, I was initially interested that you chose AIR as your platform to begin with. Mind you there are obviously many benefits, but the ultimatum of CW is it’s very memory intensive, and that’s the most important element of the game (as it’s all about the physics). You could start with XCode and bask in the immediate speed advantage, but your biggest loss would be the convenience of AIR being natively cross-platform. What other cross-platform compilers have you considered?
about 6 months ago
I’ve mostly only looked at Unity3D. I originally chose AIR because I needed both a flash/web version as well as a desktop version. Flash would be for marketing and AIR would be for the full desktop game. But it is looking like Unity3D can provide all of that and much more… along with vastly superior performance.
about 6 months ago
Pricey, but very interesting! I didn’t realize there were cross-platform game development solutions. You could deploy CW on the console!
I’ll have to pick up a trial version of Unity and give it a go. Thanks for the reference. I’ll add that to my list of excellent compilers.
about 6 months ago
but.. but… how will I play cw on linux if you move to unity3d?
*sobs. excusme me
Anyway, javascript/hmtl5 looks pretty promising right now- all the major desktop (chrome/safari/ffox) and mobile (ios/android) browsers support it. If rovio could port their game why not knuckle crakcer?
about 6 months ago
Creeper World 1 & 2 on my Android Tablet would make my life so much better.
about 6 months ago
I mentioned this in the last post, but I didn’t get a response. I suggested that weapon move speed upgrades also increase the speed at which the missiles fly at. This would be tremendously helpful if I need to move a launcher but that launcher is keeping the creeper at bay.
about 6 months ago
@Screech, you should check out the forums, as they’re the place for suggestions :3
about 6 months ago
Would Chop cost $?
Anyways I would just die If I had CW for my iPhone, if it made its way there
about 6 months ago
LOVE the map preview/rating system. I was really hoping you’d implement something like that.
Also, CW on Android sounds awesome – Looking forward to that someday.
Keep up the amazing work, Virgilw!