Star Saver, a Metroidvania style game for iOS has been released
Star Saver, a game Casey Gatti was the visual lead on just got released. It’s a super cool Metroidvania style game. It’s FREE to download and provides a whopping 1/3 of the game for free before the need to unlock the full version.
You play as a Squidly, a Space Squid, hauling around Squishy, The Prince of the Galaxy, on a magic chain in search of the stars that are mysteriously disappearing from the sky. Luckily, Prince Squishy can eat his way though almost anything! Star Saver is a hilarious adventure spanning the galaxy, with over 10 hours of gameplay.
Check it out -> http://bit.ly/1sNbRS9
The TooManyGames expo was a success!
We had a wide range of people stopping by and checking out our games. Everyone laughed or shuttered when they heard their friend speaking through Devil Voice. People jumped when their ship blew up for the first time in Ace Extreme. And gamers were munching away with Sir Squishy in a partner project called Star Saver that Casey is leading the art in.
Along the course of the weekend, Jake (Programmer of Ace Extreme) was sending new builds for us to load into the demo machine. This was truly invaluable as it finessed the experience of the game and attendees got to see it change during their repeated visits to our booth.
ProRattaFactor at TooManyGames Expo (Oaks, PA)
Starting tomorrow (from June 14-16) ProRattaFactor will have a booth in the indie game section of the TooManyGames East Coast Gaming Expo. We’ll be sharing the upcoming launch of bringing our iOS survival space shooting game, Ace Extreme, to the Mac. If you’re in the NYC, NJ, PA area, swing on by. You’ll have a blast!
ACE Extreme is on the move!
The new game engine is now ready. The first project that we’re bringing over is Ace Omicron. However, the name is changing to ACE Extreme. Sounds extreme, huh?
We are adding a bunch of features to it: new game modes, making it support Retina-screen MacBook Pros and iPads, and are shooting for a summer release. It’ll be available on the Mac App Store and iTunes App Store. We’ll be demoing the game at the TooManyGames expo held in Oaks, PA from June 14-16, 2013.
And… it’s a good time to upgrade to Mountain Lion (10.8) as Ace Extreme will require it ;-P
ProRattaFactor will be at the TooManyGames East Coast Gaming Expo June 14-16
It’s official, we will have a booth in the indie game section of the TooManyGames East Coast Gaming Expo on June 14-16. We’ll be sharing the upcoming launch of bringing our iOS survival space shooting game, Ace Omicron, to the Mac.
If you’re in the NYC, NJ, PA area, you’ll have a fun time. There are video game and card game tournaments, LAN parties, panels, and showcases. In the marketplace area there’s plenty of vendors with classic games and merchandise, people that make game-inspired clothes and artwork, James Rolfe (The Angry Video Game Nerd) will be signing autographs, and there will be a bunch of indie game developers sharing their games.
Hope to see you there!
– Casey
Creating interactive books with iBooks Author
So far, so good. It’s been pretty cool working in it. After the small learning curve in understanding some of the advanced features, the tool seems very useful for creating engaging content. The widgets are definitely useful to switch up the experience for the user and keep things fresh. And, the inclusion of importing custom html 5 content provides a limitless avenue for enabling completely unique interactive experiences.
If you’re a digital creator, be sure to backup
It’s a new year and time to start blogging once again. Today’s topic is about computer backup. If you’re a digital creator, I can’t stress how important data backup is. There are primarily two parts of data backup that will keep you up and running with minimal downtime. The first part is a cloned/bootable hard drive to keep your machine running. The second part is your data; and that’s what I’m going to talk about today.
There are two kinds of data backup: local and remote. Both Mac and Windows have built-in applications that work with “local” external USB, firewire, and eSATA drives. There are also a bunch of “free” back-up software packages that run from your computer. However, in the past couple years, the cost of remote/cloud-based backup has incredibly declined. For instance, CrashPlan+ which support file versioning, unlimited data, access to restore your data from any web-enabled computer, and next day delivery of your data (if you have a catastrophic crash) is around $50/year.
Most importantly, a very high percentage of designers and artists are primarily moving to working on laptops and from multiple locations. This growing laptop trend changes the dynamic of backup and what the user has access to when working from different locations. They may also not have room to attach external drives. I’ve been personally using CrashPlan+ for over a year and it’s been great! Now there are other web services out there (such as mozy.com) that offer low-cost, cloud-based backup to check out.
The key thing is to seriously start thinking about remote/cloud-based backup as part of your strategy to safeguard your creative data.
DevNotes — The Core Console
One major challenge I have encountered in this foray into cross-platform development has been getting consistent debugging and analysis information. Doing this on one platform can be tough enough, but when doing it across different platforms, there aren’t many consistent tools or standards.
Summarizing my needs:
1) I need consistent, fast text output for debugging.
2) I need clear messages from my program which indicate what went wrong.
3) I would like some kind of performance profiling tool, to measure what parts are too slow, so I can optimize them.
4) I would like to have some idea about what my RAM usage is, to help spot memory leaks.
Angry Video Game Nerd signs El Ballo promo card
Just thought I’d share some silly fun stuff. The Angry Video Game Nerd (James Rolfe) and Mike Matei of cinemassacre.com signed a promo card of our retro Mac game El Ballo! Retro gamers…UNITE!!
– Casey