My new game - Match n Slide Aqua preview!

Here are a few screenshots of my new game, a Match3 style game with an underwater theme.

So far I've just been working on the graphics and I'm quite pleased with what I have so far. The first image is the main menu, and the latter is the in game view. Next job, draw some fish! Any feedback would be very much appreciated.

Here's a little update - I'm looking at porting this into an iPhone up as soon as the CS5 beta becomes available, stay tuned!

Fluid Dynamics using AS3

As a physicist I find things like this incredible. Fluids are extremely complex mathematically, so when I came across Eugine Zatepuakin's work on fluid dynamics I was amazed by the speed and accuracy of the simulations!

Just click the right image for a full preview, you'll be blown away! When I've got a bit more time I'll write a thread explaining how fluid dynamics simulations work, and explain the basic principles of coding something like this in flash, but for now check it out!

Move your mouse around to create dense regions and click to change the rendering mode. I love that flash is capable of handling these kinds of calculations. I remember playing a game called plasma pong which used very similar fluid dynamics to Eugine's model. Unfortunately the game is no longer available for download because pong is a trademark of Atari but here is a nice little video of the game in action.

Here is a little youtube clip of the game, just click to launch it! :)

Enjoy!

Nitrome - Some featured games!

I've been getting really addicted to games by Nitrome recently, a flash game company based in London, England. I thought I'd feature a few of my favourites on the site.

First is Snot Put, a cute and equally gross take on the shot put event where you have to swing the main character as fast as you can in a circle, the aim of the game being to throw it as far as you can. Its a small game, but the physics are good and its really addictive!

Next is Twin Shot 2, a new instalment from the design team. This game is beatifully made, and has done an incredible job of recreating the magic of games like Bubble Bobble in the late 80s and early 90s. From start to finish the character and level design is gorgeous, the music is great and not at all repetitive, there are loads of levels (including a bonus pack of 50).

As always just click the thumbnails to play or you can catch them on facebook on The Game Portal.

I'm sure you'll love these ones, Enjoy!

Old physics engine

Working on the Buzz game has taken me back to some of the physics simulations/engines I've worked on in the past. There is an amazing game out there called Gish, and this little mock up game was inspired by that. In gish you play a blob of slime and you have to complete various obstacle-course-like levels. The physics engine is incredible and the blob of slime itself is made up of hundreds of Springs and points. I used a similar method to create my blob. Gish two is soon to be released, and the physics look to have improved a lot, here is a nice little video.

Anyway, here are a few screenshots of my attempt at creating the Gish Engine in flash.

And here is a flash demo so you can get a feel for the controls and physics (arrow keys to move, space to jump).

here it is

Enjoy!

Buzz - New Game Project

I'm currently building a new game, so I thought I'd blog at each stage of the way. The game I'm working on is called Buzz and its a game about bees. You control a swarm of bees as they fly around levels trying to pollinate flowers as quickly as possible. I decided to write this game after hearing about colony collapse disorder - a relatively new term given to the phenomenon where bees abandon their hives. The disorder only effects honey bees

and has confused scientists everywhere.

I think that the most likely cause is environmental changes and not a viral conditions as some scientists have speculated, but what do I know, I'm just a flash developer haha...

So first of all I've been working on the game engine. I'm building the game tile-based just to make level creation a bit easier to handle and to keep up the retro feel that I'm going for.

Click here for an initial shell of the engine.

I'm having various issues with hit detection in the tile-based format but I will soon sort it out, You'll see what I mean. The engine runs quite nicely on my computer, let me know what you think. Enjoy!