Revamped the website

Over a year after it was first launched, I decided to redo the website from scratch. The initial design suited my initial vision, but given that my vision for OMGames has changed hugely, I felt it was time to change the website with it.

Unfortunately I have always been *terrible* at webdesign, so I have been putting it off for countless weeks! In fact it wasn’t until I went looking for inspiration from other sites that I found some really nice, clean designs that I decided to borrow from (Borrow! Not steal, I swear!). This new site will make it far easier to add new games and features and will generally be more streamlined (less bandwidth!).

While you’re here, don’t forget to try out our latest game which was released just a few weeks ago – Lone Defender.

Ok, so the whole ‘weekly updates’ didn’t work out quite as I’d hoped, but I do have some good news – after a lot of work, Linkaball (Bondaball) is finished. Actually, it was finished about a month ago but I decided to take a different distribution route.
After completion and testing, I uploaded the game to the fantastic service known as Flash Game License, a site which connects developers with sponsors and allows you to get the big portals looking at your game without the need to send out hundreds of e-mails. After some very tempting offers, I got a fantastic deal with Crazy Monkey Games, who will be uploading the game to their website within a few days.

I’d like to extend a big thanks to the fantastic indie group The B of the Bang – they provided a soundtrack that fitted the game perfectly. The biggest comment that I’ve been getting back from players so far is “Awesome music!”. If enough people are interested in it, then I may talk to them about releasing the track to the public.

Current Projects:

• Linkaball (Any day now) – a simple, yet highly addictive puzzle game. In a similar style to Boomshine and Circle Chain, you must create chain reactions in groups of circles. Music by The B of the Bang.

• Vyral:Toxin (TBA 08) – an arcade shooter which pits you against a deadly virus. Will include a level editor as well as the ability to easily share your levels with friends.

• Paperoids, Meteor Defense, Starbox Plus – temporarily delayed

Nobody told me how difficult it was to keep a blog up-to-date!

Development has been somewhat slow over the past few weeks, mostly due to other commitments but also due to occasional shifts in strategy. Because of this, I have decided to try to update the blog on at least a weekly basis, to act as both a reason for readers to subscribe and as a reminder for myself to stick to schedules!

In light of this, I have also decided to make my projects as transparent as possible, rather than maintaining the ’secretive-nature’ I have done up to this point.
Additionally, I plan to post some useful tips for those who are looking to start developing games.

Current Projects (NB: Names are not confirmed):

• Bondaball (DEC 07) – a simple, yet highly addictive puzzle game. In a similar style to Boomshine and Circle Chain, you must create chain reactions in groups of circles. Music by The B of the Bang.

• Paperoids (FEB 08) – both an upgrade and a downgrade of the classic ‘Asteroids’. You must now not only destroy the asteroids, but collect the materials within them to upgrade your ship. In this game I’m also trying out a new ‘pen-and-paper’ art-style.

• Meteor Defense (TBA) – you control a highly customisable turret to defend Earth against an onslaught of different types of meteors. Includes a large number of weapons and customisations.

• Starbox Plus (TBA) – the port of Starbox to AS3. This should really give you an idea of just how much faster AS3 is over AS2 when you compare the performance of the two versions side by side.

Next week, I’ll go into my plans for one of these projects in a bit more detail.

Perhaps my first estimate of a month was a bit ambitious…

The last week or two has been a big learning experience for me while developing the latest project. While it is shaping up really nicely, I’ve had to learn a huge number of topics.

Additionally, there’ll be a change in the way the game is released – as well as an initial Flash version, I plan to spend a bit more time developing a shareware version with far more content. Since I’m still technically a poor student, and Google AdWords isn’t really paying the bills just yet I figured this may be a lucrative avenue.

Finally, I’ve also started work porting Starbox to Actionscript 3 – this will result in a massive speed improvement. For example, currently it bogs down at around 500 stars, whereas the version 2 can quite nicely handle around 2,000 stars.

I realise I haven’t posted here for over a month and as such I apologise to the devoted readers who, no doubt by now, number in the several.

I have been extremely busy at work and with my Masters kicking off again, I’ve had little free time.

However, I have begun a new project which is coming along nicely. After Multiball and Starbox, I learnt enough to make something a little more substantial, so this next project will be my largest, deepest and greatest game yet. I’m hoping it wont take more than a month to build, but it’s early days yet.

One final comment – I would like to perform a beta test when it’s nearing completion, so if you want in just drop me an e-mail at omgamesuk@googlemail.com, or alternatively leave a comment below with a contact e-mail.

Regards,
James

What started out as a learning experiment in particle simulation turned into an online interative toy.

Starbox is a sandbox full of stars. It isn’t a game – it’s a simulation, decoration, toy and a universe, in one.

Create beautiful patterns from stars, or just watch them fly by.

First, let me apologise for the delay between posts – it’s been a busy few weeks.

Second, may I present to you: Multiball. This game began as a simple idea when I was working on something else and was developed over a few days. It is incredibly easy to learn but gets very difficult, very fast.

I am nearly finished the next game already (actually the untitled project was meant to be released first) and the one after that is all planned out, and will be far more substantial.

In the last two weeks I’ve completely revamped much of the back end and integrated the accounts system properly – you can now login to the website and you are automatically logged onto all games, fantabulous.

Given that I’ve now implemented all that I had originally intended to into the website (granted, I still have much planned for the future), I can now start working on the next game. I haven’t actually released any details of this yet, but I can say that it will be far more challenging and skill based than Lander – trust me when I say, it will make your brain hurt!

While I had intended to put a fair bit of work in today, an incident involving myself, a number of workmates and a £1,000 bar tab last night prevented me from doing so.

However, I have gotten around to adding MochiAds to Lander. MochiAds are a great concept which allows games developers to continue gaining revenue from their games even when they are placed on other sites.

A very quick thanks to Ben Buxton (KingB3N) and Alex Bevan (abevan) for pointing out how bloody awful Internet Explorer is. They taught me a very valuable lesson today which I should, perhaps, have known already – always check your CSS code on every browser!