Here’s a few screenshots and a youtube demo..

WEEK 1 – intro, IDE, API overview
Lecture 1 – Introduction
Lab 1 – Setup Shiva + Mars Rotator
Mars model (Collada .dae and .jpg) (for use in lab session 1)

WEEK 2 – key game entities, automatic flow of control, AIs, keyboard, accelerometer
Lectures 2&3 – Concepts, the Shiva SDK etc.
Lab 2 – Mars and its moons!
Phobos/Deimos models (Collada .dae and .jpg) and skyboxes (.jpg) (for use in lab session 2)

WEEK 3 – programmed flow of control, messages, key game entities, data handling
Lectures 2&3 – Added to since last week!
Lab 3 – Mars with collidable asteroids
Asteroid model (Collada .dae and .jpg) (for use in lab session 3)

WEEK 4 – physics, direct movement, the camera
Lecture 4 – physics, movement, camera
Labwork: start on your game projects; complete lab 3 if you haven’t done so yet.

WEEK 5 – HUDs, runtime object management, coordinate systems, vectors and angles, ray casting, the math object
Sample solution to lab 3 (Mars with Moons and Asteroids)
Lecture 5 – HUDs, raycasting, runtime object management

WEEK 6 – sensors & colliders, tables, hash tables, xml, game deployment
Lecture 6 notes

WEEK 7/8 – particle emitters, multiplayer, multitouch, efficiency, Shiva script and OpenGLES, materials & lighting, pathfinding
Lecture 7/8 notes

Demo Games that we will be discussing in class:
The Shiva webplayer plugin will automatically install..
[Afterburn 2150]
[Mars Defender]
[Block Rockin]

There’s a webplayer beta here

And an Android .apk here

The reason headphones are recommended (apart from the kickin’ menu music) is that the 3D audio helps you know where offscreen enemies behind you are shooting at you from.

Initially, the powerups were to be collected by driving thru 3D objects in the game, but this seemed (and looked) too cheesy, so eventually I dropped that idea and made it so that you gather ‘energy’ at the same time as points, and then spend this energy on the powerups by sliding out the 6 icons on the right of the screen. I prefer how this plays out anyway, as it adds some choice and tactical decision making which you wouldn’t get if you were simply collecting specific powerups onscreen.

Music was another aspect which I worked at and eventually backtracked on. I’m using a really nice track “Ride the Wave” by a guy called Matt Brodie, from Shockwave Sound. Nice crunchy guitar, solid drum section and plenty of ride cymbals (which carry across nicely even on small speakers). I sliced the whole thing into loops and then had them dynamically chosen based on the on-screen action – but it got too repetitive, so eventually I moved the whole song back to the menu screen, where it works really well. The in-game sounds now involve spacecraft engines, ‘flyby’ sounds, bullets and explosions, all in 3D. The 3D aspect is actually quite important since often the enemy are firing at you from offscreen and you want to basically duck and dive, dodging away from whereever a bullet is coming from. The audio is from freesound.org

There’s also an online highscore system and there will be a few ships to choose from. I’m hoping to get the game out as a Beta version on Android in the next week or two.

Anyhow, I’ll be talking about Darkwind fiction again at a later date. ‘Tales from the Wasteland’, a collection of Darkwind stories, is planned.

But for now, some images of the new maps..

We will finally have the 9th town, Morgan, in game very soon. This is a frozen town high in the Western Mountains, largely cut off from the rest of Evan. Stefan Bondier’s excellent start to the maps for this region have been picked up by Mike Mueller, and we’re close to having these ready to go:

There are also several new race tracks, including an anarchic tumble down the side of a volcano in the town of Firelight:

There were some compatibility issues with the Play Book Simulator, so like other Shiva developers I ended up ‘flying blind’ and submitting Mars Defender without ever actually knowing how well it would run. But apart from a couple of small tweaks, it worked straight up. Figuring out the process of signing the app. was the most time consuming step.

About 10 days later I received my Play Book. Not only had RIM paid the shipping cost, they actually made sure to pay the Irish import tax too (liable since it was coming from outside the EU, probably about €60) – this was a nice surprise that I wasn’t expecting.

It’s a really nice device – I love the size, coming in at halfway between an iPad and a smartphone. So it’s not small and fiddly nor is it too unwieldly to carry around for everyday use. Nice bright screen, punchy front-facing speakers. Touch sensitive strips above and below the visible display provide OS-level controls in a similar way to the hardware keys on Android devices (this is something that’s seriously lacking on iOS devices).

I have been testing out Afterburn 2150, one of my in-development games on it, and it’s giving between 100 and 150 frames per second – versus my laptop which gives between 40 and 65! Now admittedly my laptop (soon to be replaced) isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but still I expected it to outstrip a tablet device with ease.

The lack of Play Book apps on the App World store is a bit surprising – there are literally only about 30 games in the ‘Space’ section, for example. And the store is somewhat swamped currently by low-quality games like tic-tac-toe, presumably written by people looking for a quick way to a free Play Book.

The downloads of Mars Defender are relatively good, currently over 40 in less than a month (which is about the same as what it gets on the Android market), but I wonder how much room there is for serious success on the current install base? Probably not much, but then again the device itself is good so there’s every chance things could change in the future or with a Play Book 2.

Mars Defender Lite is now available on the App World, if you’re interested in trying it out for free

This is a new game I have been working on for a bit; it’s basically an ‘Angry Cutlery’ game where you get the satisfaction of firing a slingshot at tables and dressers full of crockery, glasses and bottles. Sam’s attempt at hitting the App Store’s magic “lowest common denominator”, perhaps.

The breakable items have hidden ‘hit points’ values, and they take damage when they’re knocked into by something (typically a slingshot ball, but it could be something else toppling). When they take enough damage they splinter into lots of little smithereens which are ejected under control of the physics engine. An object that doesn’t take enough damage to be destroyed outright might split into viable (non-smithereen) sub-objects.

It’s a bit of fun and is supported by a great range of sounds I have obtained from freesound.org. I have more than 30 breakage sounds in the game, categorised by material type (glass, crockery, metal) and by impact strenth (shatter, split, tinkle, tap) – the overall effect is quite a pleasing sense of realistic destruction.

Demo movie and downloadable Android (.apk) version soon!

IndieCity are running a competition whereby you play a bunch of free/demo games and answer questions about them, one per day. Nice idea.. and Mars Defender is one of them

It’s a games controller for iOS devices. At first I assumed it was for Android, since my games have been getting much better visibility on the Android market. But no, iOS only for the moment. They offered to send me one of these if I’d agree to integrate it into Mars Defender.

It actually makes very good sense to play with a proper hardware controller, since touchscreen ‘virtual joysticks’, as used by many games, are really pretty poor in terms of usability and ergonomics. Plus your fingers on the screen are taking up valuable real estate.

I was a bit unsure at first, after an unpleasant experience last year trying to integrate the hardware joysticks on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play:

The Sony Ericsson SDK seems to be rushed and ill-thought out, forcing a game structure that would work for some games and not for others (certainly not for me, using Shiva). They did refer me to a ‘developer’ at the time, but he really didn’t seem to know what he was doing. (At least I never claimed to be a Java/Android expert).

By comparison, 60beat integration turned out to be really straightforward. Apart from a little trouble before upgrading to XCode 4.2, getting their SDK integrated and working was easy, and worked first time as promised. It actually makes a great improvement to Mars Defender – it’s easier to control the spaceship, and far less tiring on your fingers.

The 60beat plugs in via the headphone/microphone shared port, and communicates with the device via sound. Quite clever; and not a big problem since iOS devices have bi-directional audio ports so you can still hear the game by using the supplied splitter and headphones. Forcing the player to use headphones can only be a good thing, as the deep bassy rumbles in the Mars Defender soundtrack are completely lost on the weak built-in speakers.

Mars Defender with 60beat support went live on the app store yesterday. No sign of any major increase in downloads, unfortunately, but I guess 60beat doesn’t yet have much coverage. I hope this works out for them, it’s a great piece of kit.

To be fair to the Xperia Play, I am still using it as my main phone due to its excellent audio quality.