you can be quite sure something goes wrong. You might remeber I wrote about my latest game in my last post. http://www.derbrill.de/zack . Just as I happiely watched scores being entered in the Database, I received a very nice email pointing me to a hole in the UNDO system, that could be exploited to cheat. Yes. There are people that play like weaklings and use the UNDO button However I have fixed the hole. No more cheating.

All the best,

Malte

Hi friends. It has been a while since I last wrote here. As it is derbrills “birth week” (5 years in business, how time flies!) I have been a busy bee and working on a new game. It is done.

http://www.derbrill.de/zack

ZACK! is a strategy game that’s delightfully addictive! Based on the concept of placing tiles to build bridges, each tile must match the color of adjacent pieces.

It starts simply: there are four basic colors to the tiles. Building straight bridges is easy. You are also given the occasional joker that allows any color to be adjacent to the piece. As you progress, ZACK! first adds two more colors … and, then, 60 “combo” colors.

It’s a puzzle. It’s strategy. It’s addictive. It’s ZACK!

Available for Mac OS X (universal binary) und Windows.

Check out the free trial now.

ZACK! is available immediately from http://www.derbrill.de for Windows, Vista and Macintosh computers. It is offered as shareware: payments can be made by  cheque or PAYPAL for €6.90 (approx 9 USD).

The trial version allows you to launch 19 times before requiring a payment.

I will be posting more about the development cycle here as soon as I can.

All the best,

Malte

That’s a question I regulary ask, when I chat with people. You might ask yourself what is new and exciting on the Revolution games front. Well, I just can tell you that there is something in the pipeline! I am currently running Beta tests of my latest game project called “Drops”. Off course it makes heavy use of animationEngine. Stay tuned for more info.

Hi all,

it’s been a while since I wrote something here. At the moment animationEngine 2.1 is in testing. This will be the first version that actually changes the name from ArcadeEngine to animationEngine. As the nameChange introduces some sensitive changes under the hood, I would like to invite any holder of an arcadeEngine 2.x license to test the new release before it ships. If you would like to get a sneak peek, please contact me off list: info -at- derbrill -dot- de

All the best,

Malte

just wanted to let you know that you find the new ArcadeEngine Showcase for Mac OsX and Win on the revselect pages:

http://www.runrev.com/section/revselect/arcadeengine

Direct download links:

Mac OsX:
http://www.runrev.com/section/revselect/arcadeengine/downloads/ae20showcase.dmg

Win:
http://www.runrev.com/section/revselect/arcadeengine/downloads/ae20showcase.zip

I hope you like it. The stack is available on request.

All the best,

Malte

Hi all,

I´ve just uploaded arcadeEngine v. 2.0.1 to my server. You can grab it here:

http://www.derbrill.com/showcase/ae201.zip

This version fixes the nagging false unregistred dialogue problem when compiling standalones.

all the best,

Malte

So. Now it is done. The game is finished and uploaded to runrevs ftp server, so now it is only a matter of days until I can release it as a tutorial stack. It also has a nice Rev CGI driven online highscore. It can be seen in game and I´ll have a top 50 on the server later. I´ll finish the HTML part for the server after returning from a short trip to Sweden. So long!

Malte

How nice. I finally received the missing pieces of artwork today. And it is interesting how much fun nice drawings add to a prototype game. While I haven´t been able to code much on the game the last few days it really gets together nicely now. And still less than 50 hours of coding time for it.
Well, time to get into code again and stop talking too much. I have a highscores CGI to write. If there is interest I will post the script of it here.

That´s all for now. All the best,

Malte

If you are reading this blog you might wonder why AEs name has been changed to animationEngine. The reason is that the new name makes more sense. AE is a lib that helps you while creating games, but it is not limited to that task. I have seen stacks that are totally game unrelated and still use AE. For charting or GUI elements for example. So it seems reasonable that the name has changed.

I had quite a lot of fun doing fundamental programming with the last AE update. I think it was well worth the effort, as AE is more powerful and easier to use in your scripts. Also the docs overhaul was necessary. It is always a good idea to seperate data from code. This led to a smaller lib, despite of the new functionality. However there is one thing that is more fun to me then fundamentals. Doing games. And that is what I am doing at the moment. I am writing a full blown game for the Revolution MacMini contest. Yeah! Why do I write this here? Well, the good thing about stacks is that they are easiely shared. So once the contest is over I will make the game available as a tutorial stack. Please stay tuned for more.

All the best,

Malte