For those technically inclined, this is a C++ reimplementation of the original Flash version (which was programmed by the very same Duncan Saunders whom I've teamed up with to create Super Snake Blox). The Flash version will be available at the same time as the iOS.

Another game that I've been involved will follow shortly, this time for the Vita; stay tuned!

Most importantly, I've got a placement year with the London based studio, Playerthree. The first title that I've worked on should be out soon for PSP Minis, with another one for PS Vita to follow it in a close consecution. I've learnt some very useful lessons in working with 3rd party code and team projects.

I've also rewritten XRhodes, next to from scratch. Only this time around I'm no longer gearing it towards a public release - I could, but it takes a lot of effort, which I'd rather be spending on actual games, and ones that I'm passionate about.

The most important change is connected to this: I've learnt to let go of perfection. I no longer feel the urge to write crystal clear code, and I'm willing to make sacrifices to just make things work. What having been aspiring to pick up good practices and to write crystal clear code helped me is to learn what can actually be sacrificed, and what will come back to bite me in the ass.

Global Game Jam 2012 has just finished. I've been looking forward to the event very much - from a suprise team-up with Duncan Saunders and Jade Konechy, Super Snake Blox was born. It's quite fun. Go and play it. There are flaws (it's a 48 hour game), but I'll tidy them up as soon as I can bear to look at it again.

The plan now is to work on short and sweet prototypes that I can fit in my schedule easier, to do the next Ludum Dare - which I now know I can -, and to provide more updates. We'll see how it goes.;)

Also, its code has been made public domain in form of a Mercurial repository. It is probably not the tidiest code ever, but if you are new to games development and/or XRhodes, you might find it helpful. (If you are also new to Mercurial, a great tutorial can be found here.)

To work your magic from the command line:

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/zyndor/tower-offense

Please note that actually building it will require XRhodes v0.86. Just a couple more days...

...I mean you'll need to look closer.=)

Firstly there is the prototype of Oh Brother, an arena shooter with an emotional/spiritual payload and a freshesque control scheme that will melt your mind. That is where I'm going to leave this one - that and a stress test screenshot:

Then there's the Plymouth Game Jam the 9th game, Tower Offense, that I have made in cooperation with Paul Hallett and Ben Bullock. Paul came up with the concept of a reverse tower defense game and did the graphics, Ben made some of the sounds. I'm quite happy with the results, and infuriatingly enough I've found myself pondering how to improve certain aspects of the game (infuriatingly, I says, as I have spent about 5 times as long on it as I have originally intended). On the upside, it came with several valuable learnings, which gone into a better XRhodes Project Template for NetBeans.

Screenshot:

...and to have a go for yourself: Download Tower Offense.

1. To bring enjoyment to those who wanted to use XRhodes on their favourite penguin based platforms (Ubuntu flavors at least -- I'm new to this).
2. To create an XRhodes Application project template for NetBeans. This should automagically work on all platforms.

While I'm at it: I've also started thinking about building an authoring tool on top of the XRhodes code-base. Of course that's a far stretch and I'd rather be working on games. But it should be feasible, and wouldn't it be awesome?