This one has been floating around the internets quite a bit recently, but it well descrbies the whole space squid phenomenon:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/there_are_never_enough_cartoon.php
Apr 272009
Space Squid has been sitting on FlashGameLicense.com for a week now, and it’s been viewed by publishers 6 times.
And only one of them actually played the game – and they never beat (or lost) a level. I have no feedback and no other indication of any slight interest whatsoever. FGL even lists some viewing stats – two of the 6 visitors looked at my page for a total of 4 seconds.
One publisher – AddictingGames – viewed my game for 6 hours but never ended up clicking the play button. I think that’s a telling tale – they just left the browser window open and FGL claims it as “interest.” Very disappointing.
I’m really really happy I set up my own database so I could track what kind of gameplay exposure my potential buyers are seeing – because now I can see that FlashGameLicense might not be the be-all solution I hoped it would.
However, I’m not completely giving up on them. It might be because my game is listed (as of today) at “97% complete” – maybe some publishers only view 100% complete games? Maybe my thumbnail image isn’t the best (it was from v.30 something), or maybe my description could use more marketing magic?
The primary turn-off point for Space Squid might be the Menu. It looks ugly and cluttered. The only thing I like about it is the title, and even then the red underline doesn’t quite fit. And a bad impression right from the menu might turn some people right off.
So here’s the plan for the last 4 days of this project:
- Redesigning the menu from scratch with better readable fonts.
- Make or find new vector keyboard icons – the current ones are crap.
- Add spacebar to the controls list.
- Take a suite of screenshots and work on a solid game description.
- Return the destroy-menu code and implement the new focus code (stage.focus=this; – argh I wish I knew it was this simple! I think everyone that was trying to help me with the two-clicks-required-bug were overlooking the obvious and trying to think of what the larger problem was)
- Redesign or recolor the cyan bounding box for the fishtank
- Change the color of the boost bar – because yellow doesn’t appear anywhere else in the game
- Try a few color changes for the “Level/Score” display on the Hud.
- Get stroke working on the countdown timer and score results so they better stand out from the background.
- Fix the text input boxes on the main menu so they don’t act and look retarded
- “Anonymous” shouldn’t get the score details in the victory/gameover boxes.
- Put a border on the game so the squid doesn’t fly off the screen and clip mysteriously
- Finalize the highscore display and get it formatted nicely on the page
- The victory/gameover boxes should appear on top of the obstacles and water, for clarity
- Add descriptions for all the play modes (maybe popup?)
- Make the website not scroll on a standard resolution such as my laptop
- Shop the game around in a mass-email spam
- Throw a launch party. Considering it’s 4 days away that’s probably not going to end up being too big. I really should plan it out better.
Ryan Madsen, who has been making several awesome suggestions for the game since I started writing about it here, just finished a Magic 8Ball responder for Twitter. If you ask a standard 8ball question he’ll randomly pick it up and respond to you! Check him out:
or his responses:
(good for some random fun)
Apr 272009
Another late-night update brings us up to build 44 – nothing amazingly special this time. I figure as these last few days of April tick by the updates will become more and more inane :)
Play it on the fancy-new Official Space Squid website.
- Sitelocking enabled; you won’t be able to run the SWF on your local machine (or upload it to a shady site!)
- After days of headaches I was finally able to fix the keyboard losing focus bug. It ended up being the “Play Now” button that was getting focus, and when I destroyed it on level creation (just trying to be tidy!) it destroyed the focus with it. I’m pretty sure this is not standard flash behaviour, but there you have it! My workaround was to make the PlayNow button invisible instead of removing it altogether.
- Cookies! The game now remembers your name from site visit to site visit.
- I would totally have a preloader in place – if only I were to put MochiAds in. The only working example I could find for a FlexSDK v3 preloader relies on it. :/ I’ll find something eventually.
In unrelated news, I was rearranging furniture today and crushed a nerve in my back. For some reason sitting in this chair and typing on my laptop for a month isn’t keeping my normally-ripped physique up to par.
While I waited for some drugs to take effect I took some time out to blow things up in Team Fortress 2 and followed it up with some Left 4 Dead. Ah, distractions.
I’ve downloaded Braid too but it hurts my head. I can see it’s an amazing fun game and is awesome, but I don’t really want to think right now. My brain is revving high enough as it is just getting this project done. I’ve shelved Braid for March sometime, when I can enjoy it properly. :)
I have a super amazing build (number 43) and it totally would have blown your socks of if only Aubrey didn’t launch the new website!
Check out the official Space Squid website here and bask in its glory. You can actually play the game ON THE PAGE!! wew!
The high score section of the site still needs a lot of work but the fundamentals are there for you to enjoy.
Hohum improvements to the game include:
- Giving you score stats inside the GameOver/Victory box at the end of each round. I think this actually adds a lot of depth to the game.
- Some minor graphical improvements (making fonts more legible mainly)
- A new instructions page with some details on the “world” scoring mechanism
- Made the endgame boxes interactable with the squid again (and slightly smaller)
- A bunch of small tweaks here and there that don’t affect gameplay (and thus the highscores)
Things to do:
- Figure out how to save the username/world in a cookie so you don’t have to type it every time
- Get my domain-lock security in place. It worked once, just have to get it working again…
- Solve the damned “have to click twice” game-loses-focus bug. I posted a help request for it at StackOverflow.com, if you want to help me out you can earn some karma points. :)
- A loading page! The game is 182Kb and it takes a while to load now.
5 days left on the clock! It always seems like I’ll have plenty of time but then I go two days without doing anything, so I really want to press on for this last little bit. Elbow grease and polish!
Build 42 isn’t a gigantic improvement. I’ve just added instancing for the high score tables! This update makes such big sweeping changes to the high score API that I decided to turn off score submitting for earlier versions.
High scores for versions 40 & 41 are still in the database and are perfectly valid, they just can’t submit anymore.
I really wanted to make a high score solution that did not involve you pitting yourself against a dozen bored kids you don’t know with too much spare time on their hands. I also wanted to avoid you scoring regularly in 400th-10,000th place in the globe.
My first reaction was to implement a 24-hour rule – your ranking is based on the last 24 hours of high scores. This is OK, but not perfect. What if a single office, group of friends, or school wants to compete amongst themselves, and only themselves?
I have to credit Ryan Madsen for the idea of instancing the high scores. This will allow any group of people to create their own set of high scores, and only have to worry about being ranked between each other. On the main game screen you can type your own custom group name in the “World” field – just that simple! The field will default to the domain you’re currently playing the game on, so if the game ever gets sponsored by some Flash Portal you’ll be playing against your friends there.
As a little side bonus I’m also tracking failures now, too. This only counts if you see the red “gameover” box – quitting to the main menu doesn’t count as a failure at all.
Aubrey is working hard getting the new version of Space-Squid.com up and running and we’ll see new stuff soon. Until then, keep racking up the high scores! I’m a fairly firm “king” in the space-squid.com arena. :)
Apr 232009
I liked the gameplay of those asteroids-in-the-sky so much I made a whole new level out of it!
Now instead of “Easy” and “Hard”, there is:
- Normal hasn’t changed from Easy – it’s the same, easy to control, solid victory conditions game that you know and love.
- Pro hasn’t changed from Hard except for the graphics – the boulders that hover in the air are now alien spaceships.
- Aliens! is a brand new game mode where you get as many points as you can in 120 seconds! Because of the scoring mechanism that probably means grabbing as many stars as you can. There’s no way to lose (except leaving the arena), and running out of time will win you the game. Changing levels just alters the semi-random layout of the spaceships/stars.
I also turned boost back to a “hold down” key instead of a tap.
Check out Build 41 here or just visit the official Space Squid homepage (new site design is coming soon!)
E: Increased alien mode from 60->120 seconds and removed death-by-limb-removal. Didn’t increase the build version for this change.
Apr 222009
1,408 rows deleted. That’s a lot of high score entries! Thanks, guys. :) I can’t believe how much you’ve been plalying! I’ve reset the high score database to go along with this quite excellent new version. Let’s rack it back up again!
Check out Build 40 of Space Squid here, or just visit the official space squid web page.
So what’s new? Too much! Other than making Hard Mode nearly it’s own new game…
- I let squids continue to propel as long as their head is submerged – instead of going from the tip of the mantle. This basically means squids leap farther out of the water, making acrobatics much more fun!
- I apply the turning force at a much larger angle now, so it’s harder to do the “hover cheat” while increasing your turning responsiveness.
- I put motors in the squid tentacles that auto-seek a straight angle. This will help your limbs from getting tangled up. The motor is only on the head-to-tentacle joint, and I don’t have one in the secondary joints yet so they might still tangle a little if you turn really fast.
- The squid can no longer touch himself – so his legs won’t tangle in each other. This small change ended up increasing framerates quite a bit!
- Played a bit with micro-changes to water viscoscity and gravity.
- Removed the extra objects altogether in the later levels – they now only show up at the tail end of level 18, 19, and 20. Things were just getting too busy and processors were melting. :)
- Level 1/2/3, 9/10/11, and 18/19/20 are all “theme” levels now. They only produce one type of obstacle.
- Reduced the sizes of all the obstacles.
- Made the sinking depth of the Space Urchin much more random (they were sticking a bit too close to the surface)
- Updated the main menu with controls, story, and a scoring overview. Be prepared, the story is one of ultimate seriousness.
- In hard mode, all rocks are static objects that get in your way – and should only appear in or near the air (with a random size as well).
- In hard mode, all the stars appear in or near the air.
- Stars now appear 100->350 pixels away from the previous star. No more overlapping double-grabs, and no more traversing to the far end of the screen.. but still close enough that you can still make multiple grabs in single jumps. Thanks to pythagoras for this one (and Aubrey for suggesting it).
- Pause screen (spacebar) and ability to return to the main menu.
- Made the GameOver/Victory boxes not intersect with the level objects, so you can still play in the background after the round has ended.
- Boost now requires a tap instead of holding – this helps prevent you from burning through it too quickly. I’m not sure if I like this change and might revert it.
- Made squid joints more robust (again).
- Made easy-mode squid a bit smaller and lighter (faster).
- Thanks to John Hughes @ Twune.com, Space Squid now has music. Hooray! It’s a nice mellow tune to chill out to with underwater vibes. I’ll have a mute button shortly if you prefer to listen to your own tracks while squidding.
- I actually playtested this version so I know all the levels are possible. ;)
- A bunch of other random small changes here and there.
Once again; check out Build 40 of Space Squid here, or just visit the official space squid web page.
Apr 212009
Made a few changes – mostly graphical – but I did reduce some of the objects that fall in the later levels. Some slower PCs couldn’t handle it :(
Here is build 39 – and of course the link back to the (still ugly!) official Space Squid website.
Fair warning: I’m going to reset the high score tables on Build 40 (next update!) because the difficulty curve is changing so much between builds.
Edit: Looks like Level 10 and 11 in Hard Mode are neigh impossible. I’ll have to fiddle with the numbers again – in the meantime, if anyone beats them I owe them a beer.
Apr 202009
Well, that was quick! Here I was pouting because I couldn’t decide what to do… And a few hours after posting a to-do list I have a brand new build on the burner. Let’s all say hello to build 38! (You can play on the official Space Squid website)
What’s changed?
- Created Hard Mode! Hard mode significantly reduces the amount of time you have to defeat each level; it makes your squid smaller, lighter, and faster; it reduces your boost capacity and refill rate; and it makes all the obstacles about 10% bigger than easy mode. If you find Easy Mode a bit too sluggish and want a challenge, Hard Mode will feel like a sports car… that falls apart very easily. :)
- Easy mode now has a squid that is 40% larger than Hard Mode and around 20% slower. This should make the squid feel like a “minivan” that is much easier to control and learn the ropes with.
- Reduced the number of levels to 20 (from 30). This ramps up the difficulty quite a bit faster – and counting both modes there’s technically a total of 40 levels now.
- Reduced the number of items that fall on your head in the later levels to increase framerates.
- Made levels 1-5 have 5 stars.
- Levels 1 through 3 have solitary obstacle types to introduce you to how each one works.
- Added new GameOver and Victory boxes.
- Found a new font to work with for the game and website – one that’s legible!
- Added a “Galactic Premonition” (purple blob) that indicates where the next star will be. This will eliminate some of the random guess work and really let you fly with your squid.
- Added more sounds.
- Changed boost to the Shift key – now you won’t have Mac compatibility issues. :)
- Touched up a few graphics here and there.
My to-do list suddenly got really short. :(
Just under a month ago I stated I would have this game done and released by May 1st. I still plan on having it complete by this date, and I am very, very proud of how far I’ve come so far. I have to say I’m a fairly amazing guy for learning Flash, Flex, OOP, graphics, and input devices – and making a game – all in a single month! We should all celebrate my genius. Feel free to name your babies after me.
I think I’ll have to circle “April” on my calendar and be sure to celebrate it every year with copious amounts of craft-brewed ale.
So I have 11 days left to complete my mission – including the rest of today – and I really don’t have that much farther to go in the game. Therein lies the dilemma – I’m not really sure which itty bitty problem I should tackle next. I’m used to finding the biggest issues and resolving them systematically – but when you get a product that’s this close to “done,” all that remains are naggling barely-issues that really aren’t fun to solve. So I haven’t done much work in the past few days.
I think to hunker down and get this done I have to make some decisions now on what has to happen – and once armed with this list I’ll have an ordered number of things to do. Let’s hash this out!
- I have to ramp up the difficulty faster so the early levels aren’t as boring. This will eliminate the casual player base – so I’m thinking I’ll have to add a “Hard Mode” to the main menu. My first instinct is to simply make the timer 4 seconds per star right from the get-go; maybe that’s too harsh. I’ll have to test it out.
- I will have to place a bunch more sounds in the game – grab-star, victory, game over, loss of limb, reset, and boost. Maybe a few more but that sounds like a nice set.
- Settle on a font to use in-game and use flash’s text rendering to put a stroke on it to help it stand out. The current font gets too narrow at points and makes it nearly unreadable.
- Add some random fun-facts about squids in the victory message.
- Add the top-secret “Game Over” object
- Clean up the “fishtank” graphic around the border – it looks like a series of rectangles right now, for some reason.
- Straighten out some of the mantle edges on the squid graphic – when twisting in certain ways he has sharp edges.
- Change up the squid graphic on the menu to be an identical copy of one in-game. Flash’s sprite compiling tool will nicely solve this.
- Make a Mac version that correctly labels the CTRL key as the Command key on the main menu.
- Implement some real music (see below for more on that). Right now the game streams in some copywritten music but doesn’t actually play it (for legal reasons), so at least I know the technology works. :)
- Do up a proper website for the game complete with integrated high scores.
- Once the SQL queries are settled on for the high score tables, port them directly into the game.
- Depending on who (if anyone) accepts the sponsorship, might need to work 3rd party API stuff into the game.
- Throw a release party.
Once the game is complete I’m going to have to market and distribute it. Since this isn’t really an epic game by any measure (and wasn’t intended to be!), it won’t really survive on it’s own two legs like Colin Northway‘s Fantastic Contraption did. I’m going to have to go the portal/sponsorship route.
That really disappoints me. I hate ads, I dislike the whole idea of portal sites, and I don’t want to wrap my head around the magic that is writing several contracts to cross several portal sites. To help me out I enlisted FlashGameLicense.com – Space Squid is now listed there for publishers/portals to bid on and help make my life easier. It might go nowhere, but I’m fine with that – this game isn’t costing me anything. :) Eventually I’ll have Cephalopod Heaven where you can play all your favorite squid games (as written by me) and I won’t have to worry so much!
Through FGL I met up with John Hughes of Twune.com. We’re currently working out a deal to get some in-game music going. It’ll be some basic, happy, midi-style stuff – I don’t think this game will be able to support a million hits on 10mb MP3 (FC proved the problems inherent with that!). Hopefully we’ll have some nice sample music up in the coming weeks!
