Hello. It’s another fortnightly update from me (Tom).
I have some fairly interesting news. Nothing to jump up and down about, but it’s positive.
Firstly, we’re looking into sponsoring games again. We haven’t sponsored anything since Tree Of Life, which did very well. We just haven’t seen any games that we thought were worth investing in.
It’s a bit too early to say, but I’m hoping we’ll get sponsorship rights for 2 or 3 games, maybe more, so if all goes to plan you’ll be seeing our logo on some fun games within the next few weeks.
Secondly. Last weekend, I was doing some research into web design. For a while now I have been playing with the idea of redesigning the site.
Originally back in 2009 we paid to have it built, having no knowledge of web design at the time. Over the years though, I’ve had to learn a few things in order to maintain parts of the website, IE - fixing security problems, modifying/creating a page. So I am quite proficient in HTML, PHP and MySQL now, and I can create graphics relatively easily... So there’s nothing stopping me from doing it in theory.
In the last few years website functionality and design have improved quite a lot, and ours has slowly become less so... It’s less efficient with bandwidth, less reliable, glitches, and the code is just an absolute mess. So it is my plan to start again from scratch. New layouts, new colours, new graphics, the whole lot!
I started doing a few drawings last night for page designs which I hope to show you some examples of in the next news post.
Because I’m so busy with the game throughout the week, I’ll only dedicate a day a week to this. My weekends currently involve me sitting around being bored and unproductive, so for a change I’m going to try and fit in a session or two of site design/building to fill the void.
I’ll report back on how this goes next time. Also, don’t hesitate to tell me how I can improve the site in the comments. I’d like to know exactly what you like and what you don’t.
Speaking of which, I read the comments from the last post, and as usual a lot of you were asking about Wasted Youth.
I’m not sure if I’ve said it on the site before, but it is my intention to work on Wasted Youth once the current game is finished.
Bunny Invasion 3 was a bit of black hole creatively speaking, and I’m still not thrilled with the idea of returning to it any time soon. That’s not to say I’m ditching the project altogether, but so much of it was plagued by indecision, undoing then redoing, and then performance issues, and because we haven’t discussed it much of late, these problems still exist.
I’m sure I’ll work on it again soon, but for now I can honestly say that I’d rather return to Wasted Youth and get it out there before you lot decide you can’t be bothered to wait around for it.
There’s a big decision we’ve yet to make though. Recently, I’ve been thinking that instead of releasing another ‘part’, that it might be better to instead release a full version of the game containing both parts. I’m not sure about that though...
The problem with releasing an independent part is that the plot of the first part would have to be force fed to the player before they start the second part. The best thing to do would be to play the first part of the game before the second, but realistically, almost nobody unfamiliar with the game is going to do that.
I guess it could all be easily explained in a short comic strip while the game loads or after starting a new game. Not that much happened after all.
Another reason to include the first part is that currently, the core files that almost everybody loads exist on TwoTowersGames.com, so if they went down the game would not be able to load on most sites. They haven’t been active for a while now so it’s likely the site may just disappear, get sold, anything really... We can’t be sure. But unfortunately, Wasted Youth 1, unlike most things on the internet, is likely to get lost in the near future.
I’ve often had thoughts of going online 20, 40, maybe 60 (!!!) years from now and seeing all of my old flash games, and how nice it would be if they were all playable and still somewhat active...
[The inner voice of anybody reading this: “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!”]
Anyway, I hope that has satisfied a few of you Wasted Youthers in the comments.... Yeah I know, I said it would be out a few months after the first part... well I shouldn’t have written that at the time. Oops!
I haven’t even mentioned 50 Chambers yet.
Well, it’s still going and while I have been working particularly hard on it recently, there is still quite a lot to be done.
I’ve spent a week mostly improving performance. A week ago, some levels ran at 10 FPS. Now they run at 30FPS. I’m very happy with it now.
I’ve learnt a lot recently, and I’m now quite confident that every game from now shall run a lot faster and a lot more efficiently.
I’m hoping the levels will be finished by next week, and then it’s just graphics, menus and sounds left to do.
I was going to post a video, but there’s not much else to show right now.
The gas is now dynamic and fills the rooms. When you open a door, the gas seeps through into the next room. It’s pretty cool and I’m very happy with the recent changes.
I’ve got a good idea on how to make it work visually without ruining the performance. Right now though they’re just green squares that appear on the floor.
More updates soon. I’m hoping by next week we’ll have a new sponsored game out. Look out for it!