Infinite Ammo » blurst

Watch it at Vimeo for better quality. You can get a taste of not only the new graphics but also the new music (by yours truly) and sound effects (by the talented Steve Swink).

This video will be on Flashbang’s Vimeo soon, possibly with better quality. So look out for that.

New Paper Moon for Free on Friday

Alec Holowka — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:24:27 +0000

Its time to reveal secrets. For the last week and a bit I’ve been down in Arizona working on a new version of Paper Moon for release on the free, web-based indie game portal Blurst.com.

New Paper Moon

Paper Moon is inspired by a fusion of pop-up books and Ella Fitzgerald’s classic song “Its Only a Paper Moon”. It was previously released as part of the Gamma3D art game show in Montreal last November 2008.

The new version of Paper Moon features a combo-based scoring system, new levels, improved visuals, musical score (by yours truly), sound effects, greater replay value and online leaderboards/achievements/bonuses.

Infinite Ammo – Flashbang Collaboration

The new Paper Moon is the result of a collaboration between myself and my friends at Flashbang studios. Down here in Tempe, AZ I’ve been focused on writing the score of the game, implementing new features and tweaking gameplay. Ben Ruiz (FB art director) has been busy creating brand new sexy art. Steve Swink (game designer, arts institute teacher) has been designing new levels, gameplay concepts and setting up the combo system for maximum re-playability. Shawn White is also in on the action helping us integrate the game with Blurst and finding bugs.

The resulting game is a mix of all of our styles, and I’m hoping fans of our previous work will see the influences from both sides.

The new version even got a notice in the Wallstreet Journal of all places! (and Rock Paper Shotgun)

You’ll be able to enjoy the fruits of our labors on Friday for free on Blurst.com.

Unity 2.5 for Windows Released

Alec Holowka — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:24:39 +0000

If you’ve been following us for some time, you’ll know that we use the amazing Unity engine for all our current projects. Unity combines an editor, Mono scripting and the ability to deploy to a lot of different platforms: PC, Mac, the Web, Wii, and iPhone. (and I hear they’re working on adding support for more consoles soon) Up until now, the Unity editor was only available for OSX. This suited Chris and I just fine, because we prefer working on Macs. But now Unity has been released for PC and this is great news for all indie developers.

The development environment for Unity features a very clever design that adheres to two crucial principles: simplicity and flexibility. Its ridiculously easy to import resources, write and prototype gameplay and put together a great experience without having to worry about niggling technical details. For an example: we put together Paper Moon in 9 days!

This is coming from someone who built his own engine from the ground up (for Aquaria) who has deep fears and suspicions towards game making tools. Many of them are severely limited and force you to do things in a retarded way. It turns out Unity is actually very flexible and easy to understand. While it might not be the best choice for every game, it has a lot of freedom.

One of my worst experiences was buying the Torque3D engine a few years ago. You were basically stuck making an FPS-style game unless you tore everything apart and put it back together. Unity starts you off with a blank canvas and lets you build whatever you want, which is a very positive experience.

Another significant indie team that uses Unity for all their projects is Flash Bang. They’ve even created a website exclusively for Unity web games called Blurst. (pssst… we’re going to make a blurst game sometime in the future!)

If you haven’t taken the time to check out Unity yet, now is definitely the time.

You can find all the information at Unity3d.com.

For a great intro to Unity’s editor and code, look no further than Blurst’s tech blog.