Posts Tagged PSP
Star Hammer Tactics for PSP and PS3 is now available in Europe (and Australia/NZ). Also, new video!
Posted by Black Lab Games in Star Hammer, Tactics on July 15th, 2010
Star Hammer Tactics is now available for the PSP *and* PS3. OMG!!!1!!
Presently, it’s out in Europe and Oceania (meaning Australia and New Zealand basically). (A full list of countries can be found here)
If you’ve been looking for a easy-to-learn strategy game that can be played in short bursts, (or extended sessions if your in the mood!), maybe consider checking it out. (If you have Media Go installed, click here)
Oh, and here is a video I made for the miniS release last week:
Coolio.
L8r, Paul
Star Hammer Tactics for PSP and PS3 available in Europe and Oceania from July 14th
Posted by Black Lab Games in Star Hammer, Tactics on July 5th, 2010
I’m excited to announce that Star Hammer Tactics for PSP and PS3 will be available in Europe and Oceania from July 14th. That’s next week!
The complete list of countries is:
- Australia
- Austria
- Belgium
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Ireland
- Italy
- Luxembourg
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Poland
- Russia
- Saudi Arabia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- United Arab Emirates
- United Kingdom.
Star Hammer Tactics will be available via the PlayStation Store, which can be accessed by anyone with a free PlayStation Network account from your PSP, PS3, or via Sony Media Go.
Cool!
Using AI to find bugs
Posted by Black Lab Games in Game Development on June 29th, 2010
I wanted to share a technique I recently used in developing Star Hammer Tactics to find crash bugs. (BTW, this post will probably be more interesting to developers, especially programmers.)
A few weeks ago, I thought the game was finished. All of the tasks on the task list were complete, and I’d tested the game extensively. I tried all sorts of crazy things to try and crash it, or make it misbehave, and it always worked just fine. Convinced that it was ready to release, I submitted the game to Sony for acceptance. A few days later, I get the acceptance testing report, and to my disappointment found that the game had failed. Apparently it was unstable and crashed a lot. What!?!?
Now, being a small company, I don’t have access to a huge QA department. Whilst I make every effort to ensure that my code is as robust as possible, I’m only human, and I guess a few bugs had crept in. I got some friends to try the game, and after quite a few rounds of combat, the game froze. Awesome!
The problem was that it took at least 30-45 minutes to find *one* instance of the game failing. Furthermore, there was no way at all to tell what might have caused the game code to freeze. I needed a way to test the game in such a way as to find problems more quickly. At this point, I remembered that earlier in development, I’d used two competing AI players to tune the gameplay and balance the power of the various types of ship. Hmmm, competing AI…
What I was able to do was configure the game to play itself, non-stop, for hours at a time. Doing this through the debugger meant that if a problem occurred, I’d know were the problem was, and would have a better chance of finding the cause. The good news is that it didn’t take long to find a couple of bugs that only occurred in rare circumstances, but had caused the previously reported “instability”.
So, if you’re working on a game, consider a mode in which the game plays itself. It’s a great way to find bugs!
Paul’s Picks : Coconut Dodge
Posted by Black Lab Games in Paul's Picks on June 25th, 2010
One of the awesome things about being a game developer is market research. By that, I mean when a new game comes out that is getting some attention, it’s usually worthwhile checking it out to see what all about, what it’s doing right and why it’s noteworthy. Yes, that’s right…sometimes I must play games as part of my job. Oh, the sacrifice.
Since I’m working on PSP miniS lately, I’ve been keeping tabs on new releases via pspminis.com and the Sony PlayStation Blog. And one title that’s been getting some attention is Coconut Dodge.
In Coconut Dodge, you play as Clawrence, a treasure hungry crab. You collect falling treasure whilst dodging falling coconuts. It’s addictive, and a really easy game to learn to play which is something I think is underrated these days. I think the most awesome thing about Coconut Dodge though, is that after it was released the developers solicited feedback from players and then made changes and released a free update that addressed issues that player had. 360 degree feedback….excellent!
Coconut Dodge is good, simple fun, and worthwhile looking into if you’re a PSP or PS3 owner.
L8r, Paul
Beta, and the forgotten tasks of self-publishing
Posted by Black Lab Games in Game Development, Star Hammer, Tactics on May 17th, 2010
I’m pretty excited to say that Star Hammer Tactics for PSP has reached beta. All of the games functionality has been written, all of the artwork created, all of the sound effects are making sounds…
So, what now? Well, testing and publishing.
I’ve come to realize over the last few years just how important the publishing part is. As a young plucky coder, I thought that developers did all of the work. We make the games. What else could there possible be to it? Step 1, Game idea. Step 2, Code, Step 3, Release game on unsuspecting public. Right?
Well, not quite.
Publishers in the games industry are generally seen as lumbering giants of organizations, corporate fat cats preying on developers and milking them for all they are worth. (Or at least that’s the view of many developers). Deals are done often in a skewed way that ensures that the publisher takes the least amount of risk, and seemly gets the greatest reward if a game is a hit. (This post I read last week was quite interesting!)
Whether this view is correct or true or fair, I’ve decided that for now at least, Black Lab Games will self-publish through digital distribution outlets. Services such as Xbox Live and the PlayStation Store are moderately accessible to smaller developers, compared with the various retail outlets on offer for boxed games.
Lately I’ve been getting Star Hammer Tactics ready for release on the PlayStation® Store – soon it will be available for anybody with a PlayStation Network account, and a PSP or a PS3. All games on the PS Store require an age rating. That means PEGI in Europe, and ESRB in the US, so I’ve been signing up Black Lab Games to these various organisations, and I’ll have to spend time submitting the game to get is age rated.
At the start of a project, when you’re designing game systems, code systems, presentations of the game etc, tasks like getting the game classified aren’t really on your mind. However such tasks are part of the broad ranging area of “publishing”, and without completing them, the game will never be played by anyone (other than the developers).
There is a lot more to be an independent game developer that just writing code and doing art!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to plan an advertising campaign.
L8r, Paul
Development updates
Posted by Black Lab Games in Game Development, Star Hammer, Tactics on April 16th, 2010
I thought I’d share the latest word on the various games in development at Black Lab Games:
- Star Hammer Tactics for PSP/PS3 minis has been the main development focus of BLG over the last few weeks. It’s progressing really well. I have to say, working on the PSP is awesomely good fun! Kinda like old times, back in the ’90s when I was in my prime
Most of a re-usable game “framework” has been developed, and most of the game is playable. I’m hopeful that it will be finished in a few weeks. - Star Hammer Tactics for Xbox 360 is “complete”, minus some minor tweaks. It’s been to peer review (a process in which it’s reviewed for technical and content problems) a couple of times, but hasn’t passed yet. Generally the issues have been pretty obscure and minor, but still valid enough reasons not to release the game. When the “minis” version is done, I’ll get back to fixing the handful of review issues and putting it back into the review queue.
- Star Hammer. This project is currently on hold. As the project has developed, the scope and ideas for what I’d like to do with the game has increased a lot. I have a pretty clear vision for what I want the game to be, but I don’t have the resources at my disposal to make it at the moment. Rather than build and release something I’m not completely happy with, I’d rather hold off a bit and tackle it again when the time is right. The project is not cancelled, just “delayed until further notice”.
I don’t like committing to release timeframes, because as a lone developer it’s so easy to miss deadlines when things go wrong or change. It’s not like I can delegate work to somebody else on the team. That said, I’m hoping to have both versions of Star Hammer Tactics out in June. But that’s not a commitment, ok!. Then probably on to something without “Star” in the name for a while.
Oh, and I’ve also been working on a special project with a friend that I’ll probably be able to talk more about in a few months. Good times!
L8r! Paul
Heartbeat
Posted by Black Lab Games in Star Hammer, Tactics on March 19th, 2010
…it’s not very strong yet, but it’s got one!
Photo of the screen of my devtool
Who knows, it may yet live…still lots of work to be done.
GDC is crazy times!
Posted by Black Lab Games in Game Development on March 10th, 2010
I couldn’t get to the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this year, so instead have to read about it.
In the last 24 hours, I’ve seen 3 huge announcements that directly relate to tools, platforms and technology that I use.
First, Unity Technology announced a new version of Unity3D with support for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Android coming soon. Next, Microsoft announce XNA 4.0, a significant upgrade to .NET based game framework. Finally, Sony announce that they are releasing PhyrEngine for the PSP!
Why do these announcements matter? Because I do contract work in Unity, original games for the Xbox 360 with XNA, and I’m currently building a technology “platform” to allow my games to run on the PSP/PS3 – so every platform/toolset I use is being upgraded.
So much craziness, I can’t keep up! And that’s just day one of a five day conference!!
Last Week – Vol 2, and musings about QA
Posted by Black Lab Games in Game Development, Star Hammer, Tactics, weekly update on February 15th, 2010
Last week was full of ups and downs in the Black Lab.
On the not so good side of the ledger, I had to pull Star Hammer Tactics out of peer review. I discovered a problem with one of the single player scenarios near the start of the game. It wasn’t a crash bug or anything nasty, just some data was missing that made the scenario almost impossible to beat. I figured that would possibly lead to bad reviews, so decided to take the game out of review and fix the problem. Although it was a 10 minute fix, there is a rule with the XNA Creator Clubs that games pulled from peer review (whether by the author, or as a result of a failure) cannot be resubmitted for 7 days. Therefore, I’ve had to wait around until this week before I can resubmit.
The time has been put to good use though! I’ve been making some excellent progress on building a game engine for the PSP. I can’t really go into much detail about it at this stage. NDA’s and all that. But I will say that it’s been great fun, and it’s interesting to have to program so “close to the metal” again – just like old times!
Lesson learnt pulling Star Hammer from peer review : Do not underestimate the value of QA (Quality Assurance). I realized that I need to expand my thinking about what “job roles” are important in building a game. My core skill is as a programmer, so obviously I understand the value of programming. I think of art and sound as being important – pretty obvious really, since a game is experienced by vision and sound. Also, there is an important role for marketing and promotion (if it’s a commercial release). This starts before the game is finished, but goes up a few gears when the game is finished. Although I’ve always been very aware of the need for QA, it never really registered how important it is. Developers can get too close to their creations to see problems, or changes to a system in the game can have flow-on effects in other parts of the game. A few years ago, Puzzle Quest on the PSP was released with a bug that caused a bit of angst amongst fans. If people are paying for a game, I think it’s fair to expect it to work and be playable to the end! So, note to self, need to work out a better solution for regular playtesting.
Finally, on a personal note, it was sad to see the implosion of Interzone Games Perth Studio. I have a number of friends who have worked, or until last week, did still work at that studio. I hope it all works out.