Makai Media Workshop

So we finally got some free time and got around to fixing some site issues.  Sorry for the snail’s pace on this, but thanks everyone for your patience.  Some general housekeeping stuff…

Bocce!

First thing’s first, we have a new Flash 3D game up called “Backyard Bocce”.

http://www.makaimedia.com/#/bocce

We’re actually in the process of making a new version of this, but those of you who want to play now, have at it!  Let us know what you think.

Speartoss!

Also, I just uploaded a patch to Speartoss. 

http://www.makaimedia.com/#/speartoss

It now handles the score correctly and the high score list is working again.  Sorry for the late fix on this, but it’s an old game, and we had to dig around quite a bit for all of the code files to be able to fix the issue.  In the end it was something small, but you guys know how that goes.  Anyway, enjoy!

If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you know that Flash 11 enables you to create actual 3D games using hardware acceleration.  And of course, this is something that’s been on the wish list of every Flash developer for years and years (well, ok, maybe not every single one, but ME!  I have!  I really wanted this!)  So we’ve been hard at work learning the new API, and we have a demo to show you.

Here’s the deal.  You need to be on a modern computer with hardware acceleration.  The Flash player doesn’t support every video card, unfortunately.  And of course you need the latest Flash player.

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Then, remember this is just a beta version.  We’re still ironing out the kinks but I’d really love your feedback.

Have fun!

UPDATE:

Added video, for those who can’t play.

Maze of Fire on YouTube

One of the things that comes up from time to time in making games is localization.  Localization, for those who haven’t heard the term, is publishing the game for different “locales”, in different languages.  In Flash, you can achieve this by creating xml files that contain whatever messages need to go in the game, e.g. “Congratulations, you sure killed all those Martians!”.  But what if you want to change it to Japanese?  Babel Fish says it comes out as “お祝い、本当にそれらの火星人をすべて殺した!”

Ok, I have no idea what that says, but here’s the point.

You need to add those characters to your fonts in Flash.  And if you want to include every possible language, you’re talking about lots of characters.  And what if you forget one?  You need to republish your game every time you want to add a new language, which is hardly ideal.  In comes the idea of loading external fonts.  The concept is simple: embed the fonts in a swf file, then load the swf file into your game that corresponds to the language you want to use, and presto, you have the new font available!  Sounds simple, but I had a really hard time finding a solid explanation about how to achieve it, so here it is.  The answer for me was built into Flash Develop, which is an awesome open source Flash editor.  It has a built in Font.as file.  You just choose add->new Font Library and here’s what pops up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Someone wrote in and suggested we open a thread to talk about Spear Toss.  But I thought: why limit it there?  Consider this a thread to discuss all all Makai games. 

Tips? Tricks? Gripes?

Post ‘em here!

Hey gang,

We’ve released another mobile game!  This time, it’s Sudoku SLAM!

Perfect for whiling away the daily commute.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sudoku-slam/id421298974?mt=8&ls=1

Well, it’s that time again.  You know, the time where we move our servers around and annoy our loyal fans and break things.  How’s we doing?  Anything broken?  Notice a difference?

Consider this your one stop place for comments!

Hey, faithful fans!!  In case you’re wondering what we’ve been up to, I’m here to fill you in.  Recently, Apple decided to give in on allowing Flash games on their app store, and we responded with…drum roll…our first mobile game for iPad/iPhone!

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So, what’s the game?  It’s a puzzle game called Fruity Poppers that we describe as  fiendishly simple to learn yet maddeningly difficult to master in which you pop fruity balloons for hours (smoothies optional).

So what was our experience like working with Apple and Flash?  I have to say that it was surprisingly easy.  One of the things we had to deal with was performance, which was strangely enough simpler to deal with than making web games.  And here’s why.  For the web, I have no idea what kind of computer you have, and only a vague sense of what software you’re running.  Are you on Firefox?  Great!  How many tabs do you have open? Three? One?  Eleventy hundred? And is that Outlook you have running in the background?  See where I’m going with this?  But on a mobile device, if I have an iPad and you have an iPad, then I know that your iPad is the same as my Ipad and if it runs well on mine it’ll be great on yours.  Score one for the walled garden.

Once we finished making the game, the rest was pretty easy.  We tested the game, had our sainted spouses play until they stopped talking to us, then submitted to the app store. It took Apple eight days to approve the app and voila, we’re iPad developers.

Anyway, if you have an iPhone, iTouch, or iPad, and you have $0.99 cents burning a hole in your virtual pocket, how about giving Fruity Poppers a try and letting us know what you think?

http://itunes.apple.com/app/fruity-poppers/id403781592?mt=8

We’re branching out here at Makai Media, and our latest experiment is with Unity 3D!  If you’re not familiar with Unity, it’s a 3D game engine with its own web player.  The result is that we can now make games with incredible 3D graphics (like the ones we make here at Makai Media) but with some of the same realtime 3D action you can only  find on Console or PC  games!

So what did we do with this?  We created Mine Racer.  Mine Racer is another Facebook game.  You may be familiar with our other Facebook game Garage Door Tennis.  In that game, you competed against your friends and play tennis in a variety of exotic locations.  In Mine Racer, the challenge is to find your sub faster than your friends, but be sure to avoid mines of your ship will go KABOOM!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on using the Unity player, since we know some of you might not like installing plugins in order to play games.  Do you like the results?  Do you want more games like this?

And for those of you who don’t use Facebook or don’t want to use Unity, we have a Youtube video of the game.  Tell us what you think!

Play Mine Racer HERE.

Greetings again, Makai Media faithful! Autumn is here already, so what better way to remember summer days gone by that with a game of Garage Door Tennis?

Based on the Makai Media classic game of the same name, Garage Door Tennis is now on Facebook! This fan favorite will take you back to the hottest day of this past summer, or maybe even the hottest summer from years ago, when you spent your lazy afternoon hitting a tennis ball off of your folks’ garage door. How many times in a row can you hit it?

Now the question is, can you hit it more times in a row than your neighbor? In Garage Door Tennis for Facebook, you don’t just have to claim you got so many in a row– you can challenge your friends and see if they can beat your awesome streak!

Plus, each time you practice or challenge someone else you’ll earn coins that you can use to buy new rackets and new locations to play in, like the spooky graveyard or the playground. You can even send rackets and environments you’ve bought to your friends!

Remember, you’ll have to sign up for Facebook to play, but signing up is free and easy to do!