Lotsa New Tunes 01/19/2012
So I have some new tunes that I've been working on for Vintage Hero and I'd thought I'd post 'em. The first three would be played during the levels and the other three are various shorter pieces. Here's a faster one with lotsa minor. I'll probably use this on the first stage. I like the feel at the start of this one. It might work well in the factory level. It also has a clave breakdown before moving into a cool little section that uses the Lydian scale. I may change the diminished chord in the intro. I think something like it might fit better before the boss music. Although I do like how the main motive gradually switches to the secondary motive as the secondary motive becomes the primary. Also, some of my favorite drums so far. This might be used for victory music after beating a boss. I still have yet to write the boss music but I have the basic ideas worked out. That'll be next. This is a loop that'll probably play after beating a boss during the upgrade screen which shows you the new weapon you've won. Some game over/continue game music. Although I'm not sure I'm going to include it since I may not even incorporate the "lives" system, at least not on "easy" mode. Add Comment Some Potential Tunes For Vintage Hero 01/10/2012
I've been working on some tunes for possible inclusion in Vintage Hero and thought I'd share a couple of them. Keep in mind they're still a work in progress and may not be included at all in the final game. I'll also probably be working towards making the songs increasingly darker as we go along. As of now I'm just throwing some stuff out there to see what sticks. Let me know what you think. This one would most likely be used during the stage select screen. Despite its rather bouncy optimism, it could work well in say a forest or cave themed level. Win Alawishus Pixel, Space Racer and More! 12/20/2011
The folks at GameMarx.com are moving on from reviewing games and switching their focus to development. As a final send-off, they're giving away over 50 free Xbox Indie Games, including Alawishus Pixel and Space Racer, to one lucky winner! In addition, leading up to the announcement for the grand prize, they'll be giving away even more free Xbox Indie Games as secondary prizes. Here's the website with all the details and here's the list of games included in the grand prize. To enter the contest register here. The winner of the GameMarx Xbox Indie Mega Pack Giveaway will be announced Friday December 30, 2011 Look, a promo video! Windows Phone Marketplace Mockup 10/28/2011
I was working on a mockup of the Windows Phone Marketplace to test what my game art might look like before it hits the store and all the while I couldn't shake the thought that someone had to have done this already. About halfway though the project during some sidetrack googling I finally managed to enter the right search terms and there it is: Fake Windows Phone Marketplace. Complete with all the necessary pages and lorem ipsum descriptions, the solution's much farther along than mine and relatively complete. So instead of a post with a download to my mockup as previously planned, here's a link to the Fake Windows Phone Marketplace. I believe it would be a useful tool for testing your assets should you hope to find yourself on that all too important featured list someday. Cryptogram v1.4 Released 10/13/2011
The new version of Cryptogram is available now for Windows Phone. Here's some of the new features!
I hope you all enjoy the new version! If you don't have it yet, why not give it try? Cryptogram on Windows Phone Marketplace Cryptogram Free on Windows Phone Marketplace Alawishus Pixel Now For Windows Phone 10/02/2011
People always ask me, hey man, how can I get Alawishus Pixel on my Windows Phone. And I always say, "Just follow the link." Alawishus Pixel on the Windows Phone 7 marketplace Memory Inflation in Windows Phone 7 09/15/2011
For a few days now I've been trying to track down the source of performance problems in my Windows Phone 7 game. It turns out the memory was increasing by an alarming rate when navigating around the different pages. Even just moving back and forth between the first page and a second page would cause it go over the magic 90 MB limit imposed by Microsoft certification. I've heard some refer to this as a memory leak but I couldn't find too much information to help me. Something was blocking the garbage collector from disposing the old page when navigating back. On the advice from someone in the AppHub forums, I added a disposer and put a break point in it to see if was ever getting called. I found one of the first things I needed to do was remove any event listeners that were running on a separate thread. The only one I had was added to a DispatchTimer that I was using for displaying memory usage at one second intervals. Easy enough and this won't be in the final build anyway. The thing I had trouble finding was a call to performanceProgressBar.IsIndeterminate= true allowed the page to live when it should've been disposed. The performance progress bar is included in a separate toolkit available for download from MS and is supposed to provide a smoothly animated WP7 style progress bar. The problem was that the page would get collected no problem if I clicked the hardware back button, but if I navigated back using the GoBack() method, the data would persist in memory! I don't know why this is because from what I understand, touching the back button just calls GoBack() anyway. I don't see why these two actions should give different results. Eventually, I'd hit the 90 meg limit, performance would slow to crawl and finally the game would just exit. I assume this has something to do with it persisting in a separate thread, since this is how it achieves the smooth animation. So if you find yourself with this same problem, just remember to remove the progress bar from the UI child element list in your override of OnNavigatedFrom(). Fortunately, it appears that this is no longer a problem with the August update to the toolkit but until Mango is released it's still something you might need to handle. Additionally, I've found AdRotator also blocks GC calls unless it's removed from the UI list as well. I suppose the best thing to do is put a dispose method in your page and check it often with a breakpoint to be sure it eventually gets destroyed. Or better yet, when running in debug mode, have it pop up a message box telling you it's disposed. Anybody see any other GC blocking code out there? Cryptogram v1.1 08/19/2011
The first update to Cryptogram is now on the marketplace. New features include: -Now over 400 puzzles -Share solved quotes on Facebook -Minor bug fixes and tweaks When I updated to the new version it seems a global file that keeps track of puzzles statuses (e.g Solved, In Progress) somehow got corrupted. Because of this, clicking the Play button from the main menu will only take you directly to the first puzzle even if it's already solved, and all puzzles appear as new from the main menu list. If you see this bug, rest assured that your saved games are still in tact and puzzles that you've solved and worked on have not been lost. A fix for this has already been made and will be uploaded to the marketplace as soon as it's approved by Microsoft. Unfortunately, to get around this for now, you'll have to manually pick an unsolved puzzle from the list to play a new one. When the new patch goes live, I'll update here. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused any players of Cryptogram, and I thank you for your support. Cryptogram Now Available 08/01/2011
The paid and free versions of Cryptogram for Windows Phone 7 have been released. Look, a press release! Cryptogram, the Classic Puzzle Game Comes To Windows Phone 7 Based on the classic puzzle game available in thousands of newspapers and books across the globe, you can now bring hundreds of cryptogram puzzles with you at your fingertips on your Windows Phone! A cryptogram is a simple alphabet substitution applied to a phrase where each letter in the phrase will stand for another. You uncover the solution by swapping an encrypted letter for the correct letter. If you think 'Z' in the puzzle stands for 'A', then it will equal 'A' every time the letter 'Z' appears in the phrase. The puzzle is solved when all letters in the phrase have been deciphered.
Crytogram is now available on the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Marketplace Deep Link to Ad-Free Version Marketplace Deep Link To Free Version With Ads Cryptogram for Windows Phone 7 07/19/2011
You might be wondering what's up with Vintage Hero and rest assured, it's still in the development pipeline. After picking up the HTC Trophy, I started messing with Silverlight on Windows Phone 7. The result is a new game I'll be releasing very soon called Cryptogram. Based on the classic puzzle game that uses a substitution cipher to obfuscate a quote or phrase, uncover the solution by swapping an encrypted letter for the correct letter. When all the letters have been solved, the phrase becomes clear. Here's a few screenshots of the game in action. Click to enlarge. Expect Cryptogram to be released on the Windows Phone Marketplace soon! While making the Silverlight app served as a good diversion to recharge my batteries, work on Vintage Hero will resume full time. Being a more complex game with a lot of content, it takes time to design and make all the parts I need to put in the game. But I am eager to get back to it as it is a project close to my heart and I want nothing more than to see people playing it. Once work commences, I'll gather what I need to put together the promised video of progress on the game. In the meantime, if you have a Windows Phone, look for the new app soon. I'll let you know when it's out. | Frog the Door
An independent game developer who likes retro games, music and extremely short walks on the beach. Subscribe to keep up with the latest projects I'm working on for Xbox Indies. 
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