Small announcement today for a small game. The “flapformer” Angle Isle is now on the App Store! Play it with your iPad, iPhone or fancy new widescreen iPod.
My favorite new feature: the Shark. I drew him almost a year ago, but he wasn’t in the original 48-hour Flash version. (Ran out of time.)
Ok, back to crunching on RGC Game 2.
(Source: vine.co)
This was my first full year making indie games. I loved it!
I started 2012 with a clean slate. No projects in progress or in mind. The first few months were spent looking for interesting ideas to chase and building prototypes.
In March I attended my first GDC. Many talented, amazing people shared their insights and work. Also: crazy multiplayer parties, friendly indies, and fun times all around.
At GDC I told Todd and Lou from Joypad that someone should make a multiplayer game using their iPhone app. Post GDC, I started prototyping four player iPad games. Trying to capture the feeling of late night Bomberman Battle Mode, I created Astro Duel: a tabletop asteroids arena game for four.
While working on Astro Duel, I became frustrated with the complexities of wireless controller setup and lag. While complaining to my friends about this, I came up with Bloop, a much simpler four player game. Bloop was finished six days later.
Tickets for WWDC sold out before I woke up, so in June I drove to SF during the conference to hang out and show off Bloop and Astro Duel. Much cheaper.
And I discovered people liked Bloop! It was a finalist at IndieCade 2012, official selection at Games for Change ANZ, official selection at IndieCade East, and one of Touch Arcade’s Best Group Games of 2012.
But the coolest part from all this was attending IndieCade. This festival was out-of-control-fun. I met dozens of fellow indies and played Bloop with hundreds of people. And the night games were incredible. What a great event. Recommended!
Twice this year I was able to participate in Ludum Dare. For the April Combo I made the flapformer Angle Isle. Then in August I teamed up with Shaun Inman and Matt Grimm to make the evolutionary metroidvania Super Clew Land. It went well. We took second place in the Jam, expanded Super Clew Land into a full game, and launched a kickstarter to make six more games. Woohoo!
A December retweet led to a Skype call which lead to me moving to Austin(!). Retro Game Crunch was about to start, so there was no time to waste: I packed up, said goodbye to Sacramento friends, and arrived in Austin two days before the new year.
If the year started empty, it ended full. Full and good.
Less than 72 hours left to get in on Retro Game Crunch, six games in six months (plus five bonus games)!
Some of the completed games for Retro Game Crunch will be Flash projectors. Unfortunately users running a projector in Mountain Lion receive a nasty error.
Damaged? Move to Trash? This is not good. To solve this the app must be signed by a known Developer ID.
Successful Software has an in-depth post, but I’ll summarize my process. To properly test the signing you must be running OS X 10.7.5 or later.
1. Sign up for the Mac Developer Program. $99 a year. Ouch.
2. Request a Signing Certificate.
3. Create a projector with the standalone Flash Player. File menu -> Create Projector
4. Open Terminal.
5. Navigate to the directory containing your flash projector.
6. Use codesign. Here’s how:
codesign -f -v -s "<Developer ID Common Name>" <yourApp>.app
Your Developer ID Common Name can be found within Keychain Access. Open Keychain Access and look for a certificate starting with “Developer ID Application”. Double-click the certificate to get more info. The common name is listed under the details section.
Here is exactly what I used for Super Clew Land:
codesign -f -v -s "Developer ID Application: Rusty Moyher" SuperClewLand.app
If everything is correct, codesign will ask for access to your keychain. Allow it.
To test the signing you must first “quarantine” the app.
1. Set allowed applications to “Mac App Store and identified developers” in the “Security and Privacy” preference pane. (This is the default option in Mountain Lion.)
2. Upload the app to an online server. I used Transmit to upload via FTP to rustymoyher.com.
3. Download the app in a web browser.
The first time you open the projector a dialogue box like this should appear:
If you see the open button, it worked!
Clew Land blew up into a six month project! Yesterday I launched a kickstarter with Shaun Inman and Matt Grimm called Retro Game Crunch. We’re planning to make six games in six months.
I put together a short video explaining the process. It features Shaun’s art and Matt’s music.
I can’t wait to see where this goes!
