Crush the Castle 3 Feedback

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Joey Betz

So Crush the Castle 3 has been in development for a few months now and I’m looking for some feedback on some key features. That’s where you come in. :)

Before you try the game, be aware that this is not indicative of the final product. Graphics or other features may change. A lot of features are not implemented yet, but the main “crushing” mechanic is working. That said there might also be some bugs to watch out for.

You can test the very early build here: http://joeybetz.com/ctc/

Click anywhere to fire. Hold down the left mouse button and drag to adjust your arc. Hit “r” to reset the castle and try again.

So some notes about the build. In previous CTC games you would click to start the launch of the trebuchet and click again to release the projectile. This was perfect for the gameplay at the time because it was all about timing your shots perfectly. As the game progressed and sequels were made I noticed that the timing element got to be a bit of a nuisance, specifically for those levels where accuracy was key. Some might say this was the difficulty curve, but I felt like it was bad design more than anything. I’m hoping this new gameplay fixes the “luck” factor that plagued the original. Any feedback is much appreciated.

Another feature that I’m on the fence about is the fracture physics. It’s quite fun to watch blocks break apart, but I need to do some more testing to figure out if it can be worked into gameplay, such as the puzzle castles. Let me know your likes and dislikes with this new engine feature.

Please comment with your initial thoughts on the new mechanics and let me know what you think. Thanks!

Also, follow me on twitter to get more updates and random ramblings.

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Sushi Cat 2 Launching This Week

Posted on January 29, 2011 by Joey Betz

Sushi Cat 2 is finally launching this week. I’ve been working on this game for about 2.5 months and it has definitely been a fun project to work on. Jimp did an amazing job for the art on this project because the game looks amazing. We’ve even got new music from the very talented Dave Cowen this time around as well.

Look for the game on Armor Games this week.

Posted in Games, Sushi Cat | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Sushi Cat Nominated [Updated]

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Joey Betz

Sushi Cat has been nominated for an award on bytejacker.com for Free Indie Game of the Year. Check out their front page to vote (on the right hand side). Hurry though, as the voting period ends on Thursday 12/16. Check out their video explaining some of it as well.

Polls are closed and Sushi Cat got 6th place. The very funny video can be found here. Thanks Bytejacker :) !

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Sushi Cat Stuff

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Joey Betz

I’ve been hard at work on the new Sushi Cat 2 with Jimp for a few weeks now and I wanted to show off some awesome fan art and random things I’ve come across related to Sushi Cat.

Site: http://dona-v.com/

Awesome Fan Site: http://sushicatfansite.webs.com/

Plate was brought in by James. It’s sitting at my desk right now. It’s not really related to Sushi Cat, it was just agreed that it looks similar.

Around the web, there seems to be a few facebook pages dedicated to Sushi Cat. The most active one I can be found here.

It’s really fascinating how popular this game became. When I first started making the game it had nothing to do with sushi or cats. It was just an attempt to do some blob physics and make a game out of it. When I sent over a demo to Jimp, he sent me over some ideas of what that game could be about. This was in the email he sent me.

  • FatCats – These cool cats run a jazz club which is becoming infested with mice. eat them all up!
  • SushiCats – make the kawii cats eat up all the sushi! nom nom
  • Pisshead Pirates – Pirates love their grog. Explore each of the 5 islands to drink all the grog and find the treasure!
  • YumBees – Fatten your bee up by collecting all the nectar, then pollenate the flowers at the bottom of the screen!
  • FatOwls – Collect all the grubs and feed your babies below!
  • IceCreams – Collect balls of ice cream to make a big scoop and then get them on the cones at the bottom!

I read them all to John and Larry in the office, and the clear winner was Sushi Cat. From there we just came up with the rest out of a fascination with Japanese and Asian culture.

Sushi Cat 2 should be out at the beginning of next year, so keep an eye out for it.

Posted in Games, Sushi Cat | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Viscoelastic Fluids

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Joey Betz

Not that long ago I made this demo using the paper: Particle-Based Viscoelastic Fluid Simulation. The only thing is that I’m not quite sure what to do with it. It’s a really neat demo and I’m kind of proud of it, but I haven’t found a practical use for it yet. And by practical I mean using it in a game of some sort.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Programming | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Bit Blit Physics

Posted on April 11, 2010 by Joey Betz

Not that long ago I attended the Flash Gaming Summit (FGS) in San Fransisco where I met many new people and sat through some pretty interesting sessions. One of which was a presentation by Sean Cooper (Boxhead) where he discussed some of his development techniques on the Boxhead games. He showed us a few impressive demos, but one in particular had hundreds of AI characters on screen all at once using bit blitting, and it ran beautifully.

Now I’ve done bit blitting in flash before and I’ve seen it’s benefits first hand in particle engines, but I’ve never really thought about ways to use it outside of particle engines. But after seeing that demo, it got me thinking about a particular problem I seem to have. Most of my physics games use a lot of rigid bodies, and one of the bottle necks I always see is rendering each one to the screen. It just reaches a point where all of those bodies on the screen makes Flash cry, and when Flash is sad, I am sad. Bit blitting could very well be my answer to a happier Flash.

This is a demo of bit blitting each object to one bitmap. Click on the swf and press SPACE to start the demo. As you can see, the results are impressive. A good 3+ frames per second better than adding to the display list directly.

Now as impressive as this, it does have and Achilles heel. Memory usage is quite high when using different graphics for different rigid bodies. In fact, this might only benefit a game that uses a small number of graphics for each body. This is because for every body needs an image for each degree of rotation (360 total).

Posted in Miscellaneous, Programming | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Demolition City 2

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Joey Betz

dc2_logo

Demolition City 2 is under production right now. I’ve been working on it for the last few weeks here with Nick from Bomtoons. He’s incredibly talented and he’s the one that came up with the awesome logo. I can’t tell you all about it, but I can tell you to expect more of a “bang” (see what I did there). Should be out before the end of the month.

On another note, Crush the Castle: Players Pack should be coming out by the end of next week at the latest *crosses fingers*. With over 1400 castles submitted, CTC:PP was made by the fans for the fans. The King thanks you for your amazing work! In return, he has expanded his kingdom across more lands, come up with a new “reward” system, and touched up your favorite patch of land with some minor enhancements.

Posted in Games, Programming | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Movie Night – Ghost in the Shell: SAC: 2nd Gig

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Joey Betz

So I’ve recently taken a large interest in the Ghost in the Shell series, with the most recent being the Ghost in the Shell: SAC: 2nd Gig series. I’m about a third of the way through and I’d have to say that the story is incredible enthralling. I’ve seen pretty much every other iteration of Ghost in the Shell, so this should be the last of it until a new version pops up somewhere. The series is so detailed and intertwined that I find it very easy to lose my place if I’m not careful. I very much enjoy movies or shows like that though, as it is all too often you see movies sacrificing plot to make way for action.

In other news, I just recently saw the new Ponyo movie trailer this weekend. I am very excited and looking forward to seeing it in theaters. I just hope that it is not in select theaters and I have to drive somewhere remote to see it. I’ve seen no mention of it being everywhere or in select theaters so I’m crossing my fingers.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Point Lights

Posted on July 27, 2009 by Joey Betz

I decided that I wanted to make a point light shader this weekend in Pixel Bender so I looked up some algorithms and came up with this. Nothing that hasn’t been done before, but I think I’d like to make a game that utilizes it. Like cave diving or something where there are few light sources. We’ll see…

Saw a few movies this weekend as well; Cowboy Bebop and The Evil Dead. For starters, Cowboy Bebop was pretty good. Animations were great, music track was even better, and the story doesn’t disappoint. An all around good movie. The Evil Dead was also great. I remember seeing bits and pieces a long time ago and hearing about the great gory scenes in it from somewhere so I’d thought I’d give it a full watch. I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I think the slight unintended humor coupled with claymation gore was what made it so great.

Posted in Movies, Programming | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Movie Night – Dune

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Joey Betz

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Because I haven’t really had much time or energy to do any coding posts, I’ve decided to post about my latest escapades which is watching a lot of movies.

In the last few months here I have probably watched over 100 films off of my netflix account and still going. Most of which came from my recent interest in japanese anime, where I’ve watched almost all of Studio Ghibli’s films. I’m fascinated with the work that gets put into them and how detailed they can get. I just recently watched Kiki’s Delivery Service, which was surprisingly better that I thought. Now I’m probably not their target demographic for that movie, but I enjoyed it.

Anyways I decided to watch and older movie based on a book that I partially read called Dune. Now I decided to get the extended edition thinking it would be better, but boy was I wrong. Now I appreciated the story immensely as Frank Herbert created an amazing universe with that series of books, but I just felt bored most of time during the movie. The story just might be easier to read than it is to watch I guess. In fact the funniest parts of the movie were the battle scenes towards the end where the warriors used the sound guns to defeat the Harkonnens. Just the battle cries from them were hilarious and oh so cheesy. That was probably the best part thinking about it.

Anywho, I’ll probably be doing more of this as I have more energy to watch movies than code at home.

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