Upon reading iFanzine’s enticing article about our coming title, Project Spectral, I noticed that a link pointing back at the blog directly (and somewhat logically) hit a one year old article: Appworks 2011.

So I thought it would be a good idea to quickly summarize what we’re up to at Anime 3D SFX.

Antistar 3D: Rising – New chapters in dev?

YES. 90% of game features developed for Project Spectral (see below) will support the long awaited Antistar update.

Please bear with me; Antistar will remain a chatty game; Antistar will remain an adventure game; Antistar will become a physics enabled action game with light RPG elements. The first episode was stir-fried over 8 months. Can’t entirely apologize for stewing up a sequel.

Project Spectral – Why? What? When?

I’d been toying with the idea of creating a dark piece - an interactive journey into a universe filled with nameless fears, with just a tiny light shining at the end of the tunnel.

For the best part of 2011, the Antistar project had been the driving force behind the development of our game platform - around last September I checked what we’d got and I thought, enough for an exciting new game, not enough for the Antistar update.

In the meantime my ideas about gaming and my approach to game design have matured so I thought it would be interesting to put that into practice, giving us a chance to explore and validate some of the goodies I’ve thrown into the game engine (see ‘our game platform is evolving’, below).

So I cooked up a few key features for an action game and started hunting for musicians, telling myself above everything else this game needs bewitching music and ambiances and I’m surely not the person that will create this.

More about Spectral later this month…

Our game platform is evolving

Listing a few exciting features is better than telling the naked truth*

• NPC AIs – You know how so many game AIs can’t do much other than attacking the player? It’s in part because many games are designed to play this way, but I think we can offer interesting gameplay going way beyond that.
• AAA Pathfinding – Navmesh oriented pathfinding, including pathfinding between disconnected / moving (!) platforms
• Bullet Physics – We have integrated Bullet Physics, a popular, open source physics engine also used in Blender and MMD.
• Level editor – Blender based.
• Animation software integration – Blender but also MMD and others (via COLLADA).

*Naked truth: At the moment I care about how clean and productive our engine is a lot more than about what it actually does).

Outlook

A recurrent question is whether I’ll port our stuff to Android. The answer is: not very soon (dear Android user, an infuriating article awaits your wrath).

For now I’d say that never mind well “documented” misgivings, I believe Apple are aptly supporting small developers, whether coincidentally or not.

Regarding plans to port to JME, scrap that; while the ‘bright new kids’ ( Apple? Google? Dem new kids? ) didn’t invent anything and trashing decade old industry standards and technology may be a waste, sometimes moving in early appears to be the recipe for failure (remember Ngage?). Either way I vaguely heard that Nokia is migrating to Android so there’s nothing left to say.

This year I’m looking at the Mac App store and feel excited about the NGP; additionally, given intrinsic compatibility at the GPU level, the 3DS is somewhat attractive – assuming the old wizards actually open up to to smaller studios, that is.

And the iPhone 5, yea. I really want an iPhone 5 so don’t 4S-bulls**t me anymore.

This week I deleted around 7,000 spams and it may well be that I accidentally removed comments from friends and genuine readers as well. Sigh

I’m reluctant to setup captchas because I can hardly read them nowadays, nor do I wish to discourage genuine readers from commenting and asking questions.

Your feedback encourages me to improve the quality of my articles.

Along with a few brand names, the following words are now blacklisted:

hosting, awesome, impressive, seo, dramatically, wireless, amateur

Additionally, comments will be closed after a week. It’s not great but still the best compromise for now as it helps reducing spam.

Generally speaking, avoid superlatives (awesome, fantastic, great, etc…) in your comments. Comment to ask for information or clarification or discuss a specific point, not to make noise. As it is superlative comments are spam 99.9% of the time.

Regarding the idiots posting spam comments, I got nothing to say. Regarding the reckless ‘hackers’ providing spamming/injection software, please DIE.

Thanks for reading.

18th of January (hissing wind, desert sand, husky narrator voice).

“I was looking for a title for my next series of articles when I look up Wikipedia, who apparently decided to bully their users into… …what? Challenging the US congress?”

This obviously has nothing to do with me – writing from my favorite coffee shop in Beijing, I am staring doubtfully at a banner offering three equally enticing options:

• Facebook (blocked)
• Google+ (crippled)
• Twitter (blocked)

Imagine a world without Facebook, Google and Twitter. Imagine my world.

Facebook/ the champion of phatic communication (opted out in 2006).

Google+/ from the guys who pitifully stabbed Firefox using Chrome just when we thought the browser wars were over.

Twitter/ a puzzling social platform priming concision over clarity. With a 140 characters limit, may appeal to regex coders.

No regrets. Be assured we got our own trash and the restrictions don’t do much other than promoting local platforms and boosting the economy.

One thing we do have is Wikipedia. Asking why? Hey maybe Wiki is way too very useful to get all their pages banned anywhere in the world (1)

Jimmy Wales, check your encyclopedia. If Washington makes you feel uncomfortable, there are slightly under 196 countries who will be very willing to host your servers.

Maybe less offensive, the decision not to translate their call to arms despite opting for a worldwide ban. I empathize with scores of users anxiously wondering why Wikipedia is banned in their country today.

And what with the dumbass banners begging for money? Since you guys integrated ads in your mix, how about you played the real ones to finance your s**t? You’d even get pocket money to fight the creepy adpedia virus clogging your system.

Notes

(1) Yea, there are a few countries that block wiki or just certain pages – or just in certain places like US schools. I tried to get the list but it’s in Wikipedia, which got banned banned by Jimmy Wales today. Sorry guys.

Many companies contributed to making IT what it is today; few IT businesses owe their success to the insights of an autocratic, self willed visionary.

One man doesn’t change society. Steve Jobs, however, put on a really good show – and put me out of work as I dropped the day job to make iOS games. Doing so, I unburied childhood dreams and braced myself against the consequences, filled with hopes and forebodings. I also learned Objective C – a literate programming language if anything – it’s been kinda fun, still is.

I don’t know that IT has an overwhelmingly positive influence on our life. I don’t see all good in a bunch of super-educated primates atrophying their leg muscles while straining their eyes on undersized windows shining irid flatlands back at us. In a society that’s becoming ever increasingly fragmented, social networking isn’t a cure, it’s a symptom – stigmatic of our drift into sodding delusions and encrypted neural blip fantasies – while the home-world is ailing and decaying and beauty rotting plain out of sight.

Yesterday was the end of the iPhone 5 extravaganza. Sour comments trailed every online article I read, denouncing unethical work conditions in iPhone assembly lines. I don’t even think it’s a bad thing. It’s nice to make noise about the bad stuff, so people can take notice and do something about it. It’s also nice to put things into perspective. I have no reason to believe that any of the computer hardware I ever used was fair trade (and for all I know the majority of the so called fair trade stuff is greenwash).
Business is intrinsically unethical and inhuman. It follows the law of the fittest. It is a blind law – so we need local and international regulations.

That, and a man dreaming up computers looking better than nerdy CB tins.

Aside from taking mobile entertainment beyond phatic communication, Apple created a new market for independent developers. Consumers actually started buying small games, utilities and gadgets instead of expecting all our stuff to be free.
For many of us, coping with a somewhat authoritative publisher is simply better than choking down our creativity and imagination while vegetating in top down corporate structures or SMEs. Plus, the app store is fair. Being creative, listening to users and putting in good work is very much the name of the game. A somewhat unique opportunity for any IT guy with talent and motivation, anywhere in the world.

Apple doesn’t please the music industry – they thrill musicians and music lovers; Apple doesn’t please the video games industry; taylorized game factories resent the iPhone and iPad  downing video games to a buck;  in the meantime the value of my work went up, 1 up! From zero to 1. In all, a binary victory against atavistic materialism – the product of our work is more real than it used to be as we are upgrading from specialized work and mass-consumed individualism to sharing our personal creations.

If I can’t be me when I’m at work, when can I be me?

I feel good about the 3,000+ players that paid two or three bucks for Antistar. That’s 3,000 people that skipped a chocolate bar or a burger and had a little digital fun instead. It’s good for me, it’s good for them and it’s good for the home-world.

Here’s a thought for the man that made this possible.

Beyond Hollywood, silicon isn’t sexy without Apple. 1 up!

Antistar sales broke a record yesterday, shipping more than a 100 units in a day.

With 2 days in the top 25 on iTunes Japan (adventure/rpg), the first update is doing a whole lot better than a lenient pricing policy would explain – just the encouragement I need while working on the next installment.

While this didn’t cause a huge online stir (what the heck!) the red haired heroine does have a few virtual friends. iFanzine is currently running a contest that will have you lie down on a sofa(?) and share your weirdest, wildest fantasies.

Time to take a break?

Maybe not. In the meantime, I digged a few interesting entries in the iPad section:

• Ozone is a platformer / puzzler pitched as ‘a mix of art and technology’
• Dink Smallwood looks like an original, in-depth RPG title. It does seem a little old fashioned and maybe not as ‘polished’ as Crimson Gem Saga, but maybe worth a look.
• Kometen is a psychedelic exploration/interactive art title with beautiful graphics, can’t wait to try it.
• Finally, Scene of the crime stands out with expressive black and white illustrations (admittingly, the lone user review out there isn’t all too encouraging).

Aside the big Antistar update for November, I am preparing a new english translation for
Twilight Cherry, a shockingly irrelevant, fun and neatly priced teen fantasy comic from Japanese studio m-kz.

Today I got a second Antistar review at iPadGames.org. I’m also preparing a proto-site (to get affiliated so I can track ad performance, although…

…the gut feeling at the moment is, not worth it.

I’m getting close to 200,000 impressions and 700 clicks in just a couple of weeks, with 3 spots and a google ad campaign over London. With 200 sales so far and a strong feeling that no more than 5% of these come from advertisement, I’ll be dropping my wishing coins into another well.

It may be worth noting that ppc google advertisement is costing me 3 to 10 times less than other channels.

iPadGames.org is the weirdest review site ever. Seems like a genuine .org, and I had to skim through other reviews to come to terms with the fact that the ever so slight cynical tone is normative, with little beyond the descriptive level to speak for each and any other title. Or maybe there just isn’t anything exciting on the iPad yet… Oh well. At any rate, it’s a genuine .org since I’d be hard pressed understand how they monetize. No referrals(?) No advertisement(?), no ‘features’.

Since you ask… OOgtech is a .org because I’ve registered the .com somewhere else, and I can’t access it at the moment.

5 minutes of celebrity

On Friday the 13th of August (Tokyo time), Antistar 3D:Rising made a quick dash into the top 75 adventure in App Store Japan.

My, it’s all in the title.

If you’re still missing out, best time to get onboard and try our serial adventure game. 4 chapters delivered, more on the way via free updates and rated 4-5 stars by more than 50% of players in the US app store.

App store link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/antistar-3d-rising/id383382828?mt=8

Promotion ending as follows:

Honolulu: 24:00 Friday
Los Angeles: 03:00 Saturday
London: 11:00 Sunday
Beijing: 18:00 Sunday
Tokyo: 19:00 Sunday
Kiritimati: 00:00 Monday

After a few days out of the loop, we’re back with a new website, a new domain and some exciting stuff in the pipeline:

• We now offer ee-docs as a standalone, no doc-gen solution for browsing specs in 5 languages.
• Our new code editor, ee-ide, is now approaching its first official release