Diary Of An Indie Dev

I've got some free time!  Starting reading The Making of Prince of Persia which has inspired me to write about my dev adventures too. 

I started on a new game idea the other day.  Gonna be a Smash TV sort of game.  Got the iPhone control system working with thumbstick and four on-screen buttons.  Next day added lots of billboard sprites to fill a room without too many draw calls.  Working all images from the one atlas - learned the hard way.

Have been thinking a lot about what I should be doing and all signs point to doing more for myself game dev wise.  I have a few contracts hanging around but I think I need to finish them off and go on a dev sabbatical, which means no work for them, and all my dev work is for me.  I was thinking the only thing holding me back is them, but I know it's really just me.

I've added some more detail to my other game, a TPS horror, such as sinks, toilets, desks, bags etc to start decorating the section of the highschool that the player does the tutorials in.  Looking pretty good.  I implemented a simple camera technique to never lose sight of the player and it works better that Torque3D's camera so I am really proud.

Starfighter keeps springing to mind and I want to have a crack at resurrecting that sometime in the future.

Last night I bought a HTC Wildfire S, and tonight I'm setting up my PC for Android development. Tomorrow I will do a simple build and work out the release cycle.  Then I am going to port Turbo Flick to the Android first.  I have to reduce some of the assets sizes though - especially the sounds, and I have no idea how to implement the video.  Will put it up for free with the first 5 levels, with an ingame purchase for about $2.50.  Hopefully it will make a mark on the Android market.  Everyone who played it likes it but for some reason it didn't capture the attention of the Angry Bird clone saturated market on the iOS.

Turbo Flick will be succeeded with BlitzBallz- a derivative of Turbo Flick, but it's always been in the plan since I thought up TF.  It will be Turbo Flick 2, still a flick shooter, but more cutesy characters.

Surf Prodigy will follow on the Android, but I really want to make it a different type of surfing game.