Make Mac Games

Just thought I would update anyone who is still subscribed to this feed here at MakeMacGames.com.

I’ve moved my active blogging about game development to my company’s blog to keep everything together. It’s become easier over time to maintain only one blog.

On that note, I just posted a small Bullfrog 2 development update and teaser screencast to share our progress. So, if you’re interested in following along, you may want to head over to the Outer Level Blog and subscribe to the news feed there.

Ars Technica recently published a three part series on “Why Writing In Games Matters”. It’s an interesting read and certainly makes one think about how their game design can be improved by putting more thought and effort into the story as well as the purty graphics and rendering engine.

Why Writing in Games Matters - Part 1

Why Writing in Games Matters - Part 2

Why Writing in Games Matters - Part 3

[links via InsideMacGames]

Posted on my company blog: Bullfrog 2

Bullfrog exceeded all my expectations. Even though it was only supposed to be a learning project and was developed with a tiny budget, downloads have been non-stop since it made its way on to the big Mac download websites.

Watching as the high scores have gotten higher and higher over time and reading all the extremely positive feedback has been feeding the game developer monster inside of me.

Finally, I can’t resist any longer. I’ve decided to begin development on the sequel to my little arcade game. But, this time the plan is a little different.

Read more…

The Apple Developer Connection just posted a new developer interview. This time they talk to Freeverse, developer of “WingNuts 2” and publisher of “Heroes of Might and Magic V“, “LineForm“, and “ComicLife“.

The 11-person team at Freeverse, Inc. might be small, but the company has scored big with the action arcade game Wingnuts 2: Raina’s Revenge, which won the 2006 Eddy Award for Best Game and was named runner-up for the 2006 Apple Design Awards for Best Mac Game.

While the article is mostly an advertisement piece, it is an interesting read. It’s also nice for a Mac First game developer to get a bit of the spotlight.

ADC: Building WingNuts in Xcode with OpenGL

An interesting list of best sellers for the MacGameStore in their latest news letter:

This Week’s Top Ten Bestsellers

1. Scrabble
2. Luxor 2
3. Mystery Case Files: Ravenhearst
4. Virtual Villagers - The Lost Children
5. Bejeweled 2
6. Halo Universal Binary
7. Pat Sajak’s Trivia Gems
8. Luxor MahJong
9. MacGameStore DVD
10. Age of Empires III

Of the 10 items, only two are “hard core” triple-A games.

The Top 10 Downloads on Apple’s Game Downloads:

1. Age of Empires III
2. X-Moto
3. Second Life
4. Little Shop of Treasures
5. Ankh
6. OSX SkyFighters
7. Myst Online
8. MacPool
9. Ultranium 5
10. Classic Solitair

Obviously, downloads don’t equal purchases, but again here only two triple-A games and only one of them is “hard core”.

Is the lack of triple-A titles in these lists due to lack of interest or dearth of product?

Sorry for the lack of updates here. I have been quite busy with the development and recent release of LicenseKeeper.

I do have plans to start the initial design phase of my next game soon. But, I need to get through the next release of LicenseKeeper as well as some Cocoa consulting work for one of my clients.

I’m debating whether this next game will be Leopard only. I really want to work with the new technologies coming out of Apple. Some of the things I’ve seen and played with have great promise, not only for standard applications but for Mac game development. We’ll see how things develop as I commit more time to the project.

I have had a little time to game a bit. I’ve been playing some Call of Duty 2 multiplayer online. While I’m starting to tire of the standard maps, there are plenty of mods and custom maps to keep things interesting. I have a couple of friends that also play and I’m really enjoying jumping online with them and using Team-Speex. I also picked up Age of Empires III and while the graphics are very good, I think I’m done with the AOE franchise. I think the whole real-time strategy genre has reached a point where some real innovation and originality is needed.

On a side note, I’ve moved all the RSS feeds over to FeedBurner today. So if you experience any issues, please let me know. Of course, if it’s not working you are unlikely to see this post at all.

Announcement: Just in case you were looking for the company website or Bullfrog download.

My main server running the outerlevel.com domain had a hard drive failure this morning. It is currently having the disk replaced and the operating system reloaded. I Estimate about 6 hours to reload plus the time it will take for me to restore all the sites on the server from backups.

Update (Feb. 6, 2007): Everything should be back to normal. If you find anything funky, please let me know.

GameProducer.net has published the past five years of sales stats for Chronic Logic’s game, Triptch.

It’s interesting to see the “self life” of this Tetris-like game over an extended timeframe.

The total sales numbers are pretty darn good for 3 weeks of development and $200 in art and sound expenses.

I’ve moved this site over to a new server and hosting provider. Please, let me know if you experience any issues.

I just rediscovered this nice little podcast: Indie Game Developer’s Podcast

The podcast features interviews with independent game developers, including:

• Positech Games (Starship Tycoon, Democracy, Kudos)
• Squashy Software (Platypus, Cletus Clay)
• Amaranth Games (Aveyond, Ahriman’s Prophecy)