Make Mac Games

I haven’t posted any updates on my development progress on Bullfrog for a while. I’ve been very busy trying to get the game ready for the OMG Cup 2005 deadline of Midnight, November 28.
Once I get through the deadline, I’m planning on writing a postmortem on the development of the game. I’ve learned [...]

One week to go until the Original Mac Games Cup deadline.
The game is code complete barring no bugs or serious performance issues over the next week of testing and game play balancing.
The majority of the work left to do is to incorporate the final artwork. I’m only waiting on the final animated sprites and [...]

I’ve been very busy with the new day job. It’s really taken a huge chunk of my time. Fortunately I’ve been able to eek out enough time to finally ready a new build of Bullfrog.
This past week of heads down game programming has produced the following changes for this new release:

heavy bug animation optimization
added [...]

In Part 2 of this series of articles, I presented Jordan Langille’s initial sketch for the application icon for Bullfrog. His first try was dead on with what I was looking for.
After approving the sketch, Jordan set off to create the initial version of the icon graphic. A week later, Jordan came back with [...]

A new version of Bullfrog is now available with tons of enhancements. Though a majority of the work went into the refactoring of the cocoa and objective-c code.
These were important changes that allow for adding new bugs in future versions. It also allows me to move away from procedurally built levels to designed levels [...]

I just took a look at the progress the other cup contenders are reporting. Wow! Are there some cool games being developed. Competition is heating up and everyone wins.
If you aren’t following along, check out this forum on iDevGames. Give people feedback, support mac game development.

This morning, Jordan Langille delivered his sketch for the Bullfrog application icon. He was able to create what I had in mind on his first try. Now, he’s working on turning the sketch into an actual application icon.

I set Jordan to work on the application icon first, because I felt having the icon to display [...]

After some really good feedback on the initial alpha release, I’ve made some minor changes that should improve game play quite a bit.
The main complaints:

bugs are too hard to hit
tongue recharges to slowly
frog’s movement is too [fast, jerky, jittery], i.e. low frame rates

Release Notes:

doubled the size of all the bugs so they are easier to [...]

The game is nearing the point where I’m ready to begin incorporating professionally designed artwork.
For this I’ve hired Jordan Langille of BuyIcons.com. Jordan comes highly recommended by Ian Jones.
I’ll be sure to keep you updated on our progress.

I’ve updated my project plan to reflect the work so far on Bullfrog.