playr.co.uk - Blog

Zilch Mobile for Android

2011-01-20T20:00:00.006Z

It's been a while. my apologies for the huge delay since my last blog. My life has been somewhat dominated by long term medical issues so I haven't been able to devote much time to development. I am so glad I live in the UK and that my taxes pay for all the medical treatment I need. I would be dead 10 years ago if I lived in the US, that or living out of a cardboard box.

Aaaaaanywho, Kongregate have just released an app on the Android Marketplace (which has been pulled for the moment) and on the GetJar app market which allows owners of Android devices to download and play mobile versions of some of the amazing games on the Kongregate site. I was contacted in December and asked if I would produce a mobile version of Zilch to go into the app. I gladly did this and now Zilch is being played on mobile devices all over the world. It's only been a few days since the launch and Zilch Mobile has already had in excess of 20,000 plays! Go Zilch!

Considering it took me a couple of days to make the necessary modifications (remove keyboard controls, multiplayer code, make all buttons and text larger, etc) the process was surprisingly simple. The only gripe was finding where all the text was. This is one thing that I love about the way I built Zilch, despite the fact that I was changing loads of things in the visuals, I only really had to change about 20 lines of code for the vast bulk of the amends.

So all you developers with games on Kongregate, now is your chance to expand into the mobile space, show off your games to your friends in the pub or just make a little money from the shared revenue system. It's a lot easier than you think so just go for it!

Zilch In the Wild

2010-08-23T19:59:00.003+01:00

Here's an interesting blog post from a chap called Matt Busche:

http://www.mattbusche.org/blog/article/zilch/

Talking about strategies related to maximising your potential scores in Zilch. Perhaps this might stem the tide of people complaining about Zilch being rigged in favour of the Realist CPU? One can only wish... :)

Zilch Best multiplayer game at The Mochis

2010-03-15T21:30:00.003Z

Looks like Zilch won another award, this time at Flash Gaming Summit for best multiplayer game!

I should have an award in the post soon:

But once again, I'm chuffed to bits! Thanks to the panel of judges for finding in my favour. I'm sorry that I couldn't be there but the awards show is available to view online where you can see me not receiving my award.

Thanks again guys, you're all awesome!

Versus Replay

2009-11-06T11:01:00.005Z

Just added a little tweak to Versus, you can now enter a game number to play a specific game of your choosing. This means that you can play exactly the same game over and over to hone a specific strategy or challenge your friends to a game to see who can score the most.

All you have to do is enter the game number into the box on the game menu or after the game is completed. You can pick a random game by clicking the 'random' button to the right of the game number.

To stop people from cheating the high scores you can only submit a score from randomly chosen games, if you entered a game number or you replay the same game again and again, you won't be able to submit your score.

The game numbering system is accomplished by using a seeded random number generator. The game number itself is the basic seed which is used to generate the seeds for all the levels. When each round starts it uses the generated level seed to randomly place the enemies and player. Because the level seeds are built from the game number, they will be the same every time that game number is used. This means that any two players playing the same game number will see exactly the same enemy placement, teleport placement, and so on. This way you can challenge your friends to specific games and see who is the best.

New Game: Versus

2009-10-25T16:57:00.012Z

A new game based on the old 'Daleks' game, Versus pits you against ever increasing waves of enemies. You play the plucky little XKCD guy and you're on the run from a rampaging horde of Redditors. You take it in turns to move, as you run they will follow. If they crash into you the then it's game over. Your only defence is to make them crash into each other or into other piles of rubble.

You can teleport out of a tight spot, let off your one-time bomb, stand right where you are or go go 'last stand' if you think you're safe.

The primary design goal was to build a game quickly and simply, the secondary goal was to use little to no text anywhere in game, to see if I could put together a game that needed no written instructions. I think it kind of succeeds but it's all part of a larger learning process.

Play, win, lose, enjoy, let me know how you get on :)

http://versus.playr.co.uk/

Word Grid on Kongregate

2009-10-09T22:14:00.001+01:00

Due to popular demand (and beacuse Jim Greer is such a lovely chap) I've added WordGrid to Kongregate so you can play it there an earn all the lovely awards and points that they will be offering very shortly :)

Zilch: e4 Multiplayer Winner

2009-09-28T22:12:00.004+01:00

Woot! Zilch was the winner of the Multiplayer award on the e4 games website, which gives me complete permission to show this:

I never thought that Zilch would win an award like this but I'm chuffed to bits! Thanks to any and all who voted for me, I love every single one of you. Yes, even you.

Award Nomination for Zilch

2009-08-24T16:19:00.004+01:00

Wow! Amazing news: Zilch has been nominated for an award on the e4 games site!

How awesome! Do yourself a favour and vote for Zilch!

Fancy a little post-game?

2009-07-30T00:37:00.004+01:00

I've added a bunch of new tweaks and stuff to the current version of Zilch. I've started tentatively working on Facebook integration but the most prominent feature is now the post-game chatter:

Turns out it wasn't just me who didn't like being cut off in the middle of a sentence when the game ends. Now you can say goodbye to your chums at your leisure :)

G.

Aggravating Flash Issue Solved

2009-07-28T13:59:00.003+01:00

I was having a hell of a time trying to make clips inside clips work without throwing an annoying error about type coercion. The solution is simple:

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/ASC-3537

Don't have any clips inside any other clips that contain static text fields. It's that simple.

I'm only really posting this so I have a reminder of what solves the problem, sorry it's not game related :)

How good are you?

2009-06-17T20:30:00.003+01:00

Think you're a good Zilcher? Any games that you finish will now count towards your Zilch rank. The scoring is outlined on the page but you get points for playing against anybody, and win or lost points for playing against other Playr account holders.

So make sure you login to your account before you play, build your Zilch rank and let the gloating begin :)

Updates

2009-06-07T01:06:00.002+01:00

I've made a few tasty tweaks to the engine now, mainly fixing some bugs and adding a few new features to the client before I update the server. Now I have added:

Wings! You'll only see them if you're playing against me
Instant rematch option. I was getting fed up of having to start new games every time so I added a "play again" button to just play the same person again. Very handy
Lobby happening in the background. It was still making pops and noises and stuff whilst playing, that has been fixed
Some menu improvements. Tweaks made to the logic of the menu screens has improved them a little.
Server enhancements. Games are now handled more efficiently on the server.

I'm sure there's other stuff but that's the things I can remember, I'm sure there are more.

Today I have played against one Mexican, three Canadians, a Californian currently living in Italy and 2 people from London. Oh, and one guy from Ireland too.

It Is Online

2009-06-04T15:03:00.001+01:00

NetZilch is here! Why not have a few games with a friend?

Beta Progress

2009-05-29T16:45:00.003+01:00

Thanks to the feedback from the beta testing team I have managed to iron out a few more bugs in the NetZilch code, some of which were quite serious showstoppers:

Games failing to start. This was because the game didn't have a list of players and this caused some... issues.
Lobby games not going away. I have restructured the way the lobby receives instructions from the server so this works better now
Game passwords. There was a mismatch between the text restrictions on the game creation password field and the game joining password field. They have now been standardised.
Opponent scores. You can now click on an opponent's score sheet to see their tabulated scores.
Help panels. Now the help panels should all go away when you click on any of their "ok" buttons.
Lobby breaking. When the last player logs out, the lobby scope gets deleted and therefore link to the lobby shared object is lost. I've now tweaked the server to recreate the lobby if it's not already running and attach a shared object to it properly
Better server code. I have made a number of structural and functional improvements to the server side code, namely the ApplicationAdaptor that runs the main lobby has been drastically simplified, proper usage of the roomJoin() and roomLeave() methods makes life easier and the general feeling of understanding has increased.
Single 5 not being added. If you rolled 1115 or 5551 or any combination of 3+ of a kind and some 1's or 5's, the extra dice were not being added to your score. This was a glitch both parts of the engine code, server and client side.
More legible chat window. Fixed the font sizes to be the same, moved the text box a little bit and made the text optimised for readability rather than animation.

I'm sure there might be a few things that I've left off this list but that's all that I can think of at the moment. I've been working quite hard on this for the last few days, I expect this to continue for the next week or so.

To all you beta testers (you know who you are), thank you! Keep testing, keep playing, keep sending in bug reports. If I might suggest, give the beta test login details to a few friends and ask them to login at 9pm, local time. Have a few games, see if you can find a few bugs. Who knows, you might even see me online... :)

Beta Testers Wanted

2009-05-25T22:25:00.004+01:00

Fancy testing out the online 2 player version of Zilch? It's pretty much ready to rock but I do need a body of sensible people with a few friends who are willing to put the network game through it's paces. It's pretty much the same as the single player game but you get to play online with your friends. You can even have a little chat with them using the in-game chat. How sweet :)

So what can you do? The first dozen or so people who express interest by leaving a comment to this post will get a password for the beta test area. You should then arrange a time with a friend to both login at the same time and have a few games of NetZilch. If you find a bug then you should do this:

Check it's actually a bug. See if it's doing something you don't expect it to do or something that it actually shouldn't do.
Try and make the bug repeat itself. If you can't make the bug happen at will, I won't be able to make it happen at will and therefore can't fix it.
Get in touch, explaining what the bug is and, in as much details as possible, how I can make this bug happen for me.

I can't emphasise point 3 enough, if you don't tell me how to repeat the bug then I can't fix it.

If you're still interested then drop me a comment and I'll zip you access to the beta test. First come first served!

Quiet, but not forgotten

2009-02-24T20:34:00.001Z

Yes, I have been rather quiet of late but fear not, I am still in active development. I am putting the final, long awaited touches to Net Zilch after a somewhat prolonged absence from coding. So gird your loins, lock up your daughters, don't forget your toothbrush and brace yourself, Net Zilch is almost ready!

In other news, it was my birthday a few weeks ago! I have made it to the sturdy age of thirty (dirty thirty). Go me!

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T00:37:00.002Z

And a happy new year to all you wonderul playr people out there :)

Here's to another bug free year of games and fun.

Fond regards,

G.

Sneak peek: Multiplayer

2008-12-03T23:54:00.003Z

And here's another little sneak peak of a UI change. Can you see what it is?

That's right, the roll button is transparent. And there's a tiny little iconised menu at the foot of the screen as well. I was fed up with the nasty menus that I had, thought I'd try out my paltry artistic skillz. Ah well, at least it's in keeping with the hand-scrawled feel of the game :)

Upcoming version sneak peek

2008-12-02T20:26:00.005Z

Here's a little graphic that shows a working version of Zilch that I have in progress. I have it set to play 3 CPU players against each other to a million points, just to see what would happen:

There will be a few changes to the dice graphics and as you can see all the player's scores are now visible at the same time. Support has always been there for an arbitrary number of players, I hope to be able to extend the UI to let you play with more than 2 people.

The main changes are under the hood; all the game logic has been separated from the game controller. The problem with just trying to build a game means that in the rush to get it built you don't really think about what should go where. At some point you need to add a new feature (multiplayer support, for example) and everything suddenly gets very complicated. I hit this point last week and I've spent the last 4 days refactoring everything to be much cleaner, simpler, more event driven and vastly less complex. The upshot of this will be that it will turn the multiplayer integration from a nightmare to merely a complicated problem. Sweet.

So, at some point soon multiplayer gaming will be ready to rock. I'll put some screen shots of that up when I finally get my sanity back :)

Zilch spotted in the wild

2008-11-23T23:22:00.003Z

I've found Zilch in a number of popular blogs on the internets:

To name a couple. I'm so chuffed that it has taken off and I'm glad that the majority of the feedback is positive :)

If you've seen Zilch featured on a blog or review site, drop me a comment, I'll add it to the list.

Drawing is losing in Zilch

2008-11-18T15:25:00.001Z

If the compuer gets 10500 points and triggers the final round, and you then match their score at 10500 points, this is not a win for you. In the final round you get one more turn to *beat* your opponents score. Getting exactly the same score as them is not beating it, it's just tieing it.

In order to win you need to have more points than your opponent.

Submitting a Bug Report

2008-11-12T14:43:00.002Z

If you're going to submit a bug report for Zilch it's important that you follow these instructions. These will help you include enough of the right information that will help me locate (and hopefully fix) the problem. If you just send an email and say "I've found this bug that does this" and don't include the game logs or CPU logs, it's no help at all.

So what do you need to do?

Make sure you're running at least build 4443-adatch. To get this version empty your browser cache and load the game again, you should get the latest version.
Check the blog to make sure it's not a bug or hasn't already been reported
Press L to copy the game log to your clipboard, then paste this into a new text file.
Press C to copy the CPU log to your clipboard, paste this into the text file as well
Send me the contents of that text file, along with a description of the bug and any steps I need to take to replicate it.

This is the bare minimum that I need for a bug report if I am to be able to do anything useful with it. Without this information I probably can't even find, let alone fix the problem.

I really appreciate players taking the time to let me know about problems and I do enjoy fixing them as it makes the game better for everybody. Keep on playing, keep on sending bug reports but just make sure it's a bug report I can work with.

Blast from the past

2008-11-11T18:28:00.006Z

Believe it or not, this is what Zilch used to look like as I was developing it, all of 2 months ago:

Amazing to see how much nicer it looks when you just stick some nice graphics into it! I have tons of these if anybody is interested in seeing some of the really really old dev versions :)

Bored, bored, bored.

2008-11-10T21:06:00.004Z

OK, I'm bored of people complaining that it's not random. If anybody emails me or submits a bug report saying that the CPU is rigged, the dice rolls are weighted or anything similar, I'm just going to ignore it. I may print out a copy of the email, rub it in some butter then set fire to it, but that's all.

If you don't like losing games of chance, Zilch is not the game for you, sorry.

On the other hand, if you want to pay a certified software security specialist to audit my code, I'm happy to comply. They usually clock in around $500, if you're really that angry about losing at a game of chance then it's money well spent to prove to yourself that you don't understand the strategy of the game.

If anybody is interested in doing some statistical analysis of a large number of game results, please let me know and I'll see what I can do to make the game logs available.

UPDATE: Here are a few points to consider.

Why would a given RNG 'favour' one player over another?
How does the RNG know when the CPU player is currently taking their turn?
Why does the RNG 'favour' the CPU player by giving them 'better' rolls?
How does the RNG know what a 'better' roll is?

Any more points I can add here?

Viviomancy: Study of the game Zilch part 1

2008-11-09T19:22:00.001Z

A cracking study of how to play the game in the most efficient means possible. All you doubters, take heed :)

Viviomancy: Study of the game Zilch part 1

The Realist will take just one dice

2008-11-08T17:19:00.003Z

Lots of people keep sending bug reports about the fact that the Realist CPU player will only select one dice from a pair. For example when it rolls a pair of ones it will only select one of them and then carry on rolling. This is not a bug, this is a legitimate strategy. which hinges on this important point:

You can click on the dice you want to keep, you don't have to use the score options.

In order to maximise it's chances of rolling a high-scoring multiple the Realist CPU will only select one of the dice in a pair. You'll note that the score option doesn't "ping", that's because the CPU is clicking the dice instead of the score option.

I will make the CPU player ping the dice when it clicks them, to make it more obvious what's going on. This is not a bug, this is the CPU trying to be smart about how it plays. Please stop sending bug reports about it.

RANDOM! IT IS RANDOM!!!

2008-11-06T21:42:00.003Z

All dice rolls on Zilch are random. Totally random, or as random as the Flash RNG will allow. Don't believe me?

Read the source code for my Dice class.

And in case anybody cries foul, here's the HideableObject class that I use to nudge things in and out of view on the screen.

See?

Zilch: About the CPU players

2008-11-06T00:32:00.004Z

Believe me, the CPU players do not cheat. There is no code that weights the dice towards the CPU, there is no unfair dice rolling, everything is totally random for all players. Everybody gets the same random dice rolls, humans and CPU players alike.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I very much dislike playing against CPU players that aren't better, just luckier. A classic example of this can be found in nearly every backgammon game for mobile phones. The hard CPU players just roll better dice all the time. I found this out by noting down the dice rolled on paper over 20 games, the CPU rolled way better dice. It's a short cut to making the game more difficult. Making better CPU players is a hard problem to solve, it's much easier just to give them better dice.

This drives me mad, so I made a specific decision to code a more intelligent CPU player, one that would make informed decisions like a human but would still be at the mercy of the dice. That is how I have coded all three CPU players.

Cautious and Reckless basically follow the same rules:

Always go with the highest scoring option every time
If it's the final round then keep on rolling until you either zilch or have more points than the opponent
If using all the score options results in a free roll, take it
If any scoring option is a free roll, take it
If you have more than X points on the board, bank them
If there are more than Y dice left unused, roll again

For cautious and reckless, X and Y are slightly different, as their names would suggest. Reckless is more likely to roll with fewer dice, Cautious has a lower X threshold so will bank fewer points each time but should avoid zilching more often.

The Realist player has much more human-like strategy coded in. It will look for free rolls using combinations of scoring options, it will avoid the third zilch where possible, it will choose a single 1 over three 2's if possible, it will take a single 1 from a pair to increase the number of dice left to roll, all of this on top of the standard strategies employed by the Cautious and Reckless players.

There isn't a single line of code that nudges the dice in the favour of either the CPU or the human players, not one. It's all strategy. What do we learn from this?

Sometimes it pays to be reckless
Nobody likes losing a game of chance
The dice have the final say

It's completely random, I promise.

New game: Zilch

2008-11-05T16:16:00.006Z

Now, for your delight and amusement, playr presents a new game: Zilch

It's a dice game of skill and luck with over 100 in-game awards, three levels of CPU opponent, two player mode and a built-in tutorial mode. It's fun, addictive and quick to pick up. Play a few rounds today :)

Click here to play Zilch now!

UPDATE: For all those people asking or submitting bug reports, the CPU players do not cheat, they get exactly the same random rolls that the players do. One of my pet peeves is playing against CPU players where they aren't better players, just luckier ones that roll better dice. I have tried to make the CPU players employ different tactics to make them better players but they still get totally random dice rolls.

Almost ready to launch new game

2008-10-31T22:09:00.001Z

The title says it all really. New game is almost ready to release. Oooh, the tension! Can you bear it?

:)

Theme rollout to Onslaught

2008-10-27T22:18:00.001Z

The new and delightful playr theme has now been rolled out to the Onslaught site. I think I've found all the pages that use it but I'm almost certain to have missed once or two, which I'm sure I'll find in due course.

If there's any glaring rendering issues or CSS bugs, please drop me a comment here. I think it all looks lovely now, and reasonably consistent across the rest of the playr games too :)

In other news, now the rebranding is almost complete I can start working on getting my current project out the door. News shortly!

G.

S3 problem partly solved

2008-10-27T14:49:00.004Z

In that I have found that Transmit and Cyberduck all handle the content-type correctly so until I hear back from Interarchy I'll be using Cyberduck to upload my CSS files. Joy.

Also, made a few tweaks to the styles across the sites. Having a consistent design and centralised stylesheet really does kick ass, I can make changes in one place and all the sites are updated live. Nice :)

G.

Curious bug with S3

2008-10-26T18:46:00.005Z

During the process of rebranding the playr sites I found a curious bug in the way Firefox handles CSS files. I wanted to reduce the load on my server so I've hosted some of the files on the Amazon S3 Simple Storage Service. Great service, practically unlimited bandwidth and very cheap to boot.

However, for reasons unknown, when I uploaded my CSS to S3 it was saved with a content type of binary/octet-stream. As any g33k will know that's an encoding used to tranfer generic files, not a specific content type like text/css, or audio/mp3. Whilst this doesn't faze IE or Safari it did cause a problem for Firefox. The CSS file was supposed to @import some other CSS from other files but when Firefox saw the CSS, and the fact that it was in a binary encoding it refused to parse it as CSS. This resulted in no CSS loading and the entire page looking broken.

Moving the CSS to a standard Apache host solved the problem but I wanted it hosted on S3. I asked the question in the S3 support forum and got a reply which pointed me at Bucket Explorer. I used this to manually set the content type to text/css and the problem is solved in Firefox now.

Was this a bug in the way Firefox handles CSS files with the wrong content-type coming from the server or was it a bug in the way my S3 client failed to identify the file as CSS and set the content-type accordingly? We may not know but I'll be submitting some bug reports for sure.

UPDATE: I have submitted a bug report to bugzilla and I have contacted Interarchy support as well, fingers crossed somebody will resolve the issue. In the mean time I have found that Transmit does correctly set the content-type of CSS files it uploads to S3.

New blog theme

2008-10-26T18:40:00.001Z

Well, actually a new playr theme. I've been busy rebranding the playr suite of sites as I was pretty fed up with the crappy design they used to have. Very very basic, black and white, no actual style so I have remedied the situation and created a better set of graphics to go on all the current and future playr sites.

I'm still in the process of updating some of the other sites so the new look will come online with all the sites when I get round to working out the kinks but for the moment you can enjoy the new look on the blog, the playr homepage and the memory game. Sudoku will stay the same but Onslaught will soon be rebranded too.

Nice :)

Change of name

2008-10-14T17:52:00.002+01:00

Been meaning to do this for a while but I've finally re-domained the blog to a proper playr domain name:

http://blog.playr.co.uk

The old domain should redirect to the new name so all blogging links ought to carry on working fine. Nice.

Also, there ought to be a new game coming soon from the Playr stable. As usual I'll keep posting updates here on the blog.

Finally live!

2008-09-10T22:54:00.001+01:00

I have made the current preview version the live and real version now! I've uploaded it to NewGrounds, Kongregate and the main site. All that moddy goodness is now available for all to play in all those places.

Thanks to everybody who helped in the testing and bug reporting process, I couldn't have done it without you!

G.

Final Update

2008-09-02T03:09:00.001+01:00

So I think that the vast majority of bugs have been found and dealt with in the latest version of the beta preview. Once again I'll set the play counters to 0 so you can all experiment.

I've also added a couple of new settings to the mod interface for changing the initial amount of cash in various modes of game, and I think I have already mentioned that you can change the turret availability, cost and unlock levels too. Plenty to play with there and don't forget, once it's gone live to the main site you will need to have finished easy, medium and hard modes to have access to the mod interface.

Good luck!

New Version: Updates

2008-08-31T00:50:00.001+01:00

So the most excellent Kioyoh has kindly posted up a list of bugs so far, most of which I think I have squashed. I've uploaded a new version with a bunch of minor tweaks and a few other moddable sections, such as the turret costs, availability, napalm mods, blackhole mods and a few other tweaks and twists. I've also reset the preview play counters so everybody can try it again.

Have a play and let me know :)

G.

New Version

2008-08-29T19:00:00.002+01:00

Soooooooo..

It has been an awfully long time in the preparation, partially due to the fact that I had to restructure lumps of things inside the game engine to make it work properly. I have now added a section in the game that allows players to heavily tweak the game settings as they see fit. It also allows for the saving and loading of complete sets of mods so you can try out configurations and save them for later use, or share them with friends.

The eventual aim of these changes is to allow the community of players to come up with a mod that balances the game more evenly. There are so many different ways to tweak the game that I simply can't possibly balance them all effectively, so I'm leaving it in the hands of the most suitable people, the players.

Anywho, have fun with the new modding interface, I await some interesting feedback. You can only play it on the preview version at the moment, once it's stable it'll go live.

One year on Kongregate

2008-07-05T02:00:00.003+01:00

On 1st July Onslaught passed the one year mark on Kongregate! Happy Birthday Onslaught! It's been quite a ride and I'd like to thank everybody who's played, suggested improvements or just enjoyed being part of the croud.

Thank you!

Mod: Teaser Info

2008-06-24T21:37:00.003+01:00

So to provide a little more information about what things you'll be able to mod in the new version. Initially you'll be able to modify all the aspects of the turrets, such as:

Initial damage, range and rate
Freakout ability and settings
Upgrade costs and levels
Weapon poison

If that proves to be straightforward to implement then I'll build in extra bits that let you modify cash, waves, combos and more. For the moment I'm trying to get the interface up and running but I have managed to implement one half of the turret mod mechanism.

When it's all finished you should be able to create, save and load your own mods that should completely change the balance of the game.

The driving idea behind the modding engine is to allow the players to tweak the game to better suit their needs. For example there could be a mod for basic players, a mod for people who like laser chaining, mods that provide better game balance, and so on. Fingers crossed I can make it simple enough for everybody to play with but there's a shed load of different variables that control the game, it's going to be a fairly serious job to allow them all to be tweaked :)

Still here...

2008-06-24T20:08:00.003+01:00

I'm still here, honestly! I have been working hard on a bunch of updates to Onslaught, the most notable of which will be a modding system to allow tweaking of nearly all the game parameters, as well as a bunch of other tweaks and things suggested by the forum members.

I hope to have something available to play with in the next couple of days so hang tight!

G.

Documentation Updates

2008-05-07T17:58:00.003+01:00

As prompted by a small discussion on the forums a few corrections have been made to the information on the how to play pages of the main site. Just a few things, like correcting the keyboard shortcuts for the newest version, the Targeter turret keys and the directional targeting. Thanks to Griffer for the heads up, and to all the lovely shiny people on the forum who find these things for me :)

Thanks!

We Got Badged!

2008-04-23T21:23:00.002+01:00

Sweet! The version of Onslaught that is hosted on Kongregate has been given some badges to win! Two badges so far, one easy and one medium. Have a play, win the points!

Directional Targeting: In Pictures

2008-04-17T03:06:00.011+01:00

The newest feature of the game is Directional Targeting, which allows turrets to only pick new targets that are within a certain field of fire. Normally turrets will pick any target that is within their range, which is represented by a green circle around the turret:

To enable directional targeting, simply select the turret and press D to enable it. The range indicator will change from a circle to a wedge:

The wedge is lined up facing towards the mouse cursor. This turret will now only attack creeps that enter the green area. Once they carry on down the road, out of the green area, the turret will then ignore them. Currently this is set to a fairly wide field of fire. Pressing D again will narrow the range further:

Notice how it always aligns the wedge towards the mouse cursor. Pressing D again gives a very tight field of fire:

Pressing D once more will set the targeting mode back to normal, as shown in the first picture. To re-align the field of fire to a different direction without turning directional targeting off or changing the size of the angle, simply press Shift-D and the direction will point towards the cursor again:

To recap, press D to cycle through the directional modes (wide, medium, narrow, normal) and Shift-D to re-orient the angle towards the cursor.

Bug Fixes

2008-04-14T22:01:00.002+01:00

So the new version has been up for a while now and a couple of bugs have emerged which I have fixed:

Escape key now cancels the turret move process
Link flags are now shown properly on green turrets, for either wanting or offering link
Directional targeting arcs are now more accurately drawn

I have made one more important tweak to the way directional targeting works. Originally the direction was only for target acquisition. When an attacker went out of the arc of fire, so long as the attacker was still in range of the turret it would continue to fire at it. Now if the attacker moves outside of the arc of fire the turret acquires a new target.

In some regards this makes more sense, in other ways perhaps the graphics should have been updated to reflect this; showing the full circle of range and the slice that targets are acquired in as a subset of that. I'm open to all suggestions on how to do this.

For the moment these changes are only in the beta preview, which I'll make live in 24 hours.

One final change I have made is to the website, where if you try to access a page that requires a login (like the beta preview) you can now login and be taken to that page directly, rather than having to go through your home page again. A small change but makes things easier.

G.

Loading Problems

2008-04-12T16:17:00.008+01:00

This is to help people who are having problems loading the game. Every now and again I get lots of messages in my inbox from people who are going to play the game on the main site (http://onslaught.playr.co.uk) but the game doesn't load. The page loads fine but the actual game fails to load.

To explain, the page itself is hosted on my machine, the fact that the page is loading means your connection to my server is fine. The game SWF file (the actual game) is held on MochiAds' servers. Things are done this way because the game file is quite large and I can't afford all bandwidth costs of hosting the game on my server, Mochi kindly offer to host game files for developers for just this reason.

Occasionally the game file fails to load, for reasons unknown. This could be because of ad blocking software or a random network issue, but in any case you can try accessing the game file directly:

http://games.mochiads.com/c/g/onslaught-2_1/Onslaught2.1_ma.swf

Which seems to work fine in the event that the game doesn't load on the page. Mochi are quite proactive about any problems with their network so these issues are usually temporary.

I have also added a few extra links onto the main pages; one to the Mochi hosted version of the game, one to a local copy, one to the game file itself and one to this blog posting for informational purposes.

G.

Targeter loop bug problem solved

2008-04-12T16:11:00.003+01:00

I believe that I have fixed the problem with Targeter turrets linking to each other in a circle and I have uploaded the fixed version to the beta preview site, so everybody can have a quick test and see if it's any good. Please play, check it doesn't explode and if it's good, I'll put it live tomorrow evening.

Ta!

Bug fixes uploaded

2008-04-12T00:06:00.003+01:00

So I've dealt with a pile of bugs (as outlined in the forum) and I think I've fixed all of them, with the exception of the crash that occurs when a loop of links is formed in Targeter turrets (eg when Targeter A links to Targeter B, to C and back to A). I know what the problem is and how to fix it, it's just a little complicated so will take a short while to do.

The new preview version also has all the new keyboard shortcuts enabled, so things are coming together now.

Upcoming Keyboard Changes

2008-04-11T21:37:00.004+01:00

There will be some slightly different keyboard shortcuts in the upcoming version, tuned to make better use of the keys. The ones that are changing are the shortcuts for building turrets quickly. In the current version, there seems to be a fairly odd order of keyboard shortcuts, and some of the turrets don't have shortcuts for them at all. I've made some changes now so that the keyboard shortcuts are relative to the order that the turrets are unlocked in, and every turret has it's own shortcut.

These will be the new keyboard shortcuts, once the current beta preview has been published:

1: Build a Cannon turret
2: Build a Laser turret
3: Build a Rocket turret
4: Build a Tazer turret
5: Build a range-up turret
6: Build a damage-up turret
7: Build a rate-exchange turret
8: Build a range-exchange turret
Shift-1: Build a rate-up turret
Shift-2: Build a high-damage-up turret
Shift-3: Build a high-damage-up-exchange turret
Shift-4: Build a Targeter turret
Shift-5: Build a Sniper turret
Shift-6: Build a Fusion turret
Shift-7: Build a Railgun turret
Shift-8: Build a Combonly turret

The main rationale is to give every turret a keyboard shortcut and to have the order of the keyboard shortcuts reflect the order in which the turrets become available. I think it simplifies things but I'm open to any suggestions to make it better.

Apologies to Eli, you may have to update The FAQ :)

G.

New Turret!

2008-04-11T02:24:00.010+01:00

Gotta love the new turrets. This one is called the Targeter turret. It calls in long-distance fire support from any turrets that it is linked to. It works as a target painter for up to three linked turrets. When it is in place and targeting a creep it looks like this:

See the creep it is pointing at. It doesn't do damage per se but once it is joined to a few more turrets it can do more useful things. For example, drop a Targeter somewhere, select it and press J to start the joining process:

The red line tells you which targeter you're joining to. Move the red circle over the turret you wish to join to and it'll go green:

Finally click on that turret to join it to the Targeter. Any joined turrets are indicated by a line between the Targeter and the turret, shown when the Targeter is selected:

Quite sweet really. Then, when anything comes in range of the Targeter it will call in fire support from the linked turrets. You can join up to three turrets to any Targeter, joining any more will un-join the first one you joined. To un-join a turret, press J and click on that turret again.

Possible applications include linking to a remote combo cluster:

Which will cause the blue combo to fire when anything enters the range of the Targeter.

The next new feature is the directional targeting, which is available on any turret. Select a turret and press D to cycle through the directional targeting modes; wide, medium, narrow or full. When changing modes the angle will be set pointing towards the mouse cursor. To alter the angle without changing the targeting mode press Shift-D. This sets the angle to point at the cursor without changing the targeting mode:

Note the cluster bomb in mid-flight. The green arc is the normal weapon range, the white part is the extended range from a Ranger turret that is just out of shot.

So to summarise:

Targeter turret, press J to join it to up to three other turrets by clicking on them.
Directional targeting, press D to cycle through the modes, Shift-D to set the angle

For the moment these are available on the beta preview but once it has been well tested it should go up into the main game. Please test, play, fiddle and try and let me know how it goes!

G.

Strategic guidance

2008-04-09T22:20:00.001+01:00

I've added a new page onto the site:

Strategy Guides

If there's any suggestions or other online resources I could add to it then please let me know in the comments, all suggestions welcome!

Beta Preview Update

2008-04-08T22:26:00.001+01:00

So I've added the two new targeting changes to the beta preview page. I should mention that you need to press D to cycle between circular and directional targeting, and Shift-D will re-target the directional targeting at the cursor. As usual you can just press T to cycle through the target selection modes to get to 'oldest' and 'youngest'.

Enjoy!

G.

Feature inferno, canadian wonderland!

2008-04-08T21:55:00.005+01:00

Hello you wonderful, shiny and lovely people :)

Just to let you know that I've been making a few more changes adding some new features to the development version which I hope to get up and running by the end of today. I'm adding:

Two new targting modes, 'oldest' and 'youngest'
Directional targeting, to all turrets

Why are these of any use? Well the first one, oldest/youngest targeting allows you to drop a turret close to the base and it will prioritise attackers that have been around the longest, and are henceforth closest to the base. This will stop them from getting distracted by newer attackers that are within range but less of a threat.

The second, directional targeting, allows you to setup a field of fire. You can tell a turret to only acquire new targets from within a slice of it's range, rather than the whole thing. Useful again for focussing the resources you have and stopping turrets from getting distracted.

Together these features allow your turrets to produce a much more controlled spread of firepower.

I'm currently working on a new turret as well. It's not a weapon turret but a support turret that can be linked to weapon turrets. I don't want to spoil the surprise so that's all I'll say on the matter.

I have also vastly improved the way the stats are reported to the Kongregate hosted game, which should allow them to put some badges on the game (finally...)

Anywho, just keeping you all posted, to let you know that I'm not dead and neither is Onslaught!

Hugz,

G.

We have returned!

2008-02-26T18:52:00.006Z

My apologies for such a protracted delay, I've just got settled after relocating to Canada and have only now got back up to speed with some final Onslaught tweaks. So I have:

Added the Bad Pipe map, made by MacFrantic
Added the Miss Direction map, made by AdeptSlayer
Tweaked the challenges so they should be a little more completable
Changed the format of submissions on the kongregate hosted version so they can add some badges
The previous tweaks will soon go live
Added a bunch more challenges
Renamed some of the old challenges to single word names, for better compatability with Kongregate achievements

A pile of stuff but mainly in the bug fix and maintenence areas. Testing it for a couple of days in the preview area then it ought to go live.

Once more, thanks to AdeptSlayer and MacFrantic for their excellent contributions to the mapping community.

w00t!

More bug fixes

2007-11-08T21:56:00.001Z

Some more bug fixes:

Shockwave no longer continues when paused
Napalm works properly through a pause situation
Multiple combonly towers from one set of turrets, should be fixed.

As with all new updates, I've cleared the play cache and uploaded a new version. Have a test please!

Bug Fixes in 2.1

2007-11-08T14:07:00.000Z

So with the help of the shiny people over at the bug report forum I've managed to squash a few more bugs. I've uploaded a new version to the members only beta preview page and cleared the play counter, everybody should have 3 goes on this one again to see if you can replicate your favourite bug.

Among bugs that have been squashed are:

Combonly now does not work when paused
Linked turrets will now face the combonly turret when called upon
Combonly turrets will now also call for link
Combonly black holes will fire on the road, now they re-calc the road they can reach once moved
Modifier turrets no longer show up as combo-in-range targets
Combonly will now use any turret, regardless of if it's ready to combo, fire or neither. Must sill be combo capable though.

If I get the all clear for a few days I'll put it live everywhere again. Thanks for testing, the game wouldn't be what it is without everybody's help!

Thankies!

New version live

2007-10-31T14:05:00.000Z

One more Combonly bug squashed and I think it's time to release the code for the whole world to enjoy! It's now live in Kongregate, as well as back at the main site and it ought to be up and running at NewGrounds soon, when they approve the .swf.

As usual, any bugs should be reported in the Bug Report Forum.

In other news, welcome to my newest forum moderator, Eli. Eli will be joining my existing moderator, The Spoon. Hi guys!

edit: Props to Kioyoh and Noober too :)

Gaby

Beta Update: Shockwave bugs fixed

2007-10-28T23:03:00.001Z

Hopefully I've managed to fix the shockwave bug reported in the forums, as well as a few other bugs relating to combos that either require poison or green turrets. Combos should now also be able to link fire, if they are of a green nature.

Try it out and see if there are any outstanding problems left.

Oh, and to make it easier for people to test I have cleared the play counters again, everybody has three more plays on this most recent version.

New Beta Preview

2007-10-26T10:46:00.000+01:00

There's a new version up for all you Playr account holders which hopefully should address most of the bugs found so far:

Upgade panel not updating: Fixed
Combonly premature click: Fixed
Combonly multiple turret absorb: Fixed
Combonly not resetting properly: Fixed
Creeps not going in a straight line: This is how I wanted it, them to not follow a rigid path
Combonly applications: Works with any combo, you just need to build the right turrets around it
Game Speed problems: Limited to 200% increase max, 50% speed min
TazerBFG, TazerRocket Combonly: No longer accelerate enemies to mad speeds, work properly

I hope that covers most of the problems, if nothing major comes up in the next couple of days, I'll make this live on sunday.

And I've reset all the plays-per-week data, so everybody has 3 goes again on this new version. Aren't I nice? :)

Beta Preview Available

2007-10-23T11:05:00.000+01:00

For all those people who kindly signed up for Playr accounts, I thank you. And I thank you with this:

The Beta Preview

You can now play the upcoming version up to 3 times per week. Provided there are no major problems with the beta version it will become the live version. For the moment anyone with a Playr account can view and play.

And I suppose you'll need to know how to use the new turret. It's a little picky but once you know what you're doing it's ok.

Build a Nuke combo (Blue-Blue-Red) and max out the damage on all three turrets, then build the new Combonly turret right in the middle, so it's in combo range of all of them (press C to check this). When the combonly goes red, click on it. Voila, it will become the nuke combo turret. It only fires that combo, hence the name Combonly.

Report any bugs in the forum and I'll get them fixed before going live with it.

Game Outage Last Week

2007-10-15T10:59:00.001+01:00

Sorry about that, my server was relocated from one rack at it's current host to another rack at it's current host. I hear that the move was about 12 feet but when they restarted the server they didn't turn Apache and MySQL back on properly. The result was the game being offline on the main site for a couple of days whilst I was away :(

Anywho it should be back up and running now, in plenty of time for the IGF judging.

Enter the IGF

2007-10-15T10:26:00.001+01:00

The IGF is getting underway in February. One of the perks of being in the top games list on Kongregate is that I get free entry into the Independant Games Festival.

I'm chuffed that people think Onslaught is worthy of such high praise! Thanks again to all you lovely players out there!

Kongregate and Fans

2007-10-10T14:40:00.001+01:00

I never knew I had so many fans on Kongregate! I don't know where they came from but I'm certainly glad to have them!

Big shout out to all my fans!

Beta Testing

2007-10-10T14:37:00.001+01:00

The new version of the game is now out to beta testing, hopefully I'll get some useful bug reports and I can get the game out by the end of this week.

New features include:

New turret!
Challenge modes
Some more possible optimisations
More consistent explosions
Enhanced interface
More inherent tweens, for a smoother experience

And I'm sure there's more stuff too, as usual I just can't remember all of it!

What is this?

2007-09-24T23:21:00.000+01:00

So, any guesses as to what this little beastie does?
Answers on a postcard please (or leave them in the comments). I should be able to let people play with this in the next week or two, and I think you'll find it quite enjoyable.

iGoogle update again!

2007-09-20T22:01:00.001+01:00

Seriously, you can see it in the iGoogle directory right here!

iGoogle Update

2007-09-20T21:59:00.001+01:00

Seems some people have had problems accessing the iGoogle widget. I have just tested it and it seems to work OK. Basically you have to add the widget by URL, and the URL is this:

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107177673050896359334/Onslaught2Random.xml

That should load the widget into your iGoogle desktop. Unfortunately I'm a iGoogle n00b so I don't know why it's not working for some. Have a play, see what you can do. The XML for it is public so it ought to work.

iGoogle Widget

2007-09-09T23:03:00.001+01:00

While playing around with iGoogle I have managed to create an Onslaught random map widget. The XML file is here:

Onslaught 2 Random Map

Adding this widget is fairly straightforward. It's not in the directory yet so you have to add it by hand, which takes about 10 seconds.

Go to the "Add Stuff" page
By the "Search Homepage Content" button there should be a tiny link: "Add by URL"
Paste in this URL (or copy it from the link above). Make sure you get the whole thing, it's a bit long: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107177673050896359334/Onslaught2Random.xml
Don't worry about the warning that the content was not created by Google, click OK to proceed

That's it, you will have a random Onslaught 2 map from the map directory on your iGoogle homepage. The map changes every 10 minutes on the server but the iGoogle cache may not update immediately, so don't worry if you get the same map again and again.

Enjoy!

Maps maps maps!

2007-09-06T01:26:00.001+01:00

Well, the map editor and shared map functionaliy had to have some purpose...

Player Created Maps

:)

New version up on main site

2007-08-31T10:36:00.001+01:00

Whatever problem I was having uploading it to the Mochi servers is now gone, the updated version is now live on the main site.

Now with more stuff!

2007-08-30T18:19:00.001+01:00

Just uploaded a new version to Kongregate, Newgrounds and GameGum. When Mochi fix a small problem with their upload it'll go onto the main site, which should be quite soon.

New features include:

New super-turret
Adjusted super-turret upgrade and purchase costs
Fixed a bug where the fusion tower would not poison enemies correctly
Added map ratings to the map editor
When moving turrets they can now be moved onto positions that overlap their current position
Sound enabled on all versions of the game
Map rating section built into the website (will be expanded soon)

And I'm sure there's more stuff. Have a play, let me know!

Work in Progress

2007-08-24T15:00:00.001+01:00

Features that will be present in the upcoming version, not the current version, may or may not be:

Sound now integrated into the game, rather than an external file that has to be loaded
When moving a turret you can now move it to a position that overlaps it's current position
A new super-turret
Re-aligned super-turret upgrades, stats and costs

That's just the stuff I've worked on recently, there will most likely be more updates in the next release.

Kongregate Players: Sorry!

2007-08-22T23:38:00.002+01:00

It appears that there's an issue in the way that sounds are loaded into the game hosted on Kongregate. I think it's to do with the publish process not publishing the supplementary sound file as well, so for the moment to make the game work I've had to disable sound on that site.

Rest assured I'm working with the Kongregate people to fix it and hopefully everybody should have all the sound they want in good time.

Gaby

Couple more tweaks

2007-08-22T23:35:00.001+01:00

While I'm here. One new combo, read the how to play page for more information. Also check out the small slider down the bottom of the preferences pane. It can make your game go a lot quicker... :)

New Version Released

2007-08-22T10:21:00.001+01:00

I've finally bitten a bullet and decided that it's time to put the new version up. Most notable changes are:

Sound!
Numerous efficiency enhancements
Several bug fixes
Targetting mode selection (click on a turret and press T)
Target lock selection (click on a turret and press L)
Slightly updated game stats panel
Share your custom maps and play other people's shared maps too
'Send next wave immediately' functionality now works!
Attacker focus, which focuses all turrets in range onto one attacker (press F then click on an attacker)

And probably a whole other pile of things that I've just forgotten about as I've been working on this for a while now...

So far it's on the main site, and I'm talking to newgrounds.com about the multi-file nature of it. It'll be up on kongregate.com within the hour too so new sounds for all! Yay!

Update: As usual there's a few glitches when uploading a seriously altered version, and this one was to do with the way sound was loading. I think I've fixed the issue now so it ought to be loading sound from the proper place, which will in turn make the game load. Sorry about that folks!

So, make sure you clear your browser cache and check that you're running version 1084-noise, that's the version that works.

Update 2: Other major glitch found where things just suddenly stopped working after a certain combo was triggered. I think I've found the culprit and fixed it. The latest working version is 1085-noise, ensure you're running that one before submitting a bug report.

I've also tweaked the main site http://onslaught.playr.co.uk/ to makes sure it always always loads the latest version of the game when you visit it, by adding the time in seconds to the end of the game file it loads. You can't see it in practice but it's called 'cache busting', a technique to get round browser cacheing.

Newgrounds FTW!

2007-08-21T16:18:00.001+01:00

I collected the post this morning from my doormat and was delighted to find a mystery parcel, all the way from the good old US of Stateside. In it was contained:

A $250 cheque from Tom Fulp
A certificate, thanking me for my outsanding contribution to the Newgrounds community
Load of stickers
A great NG t-shirt, which I am currently wearing

All I can say is thank you to everybody who voted for the game on newgrounds.com. It's things like this that make all the effort seem worthwhile, and that make me want to keep on doing what I do.

Thanks again to everybody who helped make this happen :)

More feature preview

2007-08-12T20:52:00.001+01:00

This is not in the current version, it will be in the upcoming version

As well as being able to decide what targetting priority each turret has you can also tell it to pick a target an keep hitting it until it's out of range or make it pick a fresh target after each shot. This is target lock, and is accessed by selecting a turret and pressing L.

Lock On means it will lock onto a target as long as it is in range. Lock Off means the turret will look for a new target after each shot.

Gaby

Another upcoming efficiency improvement

2007-08-12T16:32:00.001+01:00

When a turret would target an attacker, it would build all the targetting metrics for all targetting modes (nearest, furthest, weakest, strongest) etc, then would only pick the one it wanted. The targetting function has been tweaked so it only looks at the specific metric it's using to target attackers, therefore avoiding unneccessary targetting calc and making the whole thing a little bit faster.

Turrets and rockets all use this targetting function a lot so hopefully this should make things a touch quicker.

Also, in the new version you will be able to change targetting mode for the selected turret by pressing T. This will cycle it through the targetting modes:

Weakest target in range
Strongest target in range
Slowest target in range
Fastest target in range
Nearest target in range
Furthest away target in range

Please Note: This is in the upcoming version, not in the current version yet.

Efficiency Improvements

2007-08-09T20:23:00.001+01:00

Some people have noted that when there's tons of lag, the balsts tend to hang around for a long time. This is partially because they are frame-based tweens and when the frame rate drops the animations run slower and the blasts stick around.

I've changed the way that all blasts are handled: they're all time-based animations now. This means that a blast that is supposed to hang around for 3 seconds stays there for 3 seconds, regardless of the frame rate that the game is running at.

Another efficiency improvement: all the animations are done using a VisualEffect class I wrote. Nothing fancy, just a simple tweening class. Previously it would scan every possible property that it could tween, checking for them all. I've adjusted it to only tween the properties that have actually changed. I'm not sure it'll make an enormous difference to the animation speed but anything helps. It's basically removed around 8 function calls per loop through each visual effect (visual effects run at about 25fps, they move attackers, rockets, bullets, blasts, turrets, fades, pretty much everything). You can see that this is an important possible performance gain here.

All of this is in the upcoming release that should hopefully have the long-promised sound... :)

Gaby

Next Wave Immediately!

2007-08-08T16:00:00.001+01:00

Finally got round to implementing this function, where if there are no attackers on screen then the next wave will be sent. It's what that checkbox in the game settings (start the game and press g) was intended to do, and now it does it.

Actually it was easier than I thought, so it's all good.

My sound chap is trying his best to get sound done by Friday, so hopefully I can get a shiny new version out the door by then for everybody to play with. It will have:

Upload your maps to the main site for others to play
Download shared maps created by other users
Next wave now feature
A few other misc bug fixes in the map editor
And hopefully sound! Yay!

Fingers crossed!

Gaby

Nice Email

2007-08-07T23:35:00.001+01:00

I got an email today from Tom Fulp today saying:

Congrats, you were one of the winners for BEST OF JUNE!

Turns out people actually like playing Onslaught 2 on the Newgrounds site.

For my efforts I win a sweet T-shirt, a small cash prize and my name on a certificate! W00t! Thanks to Tom and everybody who voted for my game on the site, I raise a toast to every single one of you beautiful people.

Gaby

Upcoming Feature: Map Sharing

2007-08-07T11:15:00.001+01:00

So I built a map editor for everybody to enjoy, as far as I can tell it seems to work. So the next logical step is to make it so you can upload your maps for other people to play, to be able to play other people's maps too. I think I've got it working now but it's just undergoing a few tests before I push it live.

Also (I know I keep saying this) sounds are nearly nearly nearly there. I'm using some of the $ I won from Kongregate to pay a chap called Anthony to create a complete sound set for the game. He's done some excellent stuff and i hope to get it all live soon!

Gaby

Try this.

2007-07-31T19:20:00.001+01:00

Y+Y+B+G, with the yellow turret firing...

:)

Also, very important change

2007-07-30T22:34:00.001+01:00

The biggest change (that I completely forgot about) is the brand new HP curve on the attackers. As was mentioned on the forum before the rate at which the attackers get harder has been very heavily adjusted. They are harder for the first 110 waves, then they get harder at a rate that roughly keeps pace with the amount of damage that you can afford to buy, based on the cash.

There's some complicated maths involved but I hope it all balances out, and should result ina more playable game for new and experienced players.

Also, it means you can make it to the new weapons :)

Updates!

2007-07-30T22:25:00.001+01:00

Update complete for the latest version. So we have:

Bugfixes on the map editor
Two new weapons
Smoke trails
Some more preference options related to performance

I'm sure there's other stuff too, it's been too long since my last update so I apologise for the delay.

Also, looks like I'm just about to win the monthly prize on Kongregate! Yay me! Thanks for all your support and please keep on playing :)

Hugs,

Gaby

Upcoming features

2007-07-17T18:09:00.001+01:00

Sorry for the quietude of late, been working on some new features that might interest some people:

New weapons (not saying what)
Totally new attacker HP curve
New yellow tower combo

And some more features as well, but I can't for the life of me remember what, there's so many tweaks!

In other news, I won the $250 weekly best-game prize on Kongregate.com! Yay!

Map Editor

2007-07-10T16:02:00.001+01:00

Upcoming tweaks:

Fixes to map editor, all things now appear under the info window
Added align to grid button, to force everything to the grid
Updated some documentation on the site to properly reflect FreakOut information (thanks Noober)

More as it occurs to me...

Map Editor! Penta! Updates!

2007-07-07T16:16:00.000+01:00

Yay! The new map editor is up and running for everybody to create some fantastic maps to play on. From this I've added a new map to the default lineup, Penta.

In the upcoming versions will be the ability to share your maps on the website and play other people's maps, with the best maps getting put into the game directly.

http://onslaught.playr.co.uk/

Interface tweak

2007-07-05T08:25:00.001+01:00

Mainly to the website, but at the request of one player, I've added a link under the game that allows you to pop the game out into a new window, so you can just have the smaller popup running with no fear of accidentally clicking on the forum link and losing your game.

Gaby

Almost there

2007-07-04T19:44:00.001+01:00

I'm just putting the icing on the cake for the map editor. As a special treat there may/may not be some sounds available as well, depending on if I get a final set+approval off my sound chap.

Hang on, almost there!

Gaby

Nearly there...

2007-07-03T17:13:00.001+01:00

Almost so nearly ready to release a map-editor enabled version of the game! Just going through some final testing now and hopefully you should be able to play totally customised games very shortly!

Gaby

High Score CSS Glitch Fixed

2007-06-29T16:21:00.001+01:00

There was (as usual) an issue with IE6 and the highscore table, which I have now resolved. Turns out that you can't be implicit about table widths, you have to be more explicit. Setting the table to 98% width stops it falling off the bottom of the page, so the highscores now look like highscores.

Yay for ie.

Upcoming updates

2007-06-29T12:00:00.001+01:00

For those who like to keep abreast of these things, I'm working on a map editor for Onslaught, so you can design and play your own maps. For the moment they're just for your local enjoyment but there will be facilities to upload and share maps in the near future.

Hang tight, map editor nearly done!

Gaby

BFGTazer Bug

2007-06-28T10:25:00.001+01:00

There was a bug with the BFGTazer that caused an instant kill on whatever the BFG ball hit. I've fixed this in the 1057 release so all should be well.

v1055-spoon: New Features

2007-06-25T22:56:00.001+01:00

Fingers crossed I've not broken anything too large but I've added a new feature to the yellow turrets. Drop one somewhere, open up the info panel and select the new "charge" information. The turret charges up for a bigger hit between attackers, using up some of it's charge per hit. You get a big hit to begin with then it tails off.

I'll let you all play with it and work out the specifics :)

Gaby

Onslaught on New Grounds

2007-06-25T17:26:00.001+01:00

I put Onslaught2 onto New Grounds today, so we'll see what the community think of it:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/385302

So far it's a positive response but the main point to take home is that I need sound. I'm waiting for a response from another chap about sound, so hopefully I should be able to get a basic soundset in place for the most recent version.

Scoreboard 3/4 done now

2007-06-25T17:06:00.000+01:00

Yay! The scoreboard is back up and running again!

http://onslaught.playr.co.uk/scores/scores.last.1.html

So you can see all your high scores. The final part is yet to come, where you can view other people's games. The data is being stored ready for when this part is done, but for the moment you can just see who's better than who, not why.

Enjoy!

Smelling Pistakes

2007-06-25T00:38:00.000+01:00

Plenty of nice grammatical errors spotted by OSGamer, resulting in cleaner grammar and an altogether happier Gaby.

Thanks OSGamer!

In other news, two new combos.

Gaby

Bugs bugs bugs

2007-06-24T23:47:00.000+01:00

There seem to be a few bugs in the most recent version:

Blue turrets firing a 'wall' of bullets that don't go away
Infinte (NaN) money hack
No Turret on the info panel

I think I've fixed the second two but I simply can't replicate the first one, so I can't find it to fix it. If anybody can reliably make it happen with the most recent version of the game, please drop me a comment!