Slightly Magic Time!

What's the hour, you ask in rhyme - on your Pebble, it's Slightly Magic time!

Potassium Frog. Official watch designer to Bigwiz the Wizard.

Big day today. As well as Deus Ex Machina and Slighly Magic on Steam, we've got a third launch at the Pebble appstore.

Clearing the Decks

It's been a funny few months, with a slew of new releases lined up for the Frog.

We'll be putting Deus Ex Machina and Slightly Magic on Steam, in their almost certainly final versions. Deus is down for 30th September release, and I'm toying with the idea of releasing Slightly Magic the same day, which happens to be my birthday.

I'd go so far as to say that both games are now the definitive versions, and that my two years or so programming them have mainly been well spent. They're both important games in my opinion, and it'll be a weight of my shoulders to see them given a proper release on PC, Mac and Linux.

There are another couple of surprises for Slightly Magic, but I'm still sworn to secrecy on that front. I thought I'd just write a few things about this final Legacy edition, while it's still fresh in my mind.

When I got Slightly back, me initial reaction was to sit down and take a good look at the game to see how the old fella looked. It had been 20 years or so since I'd played the game, and monitors have improved dramatically. I was shocked at how good the graphics looked, at least to me. Yes, they were retro, but because the game came in at the later end of the 8-bit machines' lifetime they still seem to hold up quite nicely. Chris Graham did a fantastic job, and to be honest I really wanted more people to see the game.

I thought the natural thing to do was to reprogram the game, clean up the original, remove a few machine-specific quirks and let others be the judge. Which is where we seem to be now.

Playing the final game yesterday afternoon, I realised just what I'd done - this game is better than the original. Yes, I dare to say, free from any nostalgia-tinted spectacles this is the version I'd want people to play - the PC, Mac & Linux Legacy Edition.

Why would that be, you might ask. The graphics, for one, don't flicker in play. Not just the Spectrum attribute-clash flicker, but flickers on screen redraws and speech and menu popups. Plus I do like the new in-game commentary option, because I'll never have the chance to do that again for the game.

Oh, and the save game, gamepad mapping and audio extras add a certain polish, which I think players of the original would have appreciated. Fast loading, crisp graphics and audio, and the experience of playing on a large tv with a wireless gamepad make for a very rewarding experience.

What next, after September, you might ask? Well I'll be running a Kickstarter starting August 15th, for a brand-new game featuring Slightly. More news on that very soon. It's a whole new format and a whole new style, but I'm hoping to carry Slightly's legacy forward.

The Making of Slightly Magic

How fast does 25 years pass? In the blinking of an eye, I fear. For it really was 25 years ago that my game Slightly Magic was released. I'm always a little nervous when I release something new, but in Slightly's case I needn't have been. 

He's done me proud over the years, and so I couldn't let this anniversary pass without throwing a magical bean feast. Actually there'll be more than one magical event this year, but I'm sworn to secrecy on the others for a while.

However, as a party-starting taster for the awesomeness that's yet to come, a new full-colour art book is available now on Amazon. It's called 'The Making of Slightly Magic' and features some fascinating insights from myself together with the marvellous artwork of Chris Graham. It's well worth a look if you've an interest in games, retro or modern.

This is a lazy game, but what's wrong with lazy?

Something struck me the other day when looking through the comments for Cheshire's Cheese Nightmares on Steam Greenlight. Some people seemed to be implying that it was a lazy game.

That statement probably sums up the game quite well, I thought, but probably for different reasons. 

What's wrong with lazy?

We wouldn't call a musician lazy for recording a song with a single guitar and vocals. We wouldn't call an artist lazy for producing a sketch or a quick watercolour. So why is a video game lazy for not trying to be anything else other than a half-hour or so of easy relaxation? Lazy gameplay; relax and unwind.

Slightly Magic

I am 'putting myself out there' again. Always a little stressful. 

The reason? Steam, I've found out by handling Deus Ex Machina 2, is an invaluable platform for getting your games in the public eye. 

To get one of your games on Steam it needs to go through a submission process, Steam Greenlight. Games players vote on whether they'd like to see your game available on Steam. 

I'd been wondering about submitting Slightly Magic to Steam, but to be honest thought it might be too retro to catch the imagination of today's players. Anyhow, a couple of recent heart warming emails persuaded me to give it a go. 

If you've a Steam account you can vote for Slightly here. Of course, every 'no' vote is a knife through my heart, which is why 'putting myself out there' is a little stressful. Ah, well.

Rock Bottom

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I spent over a year of my life programming various versions of Deus Ex Machina, probably the wierdest game of all time.

So, a mere 30 years later, and the game is now packaged neatly with the sequel, the ebook and the soundtracks. How much? To you $2, if you get there fast enough. I kid ye not.

https://groupees.com/deusexmachina

How did this even happen?

Slightly Magic has got to the point where it's being playtested within an inch of its life. What I've noticed is:

1. The touch controls on phones and tablets work pretty well, without taking up any screen estate. 

2. Allister's music is as fresh as ever, and has never sounded better. 

3. Joystick control on consoles is, erm... a joy. 

I think I've remained faithful to the original, although there are one or two extras included.

I'll be spending a few days next week recording the audio commentary, then it'll be a matter of negotiating the numerous app stores and finally plumping for a release date. I love a good plump.

www.slightlymagic.co.uk

Slightly Magic will return...

Thanks to everyone who tweeted, blogged, facebooked and wrote about the campaign to bring back Slightly Magic. I’m pleased to say that work has already begun on the classic edition of Slightly Magic for OUYA, Mac. PC, Linux, iOS and Android. Slightly Magic will be released in June/July 2014.

www.slightlymagic.co.uk

‘Slightly Magic does what few other games do. It takes a garbage truck full of fun and makes daily deliveries!’
89% Sinclair User
‘The graphics and presentation are excellent too – full of colour and some nice bits of animation… All in all, Slightly Magic is, well, absolutely ‘magic” Your Sinclair 94%
Your Sinclair Readers Top 100 Games of All Time

Dazzling Graphics of a Future Age

Clockwork the Mouse, an already stunning cartoon adventure for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch now supports retina graphics on all devices (where available). A free iPad update is now live in the app store if you've purchased already. The extra detail on the already beautiful screens now looks amazing. Really.

'a beautiful hand-drawn adventure'

Retro Gamer Magazine

Available now for iPhone and iPod Touch:

Available now on iPad:

Fascinating Videogames Fact number 201

I found that writing computer games wasn’t really all that difficult. You just had to be persistent. And deranged. Because if you weren’t deranged at the start of a game, you’d sure be by the end of it.

You thought of an idea for a game, then worked out a flowchart. That’s what I did anyhow.

For my first game I seem to remember typing hexadecimal numbers into the Sinclair Spectrum. I’d written the program and translated the assembly language instructions into hex. One thing I remember is leaving blank commands in case extra code was needed. I don’t think I could add lines, only type over them. Things soon changed, but that’s how I remember writing my first game.

You needed graphics too. Get a sheet of graph paper and fill in 8x8 grids in black and white. Take those grids and make a binary number for each line, putting a 1 for black and a 0 for white. Or vice versa. Then type those into the program. No sweat.

The Sinclair Spectrum had the added feature of a color map, where each 8x8 group of pixels could have one ink and one paper color. Woohoo.

Fascinating Videogames Fact number 201:

Spectrum resolution: 256x192 pixels
iPad3 resolution: 2058x1536
That’s exactly 8 times in both directions.
So you could fit 64 spectrum games onto one iPad screen all at one time.

Retina Display Ate my Brain - Trade Secrets of Game Graphics Part 1

Since the news is out that the new iPad is going to have the best display ever on any thing which ever existed, it might be a good time to talk a little about graphics. I'll do a 'then and now' post at a later date, but here's how I've been preparing my graphics for my next app.

I've been using the most advanced drawing tools known to mankind - pencil and paper! No really, I've leapfrogged the whole image resolution problem so that I always have access to a near-infinite resolution original, only limited by scanner technology. Future-proofed for a hidden reality.

The artwork is scanned at 600 dots per inch and colored in Photoshop. That gives me a pretty generous size for most purposes, even for print work.

Once the coloring is finished, I prepare 3 extra copies of the screens for the final app, as well as the non-compressed original.

The three extra copies are saved as jpegs, each half the size of the previous, the biggest being 2048x1536. That leaves me with one graphic for pretty much every type of display, including the new iPad Retina.

I tend to save the jpegs at a high quality setting, and use png's if I need transparency. I need the three resolutions for every image; sprites, backgrounds, buttons, whatever. My fonts are always scaleable.



Next Scheduled post is still Friday.