Vampire Castle Preview Minor Update

I've been working this weekend on Vampire Castle so I've updated the preview version available to download.

Changes:
- Money now needed before play starts (press R button to add cash).
- Money is deducted.
- Fruit machines can now be completely wiped from memory to load another (but still only one machine available) - I love my fruit machine model component propagation :).
- A couple of wild pointers fixed.
- Bonus 4 stopper partially implemented (only climbs the trail).
- Copyrights updated.

Download (ROM image, needs Nintendo DS emulator or DS homebrew card and preferably rumble pack):
The Fruit Machine - Vampire Castle Preview NDS

Vampire Castle - Preview Release

Regular readers will have noticed I've been busy with other software projects and ignoring my Nintendo DS project "The Fruit Machine - Vampire Castle". Motivation and relative difficulty* to other software projects I've worked on have meant that this stopped development after I implemented a generic(ish) Fruit Machine framework and the part of the initial reference game "Vampire Castle".

Today I'll be restarting development on this project and to show good faith I've released the existing compiled binary and set up a sub project on this blog.

The current preview software is really a tech demo (hopefully with a commercial feel), but behind the scenes for developers there is a large amount of reusable framework implemented that isn't yet being fully utilised by Vampire Castle. This should make it easier for other developers to enhance/update/build on for their own fruit machines (it was my intention to write and include multiple machines but as I'm not a graphics artist the graphics and sound work wears me out very fast so I won't be doing this - at least initially).

What you'll find in this preview

- Intro screens
- Working reels and touchscreen actions
- Music and sound (sampled locally!)
- Working trails
- Rumble pack support

* Most of my time was spent on sound samples, graphics and QAing existing code for memory leaks - C++ is my third most used language thus I'm just an average developer at it :)

Video:
You Tube Video (doesn't do the demo justice)

Downloads:
Download Vampire Castle Preview NDS
C++ source code will be available on the official release date.

The Fruit Machine Vampire Castle Ramp Up

Last weekend I spent Sunday rewriting the The Fruit Machine - Vampire Castle "event model", to put this simply, the existing system couldn't handle the combinations of clicks and options available on the fruit machine without some major code ugliness and risk of bugs.

The code is now in a state to progress it further feature wise. I particularly want to make it easier (not easy - because it isn't) for other developers to develop similar fruit machines using a shared fruit machine framework.

Two key parts of the framework are:
- An abstract fruit machine component "model" (a fruit machine consists of boards, which consists types of components such as buttons, lights etc), these have common features and functions that are exposed by the API
- A "pull" event framework. Instead of a central monolithic piece of code making decisions based on lot of variables (e.g. has start been pressed, are we spinning a reel, are we on the top board etc) and having button clicks setting off this behaviour ("pushing the data") there are now individual pieces of code "event handlers" to do the work. The event handlers are told to work out whether they individually in turn need to do anything and can ask the abstract fruit machine ("pulling the data") to return the states of components to find out whether anything should be done.

I'm thinking of GPL for the licence, however I may make additional modifications to the licence to ensure Silent Software remains as an acknowledgement on any splash screens.

Vampire Castle Progress

I spent a a whole day trying to move from the PALib library to libnds to make Vampire Castle future proof, unfortunately this proved to be more time consuming than I hoped and backed out the changes (two key problems arose - I can't use anim gifs, and I couldn't alter screen brightness without a lot of faff*). I also didn't fancy rescripting lots of PAGfx ini files to Grit scripts (i.e. the graphics resources). Perhaps further down the line I can do this conversion, but for the moment I don't want to kill programming momentum by getting stuck in the minutae.

After the roll back I added rumble pack support and some new sound effects, this has added to the realism greatly, especially when the fruit reels stop and you feel physical "ker-chunks" and "dunk" sound effects.
Hitting the bonus 4 points now also starts the feature stopper mode that will get you to the top board, although the stopper doesn't yet stop :)

I'm expecting to release either a demo or the full version within the next month or so, source code and revised releases will follow (at the very least a new youtube video will be available soon). One thing I am toying with is displaying cut scenes for collecting your winnings and so on - this is dependent on me having time.

Oh and I briefly looked at LocateMe 1.0.1 beta to help a (potential) user adding in some minor bug fixes - this code hasn't been released and probably won't be as I intend to do some refactoring to better support phone integrated GPS.

* Wintermute on #dsdev mentioned the next version of libnds will have a brightness function I can use - thanks :)

Rumble Pack Support in Vampire Castle

Luckily nobody from the NDS scene has caught onto this project yet which is quite nice because I can spend more time on QA and less dropping alpha versions out of the door. A good example of QA is work I've done today, whilst not largely progressing the development I have looked at adding rumble pack support (useful for simulating money falling into the fruit machine tray amongst other things) and cosmetic changes, such as "Click to play" becoming "Tap to play".

The end deliverables will be

- The Fruit Machine - Vampire Castle game.
- The Fruit Machine API - a framework for developing other fruit machines easily (although in C++, nothing high level I'm afraid).
- Fully documented source code.
- All of the source code, graphics and sound, including all content not used.

Vampire Castle Video Update

I've made significant progress on my first Nintendo DS game "The Fruit Machine - Vampire Castle" but I'm disappointed that an audio recording I had of a genuine chav/wine-o hassling me whilst I recorded sound effects for the game has been accidentally deleted and the player I had the recording on has since broke (don't trust Aldi/Tevion - 3 of these players broke for me with software freezes). Useless Fascin8 support who are the warranty providers for ALDI for this product told me because it was out of warranty now I couldn't have another. This is highly disputable by UK law (a good has to be free of defects, fit for purpose and I need to have "enjoy quiet possession of the goods" - which clearly three returns shows I have not). So rather than return the player again for another breakable one I'll simply warn others and not buy more ALDI high tech goods.

Anyway rant over - enjoy the video

Vampire Castle Update

I've spent the entire weekend designing and writing the model behind the "The Fruit Machine", the first instalment is "Vampire Castle". I haven't yet decided whether there will be other machines, however the code is entirely a -well designed- *1* tier event driven "Fruit Machine" model. Simply put, the design mirrors an "abstract" fruit machine, with abstract boards, abstract components, etc etc, and so has a clear defined structure, allowing for multiple differing implementations, i.e. fruit machines to "sit on top". The domain logic (the features) are tightly integrated into the implementation because I need to keep memory overhead low and the logic is highly specific to the implementation, i.e. the Vampire Castle machine.

Although my time is mostly limited to weekends I would estimate a release within the next month.

Vampire Castle Screenshot (Nintendo DS)

I'm overdue for a blog post due to job searching, DIY and spending time on graphics for my Nintendo DS game, The Fruit Machine - Vampire Castle. The graphics (vampire and all) were drawn by hand on paper, scanned and GIMPed, reels were shaded and rendered using my own utility program (apologies for the quality of screenshot - the jpegs were compressed with MS Snipping Tool). As you might expect, I'm not a graphics designer so this has been the longest part (particularly lighting up the sprites, i.e. on and off states). The bottom screen is complete (yes the trail is meant to look a little amateurish, a "cartoony" look against the realism of the buttons and reels), I'm still working on the top. As for sound, well I spent a good £5 sampling random fruit machines at a local arcade, so my own hard earned money went into this, all in the name of research of course.

The code is only ~10% complete just enough to load sprites and play some rudimentary button, reel and collect sounds, this allows me to test the graphics and noises. Basically it's a sound board. The good news is I don't think the program and logic will take long to code and I have a basic idea of the code design structure.
In case you were wondering - the box with text in on the lower screen is a scrolling LCD style display - not a code crash :)

There's also going to be a (nice) surprise for anyone who wins the jackpot prize.

As for the source code, well I haven't yet decided whether to make it open source, but it will probably be GPL 2.

Upcoming exclusive free software schedule

Below I present an estimated schedule of upcoming software available here (free):

Product	Features	Estimated completion date
Vampire Castle 1.0 (Nintendo DS)	First release of this game	Late August/early to mid September
Gesture Magic 1.1 (Windows)	New built in gesture actions (e.g close window), better accessor keys, amongst other small improvements (this is a minor improvement release)	September
A new Nintendo DS project (I can't reveal more until this goes into production - sorry, however this project has already been planned ahead)	Includes wifi, mapping, video, some smooth jazz and advertising (NOT INTRUSIVE - trust me, this is a feature you'll enjoy :) )	December/January (I'm looking for a Christmas Day release)
Aerofoil Extra 1.0 (Windows) Aerofoil versions 1.4.1/.2 have proven so popular I'm creating a "pro" version. Aerofoil 1.4, due to its designed simplicity and small size will become "Aerofoil Lite". At least this is the intention. Lets see how it goes...	Subject to change - power managed hardware disabling, customisable process shutdowns on low power, XP compatibility, benchmarking and time estimates, task priority adjustments based on power mode, possibly written in C++ (not C# as per original).	February/March 2009

P.S. Google Analytics tells me Silent Development has now hit a new peak of 170 hits in a day - so whoever the "silent" hoards are - thanks for making this blog so popular, I'll try and keep the content original and fresh! :)

Aerofoil receives more high praise, Vampire Castle on the way

Two news items today - reviewingit.com have done a full page review of my tiny Aerofoil application - more praise! Thanks guys!

I'm also working on my first free Nintendo DS game, the first part in the series goes by the name "Vampire Castle". It's not moving as fast as I'd like because it's the second time I have ever used C++ since leaving university in 2000(!), and the graphics and sound are very time consuming for one person whose main tools are a pencil, scanner and GIMP!

I'm keeping this one under tight wraps for now, but it is progressing (first builds should be out in a couple of months - a realistic timescale) and hopefully it will be an award winner too.