Which Way Is Up?

A summary of my other game development efforts

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 23:47:00 +0300

Hey all, it's been a long time since the last Which Way Is Up release - long enough that me working on it anymore seems unlikely. However, to my surprise some people or robots still seem to follow this RSS feed, so I'll give you a short summary of what I've been up to.

Basically, I'm a part-time professional game developer now, working at a small indie/casual game company called 10tons Ltd. in Tampere. I've completed two projects so far - a casual match-3 game called Dragon Portals (PC/Mac/iPhone), and Rope Raider (iPhone). Dragon Portals didn't fare too well, but people have been very happy with Rope Raider, so I suggest you give it a spin in case you have an iTouch device. And my current upcoming casual game project is shaping up nicely, so look forward to that! After that, it's probably another smaller project under 10tons, and perhaps some even-more-indie time. 10tons.com will keep you informed in the near term, and I wholeheartedly recommend Crimsonland (PC), Azkend (PC/Mac/iPhone/iPad) and Boom Brigade (iPhone) by the other guys at the company.

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Version 0.7.9 source code released

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0300

I just haven't had the time to add the content to the game that would make version 0.8.0 finally a reality, but I do have something for you: version 0.7.9 includes all the small improvements I've managed to make to the game during the last six months, and one new level. It isn't much, but at least the code is out there now. One big feature of this release is basic level editing functionality - now you can edit the tiles of the level when the game is paused in developer mode instead of having to work on the text files by hand. The edit functionality is still in its infancy, and adding enemies and events still has to be done by hand, but that's something I'll look into too when I find the time to work on this game again. Right now I'm focusing my efforts to learning OpenGL, so it might be a while before the next version. Binaries of 0.7.9 will be published at a later date, when I get py2exe set up on my new computer. In the meantime, you might also try out that OpenGL project of mine - source code of Beat Harvester version 0.4.1 has been released and is currently available for download.

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Version 0.8.0 in progress, version 0.7.0 added to Debian

Tue, 11 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0300

After a month-long hiatus in development, work on 0.8.0 is finally well underway. Full screen support was added recently, and I've been working on the game code to make it more reusable, clean and efficient. This will make way for further development, and the generic parts of the code used in Which Way Is Up? and other Puskutraktori projects will also be released into the public domain as a separate template package called Skellington Plus. Based on the Skellington from last PyWeek, it will offer a simple and modular starting point for any Pygame-based Python game project. I've also received a patch with 7 pink levels from Nils Fagerburg - at least some of the functionality there will appear in 0.8.0, though I'm not sure about everything yet.

In other news, the older 0.7.0 version of the game has also made its way to official Debian repositories. This has sparked renewed interest in the game, in turn increasing my motivation to work on it. The package is being maintained by Miriam Ruiz. As an interesting side note, I've heard that the game has gained attention from being the first Debian package with content licensed under CC 3.0 Attribution license. Debian is famous for its strong advocacy of open source software, and apparently there has been some slight controversy about CC licenses being Debian compatible. Hopefully the inclusion of Which Way Is Up? will pave the way for other great CC-licensed work in Debian in the future.

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Version 0.7.0 out

Fri, 23 May 2007 00:00:00 +0300

Version 0.7.0. has been published. For a complete list of changes, see the changelog. Here are some of the hilights:

A new seven-level world with new kinds of puzzles and one new enemy type
A speedrun timer to measure your gaming skills
Slightly improved graphical effects and animations
Lots of minor bug fixes and improvements

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Version 0.6.5 out

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0300

Version 0.6.5. has been published.

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