Ikaroids (Xbox 360) has been entered into the Shmup (Shoot-em-up) forever contest at XBLA360.fr. Starting on September 1st the competition will run throughout September. There will be over 40 game codes given away to voters, so it’s definitely worth heading over to place your vote when the contest starts. More information to come when the competition opens for voting.
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Ikaroids HD is accepting Beta Applicants
We’ve been beavering away at our next release here at Iron Star Media Ltd and we’re happy to announce that our iPad port of Ikaroids (Ikaroids HD) is now nearing Beta Testing. We’d like to invite anyone that is interested in helping us to bring our latest creation to the market to apply to be a member of our beta testing team. It should be a lot of fun and won’t require too much of your time. If you’re interested;
Fancy Bitmap Font Generator – Development Preview
There have been some enquiries about the status of the latest version of the Fancy Bitmap Font Generator, so I wanted to post a screenshot and let you all know how it’s coming along. First of all, it’s easiest to explain how the next version of the software will work with a quick screenshot;
Preview of the Fancy Bitmap Font Generator 2 (Click to Enlarge)
In order to accommodate for all types of fonts and outputs, and even for the inclusion of the ability to make a sprite-sheet out of separate images (and apply an effect to each sprite for instance), I’ve developed a modular plugin system. It won’t allow for absolutely anything, but I think it’s a compromise between everything you would probably want to be able to do and not making it so complicated that it almost becomes a scripting environment.
So, how will it work? The process of generating a (bitmap font) sprite sheet is made up of a series of steps. First you generate the individual tiles into one large list of small tiles – these can be generated from a system font or loaded from files. Next up, you have the ability to apply FX to each individual tile in turn. The next step is to turn the large list of small icons into a small list of layers for your final image. Typically, you will just have a background layer, and then a layer that sticks all of your tiles together. We’ll include a couple of basic plugins for ‘fixed spacing’ or ’smallest spritesheet’ etc. Next up, you can apply an effect to each of the completed layers which will apply to the layer as a whole. Finally, you can tell the software when / where / how to save the files (these will also be like the other plugin lists in the final version).
As each of the 5 stages loads a list of modules from external DLL files, this means that there is, theoretically, no end to what you can achieve in each of the stages.
If you have any requirements that I might not be aware of for the next version of the software so that it suits your project, I’d love to hear them. It’s best to hear them now while I’m compiling plug-ins than in a month’s time when it’s all wrapped up!
Thanks for checking in.
Ikaroids – Now only 80 Microsoft Points
With our next XNA title well underway, we’re excited to announce that Ikaroids has been reduced in price to only 80 Microsoft Points. That’s right, for only a dollar you can get your hands on an action packed dual stick shooter with over 20 campaign levels and 9 survival stages.
Ikaroids - Action Packed Arcade Shooter for only 80MSP
Plans have begun for a sequel to Ikaroids that will bring the space shooter genre into the 21 century. Because of this, we’d love to hear what you think about the first one. Let us know of things that you like and don’t like about the game by leaving us comments around this blog or by getting in touch with us directly.
Read more about Ikaroids or head over to the XBox Live Marketplace now and buy Ikaroids for only 80MSP!
Free Game Assets 10; Photo Quality Textures
Hello everyone, something for you here – a selection of hi-res photo-quality textures, some of which tile and some that are standalone. In all there are 7 tiling textures, and 5 that do not. We’ve placed them on our newly added assets area for your enjoyment – you can find the textures, along with our other free assets, here.
Included, among others are:
- Concrete
- Brick wall
- Cork board
- Manhole cover
Enjoy!
Sorry everyone, hang in there!
Apologies to all, unfortunately there won’t be any free assets this week, as we’re pretty snowed under. However, don’t lose heart, as we plan to make it up to you next week with something a little bit special. See you then, and again, sorry for the wait!
Free Game Assets 09; Generic Platform Game Tiles
First of all, sorry this is a couple of days late, but hopefully you’ll find some use for it regardless. This week, up for download is a set of generic platform game tiles, although if you can find another use for them, feel free! Also included for kicks are sprites for a key item and a coin item. Below is a sample screen showing an example of the tiles in action:
Example screen showing how the tiles fit together.
Free Game Dev Utility; Fancy Bitmap Font Generator
We are happy to announce the initial testing release of our Fancy Bitmap Font Generator utility for Game Developers. While specifically designed for XNA developers to quickly add nice sprite fonts to their games, I’m sure you could use this in a large variety of environments without too much pain.
Fancy Bitmap Font Generator Screenshot (Click to Enlarge)
To read more about this free utility, please head over to the Iron Star Media Fancy Bitmap Font Generator page.
Win your copy of Ikaroids (3 chances to win)
Ikaroids is a fast-paced dual-stick shooter for the Xbox 360 that is available now on the Xbox Live Marketplace. With over 23 campaign stages and a challenging survival mode, Ikaroids combines the classic arcade-style shooter with modern-day physics and effects.
Screenshot from Ikaroids (Xbox 360)
This week, we’re giving away 3 copies of Ikaroids. For your chance to win a free copy of Ikaroids, simply tweet what your favourite ship is. Do you like the time-stopping Leander, the hard-hitting Kohlaraja, the defensive Pioneer or the technologically advanced Santus Rho?
Download the trial version to find out what your favourite ship is now!
In order to enter this competition, simply post a tweet in a similar format to the following from any twitter account and put the name of your favourite ship in the tweet! Deadline for entries is 1pm (GMT) on Friday 15th January 2010. Good luck!
“I’ve been playing #Ikaroids and my favourite ship is [Insert Ship Name]. Ikaroids – http://bit.ly/6Vv0fC”
For your entry to be valid, it must include the hashtag #Ikaroids (so we can find it), a valid name of a ship from Ikaroids and a link to the Ikaroids webpage. The winning entrant will be chosen at random on Friday 15th January and the winners will be announced on this website. Winning entrants will be contacted by Monday 18th January by direct message on Twitter.
Ikaroids Patch 1.07 Released
We are happy to announce that the first official patch for Ikaroids is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Patch 1.07 (excuse the strange numbering system) addresses a few issues that were affecting some players with regards to the logic of the survival stages. We have also added persistent options to the game so that you can set the sound effect volume and the music volume independently. Hopefully now the explosion sound effects will balance nicely with the background music on your uber hi-fis! Last, but not least, you can now brag about your hi-scores to a friend directly from the console.
If you already have your copy of Ikaroids, your Xbox should automatically download the latest version. If you’ve not yet bought Ikaroids – then what are you waiting for? Head over to the Xbox Live Marketplace to download it now.
Screenshot from Ikaroids - Arcade Shooter for the Xbox 360
If you’re still in doubt, here are what some of the Peer Reviewers said;
“Very polished and very cool. Nice lighting on the Avatars as well.”
“Very polished game you have. I enjoyed playing it, it looked and played great.”
“It didn’t take long to realise that this is a really well polished game, really enjoyed it.“
Merry Christmas!
We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas from the Iron Star Media offices. We hope that you have some great festivities planned and that you have a well deserved break from work and real life!
Keep your eyes peeled for more game developer freebies and some free copies of Ikaroids that we’ll be giving away in the near future.
Ikaroids; Now Available on the Xbox Live Marketplace!
Our first Xbox Live Indie Games title ‘Ikaroids’ is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace! Ikaroids is an action packed twin-stick arcade style shooter wtih a unique physics and game engine that encourages you to use parts of the scenary in a defensive manner while avoiding devastating collisions with the asteroids. The main campaign features 23 varied missions with a massive variety of bad-guys, bosses and story-twists. When you’ve mastered all three difficulty levels of the main campaign there are 9 addictive survival stages for you to challenge. If that were not enough, you can play through the game alone or in co-op mode and you can submit your high scores to an online scoreboard using your PC.
You can download Ikaroids from your Xbox by browsing to Game Marketplace -> Indie Games. There you can list games by title and find Ikaroids for your gaming fun. Alternatively, you can buy Ikaroids from your PC, so that it’ll simply download and install the next time you turn on your Xbox. Download Ikarois now from the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Ikaroids: Playtesting… Nearly there
Well, Ikaroids is very, very close to a final release, we’re just in that last no-man’s land known as playtesting. Which basically amounts to us, and anyone else willing to do so, playing the hell out of this game. It also means that the above screens are a little out of date, as so much has changed since!
The XNA playtesting community has been utterly invaluable. The people there have been amazingly helpful, not pulling any punches when it comes to pointing out what could be improved, little nasty bugs that slipped by us, and giving us a valuable perspective that you can sometimes lose when you’ve been working on a game for this many months.
They’ve also told us that while the game is difficult, it’s also fun to play. And this is music to our ears. So after we get over this final run of playtesting, and there’s no further issues we’re aware of, Ikaroids will be unleashed on the general public on the XBox Marketplace! We hope everyone else enjoys it as much as the great folks at the XNA playtesting community do. They’ve been a massive help, and gone a long way to keeping us focussed. Thanks a lot guys!
Development starts on second Xna title
Iron Star Media have started work on their second XNA title while Ikaroids goes through it’s second bout of playtesting.
We’ll be posting a development diary as we work through every decision and step in our game ‘Sentinel’. This will hopefully help budding developers see the steps that we go through and learn from our successes and failures!
Game Programming & Design Blog
We are launching this blog as a place to post information that we learn during our trials and tribulations as learning independent game developers. Hopefully, over time, the information on these pages will flourish into a useful resource, or at least prove as an interesting reference and a good read.
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