The Genesis Centre

I just wanted to make a quick post saying that I am very pleased (and excited!) to announce that Celsius Game Studios is the latest client of The Genesis Centre. The centre is a technology start-up incubator run by Memorial University and seems to be a pretty awesome place to get my bearings as I try to develop and grow CGS as a company.

Also Chromodyne HD had a nice positive review from Simple Reviews last month, which is pretty cool! Thanks Parth!

In the meantime, my next mini-project is coming along nicely. I don’t want to say too much at this point as it’s very prototype-y but let’s just say it will involve shooting hot plasma death at evil aliens and blowing them the hell up. Oh yes.

I may have some screenshots by the weekend depending on how quickly I can finish these last few art assets to make it sexy and awesome.

In an effort to try and increase the visibility of Chromodyne, I’ve done gone and created a Lite version! As it is FREE, I ask you kindly to check it out, as maybe you’ll like what you see

You can get Chromodyne Lite on the App Store here: itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chromodyne-lite/id369298294?mt=8

The Chromodyne Lite Press Release Follows:

Celsius Game Studios is proud to present Chromodyne Lite, the free version of its unique and exciting match-3 puzzle game, Chromodyne! Chromodyne Lite is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch, on the Apple App Store.

Chromodyne Lite features a brand new 5 chapter story introducing the player to the Chromodyne as they work their way through the Chromodynamic Academy’s accredited Accelerated Chromodyne Operator’s Course. Through this program, you too can learn the skills necessary to save the world from impending doom from outer space!

“Course?” You say.

“That sounds like it might be expensive…” You say.

You would say that, wouldn’t you?

Well, you might expect to pay tens of thousands of dollars and rack up years of crushing student debt at some “university” to learn how to save the world. Not so at the Chromodynamic Academy. No, you too can learn all this today for the low, low price of FREE!

Not only do you get this valuable training, but you’ll also find that Chromodyne Lite offers fun and challenging 3D match-3 gameplay, colourful and striking visual effects, and an awesome soundtrack by Kevin MacLeod.

If you’re saying: “Well, I can’t possibly go wrong with that! Plus I can’t argue with free… Especially when you put it in all caps like that!” I’d suggest you follow this link and give it a try: itms://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chromodyne-lite/id369298294?mt=8

For shits and giggles I decided to try and emulate the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey in Blender. I present to you Chromodyne: A Match-3 Odyssey. I think I did a pretty good job, don’t you?

With (many) apologies to Mr. Kubrick.

In other, more serious news not related to me cocking about making movies, I submitted Chromodyne Lite to Apple for approval in the wee hours of the morning. Here’s hoping it won’t be stuck there for long!

They call it the “Race to the Bottom” on the App store, where everyone tends to price their app towards 99 cents because they feel that will compel people to buy their app because it’s so cheap. Well, I’m not so sure that is working anymore. Also with the new finish line apparently being set at $0, I think I’m going to pull out of this race.

Put a big “Did Not Finish” next to Celsius Game Studios in the Great Race to the Bottom as even if we reached the finish line, nobody is winning.

Partially inspired by this Gamasutra article “The 0.99 Problem” by Canabalt Co-creator Adam Saltsman, the huge amount of noise at the 99 cent level, and by the fact that if people want to play my games they’ll also more than likely pay a reasonable price for it, CGS games going forward will not be priced permanently at $0.99. To prevent future cries of hypocrisy I’ll state now that you may see a sale at $0.99, but at the very least that’s the new Free for a Day as far as I’m concerned.

On my part I promise I’ll continue to deliver games that are worth more than 99 cents to you, my wonderful audience.

To that end, the $0.99 “introductory sale” on Chromodyne for the iPhone and iPod Touch will be ending this weekend and as of Monday, April 12th, it will be priced at the still inexpensive $1.99.

Mark it in your calendar. Or not.

Thank you for your continued support

Well, the iPad is out and Chromodyne was successfully ported after a marathon session of epic proportions. Amusingly, Chromodyne HD was submitted after Chromodyne v1.1 and was approved before. Some may say I amuse easily, but I was amused.

The Port

Thanks to some experience writing game engines for other platforms before, about 90-95% of Chromodyne’s graphics code was already resolution independent. After updating my XCode to the 3.2 Gold Master, I clicked the handy little “Convert this project to iPad” menu option and was playing Chromodyne in the simulator in mere minutes! Though everything else was really horrible looking because none of the 2D assets were scaled properly and some of the menus looked like crap on the huge screen.

So really, most of my time was spent creating high-res 2D graphics (even though the cutscenes are pixel art, for the most part, those are seriously high-def pixels!) and fiddling with the perspective/view on the gamefield because it was way too freaking big keeping the same perspective as the iPhone version.

I don’t know about the final build yet, but the simulator in the GM release of the SDK didn’t have 3D acceleration! I can understand why some devs were reluctant to release their apps sight-unseen to the App Store.

The iPad Only Version

If anyone actually wonders why I went with a stand-alone iPad version of Chromodyne, the biggest motivator is that the app bundle for the HD version with its 1024×768 graphics assets is larger than the 20 MB OTA limit. Basically I still want people to be able to get the iPhone version over 3G.

The Price

I’m also selling Chromodyne HD for $1.99 instead of 99 cents. I figure the larger, higher resolution game experience warrants a slightly higher price point. We’ll see how that plays out in the days to come anyway… at least I can have a sale at some point without going directly to free. Definitely something I regret when I priced Chromodyne originally.

The Numbers

I’m half-tempted to post sales numbers for Chromodyne HD as time wears on. If anything to see how things are going. I’ve seen that the game lists for the iPad don’t have any top lists for subcategories yet, which is pretty bad news for small devs such as myself. Sales for Chromodyne have not been anything to write home about, but they’ve been steady at least.

Anyway it’s been a fairly exciting few days, and at least I can say I was here from the start. Whatever that actually means, only time will tell.

Well, Apple finally released their oft-speculated-upon tablet, the iPad, today. The response I’ve been seeing across the interwebs has ranged from comments reminding me of the hubris inducing pessimism surrounding the launch of the iPod, to the completely ridiculous sort of grandstanding that comes about whenever the press catches hold of something that’s “going to change the world!”; like, how it’s going to kill the mouse and keyboard or something. That’s like saying the computer will kill paper and pens, or the Segway will kill walking, or… ingesting pop rocks and soda killed Mikey. See what I’m saying?

What about me? Small game designer/developer guy you probably haven’t even heard of until now? I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle, and the iPad is balancing on a knife-edge between success and failure.

Stick with me here.

I think where the iPad’s potential lies is as a beefed up PDA/planner with the capabilities of an eBook reader and some of the power of a laptop, like editing documents and viewing large videos, while still being in a small form factor with an amazing battery life.

The problem with the iPad, at least as far as I can tell, is that Apple has actually created the iPad’s worst competitor. By placing the iPad as a device in between PDAs and laptops, Apple believes that they are competing with inexpensive netbooks, but in reality, I think that the iPad’s biggest barrier for growth will be it’s older, yet shorter brother, the iPhone!

Look at it this way: the iPad instead of being a small laptop without a physical keyboard, ports, etc., is more like a large iPod Touch or iPhone without the phone and camera parts. People are going to look at their iPhone and think “why would I want an iPad? My iPhone does practically everything I need it to do and more, and it’s more portable to boot.” It’s an even worse value proposition if these people have laptops already. The problem is that by making the iPad behave more like an iPhone and less like a laptop, many people, I think at least, will view this as an iPad vs. iPhone question rather than an iPad vs. netbook or laptop question.

Don’t take this as me completely writing off the iPad. I don’t think it’s going to be a Segway, but I’m not really sure if it will end up being an iPhone or iPod. I do think it will find it’s place in the market, but I think that iPhone OS and the hardware may need to go through a few revisions before it can really get a proper foothold.

I suppose I should talk about gaming and the iPad while I have you here, seeing as that’s kinda my thing.

First off, I think that we’re probably going to see a divide between gaming on the iPad and the iPhone/iPod Touch. Nothing huge but because of the iPhone’s phenomenal success, I think that there will still be a massive demand for small form-factor games that specifically target the iPhone. On the other side of that coin I think that the iPad, by being larger with more power and having a higher resolution will allow more freedom of expression for game developers. But this is good! More choice is never a bad thing when it becomes trivially easy to port your software between these devices, you just have to make sure you design your software with an eye towards running on many devices (this was a good idea before the iPad, in case you didn’t get that memo).

Earlier today I read an article suggesting that the iPad was going to be end of the sort of small developer that found success on the iPhone because it allowed for small teams to produce small games but reach a large audience. I definitely don’t see that as an lesson to take away from the iPad. I do agree 100% that developing games on the iPad, specifically to take advantage of the iPad hardware, will be more time and money intense, however it’s not like the iPad is going to kill the iPhone. Hell, I’d even go so far as make the rash and wildly assumptive statement that most small iPhone devs can blissfully ignore the existence of the iPad and still be able to make a comfortable living selling their wares to iPhone owners (as they are legion).

My personal goal is to see Celsius Game Studios games on the PS3 and 360, so I’m not dreading the iPad. Quite the contrary, I view it as yet another exciting platform with a potential audience for my games.

Also, much like “Wii” humanity will somehow come to terms with “iPad.” You can quote me on that.

Just wanted to drop you all a note saying that I am forging ahead with my plans to turn Celsius Game Studios into something more than a hobby in my spare time. I really do love creating video games and I’ve been thinking about making my own company to do this for over 12 years now, it’s unfortunate it took me this long to stop being afraid about “what if it doesn’t work” and just realize it’s more important to get out there and kick some ass and do awesome things. I’ll be spending the next few months easing out of my current job before I can fully spin up the turbines at Celsius. However I have started pre-planning my next title, which you will find out about soon enough

I still have a lot of hard work ahead of me, business plans, and funding and all that crazy scary stuff, but rest assured this is the real deal. I just wanted to let everyone know that awesome things are in the pipes, but that I have a lot on my plate right now so I hope you’re understanding while I work on them all at the same time.

To that effect I wanted to say that I’m still working on the 1.1.0 update for Chromodyne, and it will be out Real Soon Now.

Things that will definitely be in the update:

• Improved game timing, reducing the time between a match being made and the play field being active again
• 3D lighting has been improved
• Cutscenes are now skippable
• Improved load times slightly and added spinner when loading

Things that I’m currently working on for the update, which will hopefully make it in:

• Alternate control style, currently testing a few final candidates
• Online leaderboards, working on securely transmitting scores

Until next time!

So, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything to ye old blag. I just wanted to let anyone concerned that yes, I am still alive!

Since I last wrote to you, Chromodyne has gotten two more positive reviews from TruthBombers and AppGirl Reviews, which is always very encouraging.

My Real Job(tm) has been rather hectic as of late, so I’m a bit behind on the first update for Chromodyne, but most of the madness has passed so I’m getting back into the swing of things there.

Speaking of madness, and my Real Job(tm), after quite a lot of deliberation I’ve finally decided that I’m going to follow my dream and try and make Celsius Game Studios into my Real Job(tm)! I have a lot of work ahead of me in the coming months, but I think I have some great ideas to work on that could only be realized by a creative effort with more than just myself working at it. Luckily I’ve got the support of my family, friends and current employer so I think this might lead to some amazing things. Stay tuned for more exciting news as time permits