Year: 2017

Adobe will stop updating and distributing Flash in 2020

Today’s news: https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html
Era of Flash games is over. 🙁
I guess, it’s time to start converting all my games to HTML5.
From one side, it’s such a waste of time for me…
But from other side, I can see a good opportunity here, as lots of flash gaming portals will close and all their players can be mine! 😎

All-Peaks Solitaire released

Finally, I have released the last part of All-Peaks Solitaire: a free version of the game for iPhone and iPad.
It took me so long because of this problem with Admob Extension for OpenFL: https://github.com/openfl/extension-admob/issues/31
The problem was recently fixed and now every iOS user can enjoy playing All-Peaks Solitaire game.
iPhone: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/all-peaks-solitaire/id1224751098
iPad: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/all-peaks-solitaire-hd/id1224812168

Now, I can get back to current projects: All-in-One Solitaire 2 and Bouncing Bubbles.

All-in-One Solitaire 2, work in progress

One of the biggest issue with first part of All-in-One Solitaire was super bad code written by me.
So doing any modification was quite painful.
Game “Undo” action was one of the things, that caused me problems. While lots of players asked for multi-step undo feature, with my code, I could hardly realize even a one-step undo. 🙁

That’s why I decided to make All-in-One Solitaire 2 from the scratch.
Finally, I have some progress, a well made (I hope so) system that can handle different card games with multi-step undo action and many other features.
It’s better to see the feature in this demo:

All that thanks to great book, Game Programming Patterns, which is available for free on a website and specifically to Command Pattern, that made my code much cleaner and functional.

Meanwhile, I have added lots of new layouts to All-Peaks Solitaire, and I will add one more game mode soon.

Also, All-in-One Solitaire and 3 parts of All-in-One Mahjong games were improved with Portuguese and Italian translations, as well as with “Share” button.

Developer-friendly SlideME, not!

It’s not an easy thing for indie-developers like me to promote and distribute games.
Creating games by myself is lots of fun, but I simply have no time/experience/budget for good promotional campaign.
That’s why every distribution channel is important for me and every download is count.

Recently, I have submitted All-Peaks Solitaire game to SlideME, and was very surprised when my game was declined with the following reason: “REPETITIVE CONTENT: (No more solitaire card games permitted from this developer)”.
So far, I have only 2 solitaire games on SlideME, which is not that many. And they both are unique.
I’m definitely not that developer, who release just another copy of jigsaw/dress-up/slots game every week. 🙂

Being confused, I’ve sent a message to SlideME asking them to try my game and reconsider their decision.
Here was the answer:

So my account was “flagged for spamming”, just because I’ve contacted SlideME support staff!
I have never received such rude and disrespectful answer. I was contacting Google, Apple, Amazon and many others, but this is first time I’ve got such response.

I wish SlideME success in their business and hope one day they will understand, that developers are their friends, who bring them new content and thus new users, and not their enemies.

All-in-One Solitaire 2, attempt #2

Ok, here is my second attempt to start working on All-in-One Solitaire 2 game. 🙂
I have gone through the list of games, I’ve made before and figured out that some games just don’t exist.
So, here is a new list, I’m planning to include in All-in-One Solitaire 2 game:
Agnes Solitaire
Algerian Solitaire
Alternation Solitaire
Calculation Solitaire
Canfield Solitaire
Crazy Quilt Solitaire
Deal With It Solitaire
Deuce Solitaire
Diplomat Solitaire
Eight Off Solitaire
Flower Garden Solitaire
Forty Thieves Solitaire
Maze Solitaire
Power Solitaire
Seahaven Solitaire
Spiderette Solitaire
Sultan Solitaire
Thieves of Egypt Solitaire
Wasp Solitaire
Yukon Solitaire

An impressive (at least for me) pack of 20 solitaire games.
The idea is to first release beta version with 2-3 games, and then eventually add other games, gathering feedback at the same time.
The same way as I did with All-Peaks Solitaire game.
I’m going to use Haxe/OpenFL as a development tool, although OpenFL is still quit buggy… 🙁

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