Streamlining Operations

Unfortunately, developing casual games for mobile platforms has become quite a hassle.
There are millions of games and apps available because basically anyone with minimal knowledge can make one, thus, developing a new game makes no sense, markets prioritize the most popular games and don’t really promote new titles unless you have a big fat budget for marketing.

At the same time, there are these stupid new regulations, like GDPR and CPRA. Marketplaces have their own rules, which they change from time to time, like the Google Play Store, which requires updating the app at least once every 2 years, otherwise, it will be automatically removed.
Plus, sometimes I need to update games to fix my own bugs and add new features.

Anyway, keeping numerous games in compliance with all the new rules and regulations is quite a soul-sucking task, so I’ve decided to remove most games from markets except for the two most popular and profitable.

All-in-One Solitaire and All-in-One Mahjong are both available for Android, iOS, Windows 10+ and online.
I will keep updating those games and add new features.

All other games, All-Peaks Solitaire, Shadow Solitaire, Rainbow Lines and Match Jong are only available online at the Pozirk Games website.

At the same time, there is some good news! 🙂
Old Flash games, that stopped working after Adobe stopped distributing Flash plugin, are slowly coming back to life!
Thanks to Ruffle, a Flash Player emulator.
It is still in beta, but several games are working just fine already.
Balloon Express – works!
Feed The Furry – works!
Instant Football – works!
Mad Tanks – works, but there are some bugs and game doesn’t save the progress.
Total Construction – almost works, but not yet.
Resistance Is Useless – not yet.
Space Age – not yet.
Dolly The Sheep – not yet.
Charlie Likes Strawberries – not yet.

Mad Tanks, Space Age and Resistance Is Useless are still my 3 most favorite games.


Dolly The Sheep, now everywhere!

I have released Dolly The Sheep game to other platforms, so now it is available at:

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.pozirk.dollythesheep
App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/dolly-the-sheep/id887047359
NOOK Store: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dolly-the-sheep-pozirk-games/1119715744
Samsung Apps: http://apps.samsung.com/mars/topApps/topAppsDetail.as?productId=000000863650
Amazon Store (PC): http://www.amazon.com/Pozirk-Games-Dolly-Sheep-Download/dp/B00KI19VYC/
App Store (Mac): https://itunes.apple.com/app/dolly-the-sheep/id890191173


Dolly The Sheep Released

Woo-hoo!
So, bidding has ended, MyPlayYard(5hippos) won the game!
It was released yesterday to public and got Daily 2nd Place on Newgrounds. And that makes me happy. 🙂
Today it was published on Kongregate as well, but they have more hard-core audience, so I’m not waiting anything big.
Now I have to wait 6 weeks to start selling site-locks, but hope to put version with my brandings to Pozirk Games website much sooner.
As for now, you can play sponsor-branded version of Dolly The Sheep.





All-in-One Solitaire, Dolly The Sheep, etc.

It’s been awhile…

So, I have added Gaps Solitaire to All-in-One Solitaire game.
And I’m planning to add at least two more solitaire games: Spider and Free Cell.

I have moved website to another hoster, so it took me some days and nights to configure my first self-managed VPS.

We are working “hard” on Dolly The Sheep game.
There are still not all the graphics ready, but we are making levels already.
I think, I will be able to release a couple of smaller games, before we finish with DTS.
Here are some videos with gameplay:


WCK. Conveyor belt problem.

For Dolly The Sheep game I’m using WCK + Box2D Alchemy Port.
It’s a very handy framework, but unfortunately, it lacks documentation and has some bugs.
One of the bugs, I have recently discovered was with the build-in Conveyor belt.
Here is an example.
There are 3 boxes, they should move to the same direction, while they are lying on the conveyor, but… their behavior is unpredictable.

I’ve decided to make my own simple Conveyor Belt, by listening Contact Events.
Here is my code:

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...
public override function create():void
{
	friction = 0; //this is very important, otherwise objects on conveyor will be moving with different speed
	reportBeginContact = true;
	reportEndContact = true;
 
	super.create();
 
	listenWhileVisible(this, ContactEvent.BEGIN_CONTACT, onBeginContact);
	listenWhileVisible(this, ContactEvent.END_CONTACT, onEndContact);
}
 
public override function update(param:Param):void //your own update function, calls every frame
{
	//set velocity to objects lying on the conveyor belt, I'm only using horizontal velocity here
	//_dir - direction, where object on conveyor should move to
	//_shape._normal - only the "y" of the normal, when object has contacted conveyor, in my case it can be only 1(from above) or -1(from below)
	for each(_shape in _shapes) //go through all the objects, contacting conveyor
	{
		_shape2 = _shape._shape;
		_shape2.b2body.SetLinearVelocity(new V2(_dir*_shape._normal*_speed, 0));
	}
}
 
protected function onBeginContact(event:ContactEvent):void
{
	//add object and its contact normal to the list
	//event.other.m_userData - our object
	//event.normal - our normal of the contact, that points from conveyor belt to object
	//if event.normal.y > 0, object has contacted conveyor from below
	//if event.normal.y  0 ? -1 : 1)));
}
 
protected function onEndContact(event:ContactEvent):void
{
	//remove object, that is not contacting with conveyor from the list
	...
}

Of course, my version has some problems too, mainly because of the zero friction.
Hope, new version of Box2D Alchemy Port with fixed bugs will be released soon.


Dolly The Sheep. Report 1

Ok. Small demo from Dolly The Sheep.
Game still lacks animation as well as graphics and sound, but it looks funny.
The idea of the game is to remove obstacles on Dolly’s way by shooting them with balloons.
So these obstacles fly up and you let Dolly to move from A to B(exit) and help to escape from Labs, where evil 👿 scientists carry out their terrible experiments.


Dolly The Sheep and Solitaire

After some thoughts, I have decided to start making two new games:

Dolly The Sheep – Box2D based game, where you have to help the sheep to escape from evil scientists.
For this game, I’m going to use WCK. It’s a handy Box2D-based framework, that allows to create game levels within Flash IDE.

All-in-One Solitaire – 5+ solitaire games in one.
While searching for images for solitaire game, I have found a good website with tons of absolutely free images:
Openclipart is the largest collaboration community that create, share and remix cliparts. All cliparts are released to the Public Domain so they can be freely used in any project for free.”


DISCLAIMER: The content in this blog represents the opinion of the author. No information here should be used for any purpose except for entertainment.