playing with html canvas to make generative mop wizards 🙃

it’s very slowwww, back to native code for me.

i love playing shmups on the iPad and have wanted to try making one for a long time. i finally got around to creating one and it’s available now on iOS, Android, and Fire OS! download it for some fast arcade fun - it’s free!

the game is a retro vector-display-style endless vertical space shoot’em up. you shoot down enemies in a series of waves with boss battles every 8 and the game gets harder and harder until you die. (just like real life!) you have three lives to amass the highest score you can. there are leaderboards for score, survival time, and number of waves so you can compete with everyone else in the world and see how well you can stack up.

your ship has a special “reversal” ability that can be used to get out of challenging situations and overwhelming numbers of bullets. it charges up over time and when ready you tap with a second finger (or double tap if you prefer). once activated all enemy bullets on the screen are reversed and turn into seeking rockets that hunt down enemies for you. this is really fun and i don’t think any shmup has done it before (do you know of any?)

in addition there are items that drop as you kill enemies. shields protect your ship from incoming bullets. EMP lasts three seconds and zaps all enemy bullets converting them into bonuses for you. bombs do instant damage to all enemies on screen and clears enemy bullets. you can stack double shields for deflector and stack double EMP for lightning attack. the items make it really fun and keep things fast paced and exciting.

right now there are two bosses. there’s a winged boss - like a big butterfly - that you can blow the wings off for extra bonuses and items or just focus on the center to kill faster. then there’s a snake boss that wiggles around while shooting out its sides and as you blow up it’s segments it gets smaller and smaller until getting really angry and going right at you. if you can survive to wave 32 you’ll face double snakes! :)

the enemy waves are procedural so each play through is a bit different. after each boss battle the play field changes and gets more colorful and busy helping to increase the difficulty as you progress.

i made it free so everyone who wants to can grab a copy and play with it. if you like it you can remove the ads for $1. and if you really like it you can buy me tacos in the store and help fuel future updates and additions!

there’s still lots with the game i’d like to add and improve. i tried to keep things pretty simple for the first version. i think it’ll be fun to add more bosses, new enemy types, achievements, and a campaign or unlockable missions. if you think of something fun you’d like to see in the game let me know!

happy shmupping!

Download for iOS Download for Android Download for Kindle Fire

i made a little photoshop plugin for a reaction / diffusion simulation that’s guided by a source image. i thought the effect would be cool or something but it’s nothing to write home about. 😜

anyway, should anyone want it i posted it to: ReactDiffuse

i went to the M+DEV game development conference over the weekend. i had never driven up to wisconsin before and it turned out to be a really fun trip.

the drive up was about two hours, so naturally i was worried that i would get bored and die (i’m not used to long drives) but it went by pretty quick by listening to an audio book. i was told by so many people that there’d be delicious cheese everywhere but i saw not a single slice the whole time! maybe it wasn’t cheese season? there was some shredded cheese in a burrito i had and it did seem quite fresh though…

anyway, the conference itself was like a mini GDC with a small exhibit area and lots of talks broken into several paths for different disciplines. the opening keynote was given by Warren Spector and was excellent and very inspirational. there were lots of interesting people to meet from companies in wisconsin and also the chicago area.

i’ll definitely go again next year. the conference ticket was a hundred bucks and the hotel was about the same so it’s extremely cheap compared to GDC - plus i’d like a second chance at finding some wisconsin cheese. XD

this past week SketchClub was part of Apple’s “Unleah Your Creativity” promotion in the App Store! it was featured on the front page of the App Store worldwide and on sale too for the Chinese New Year celebration in Asia.

it was super cool to see the app and art by SketchClub artists SKYW4kR and Wendy promoted in the store and on social media. fun start to the new year!