The New ShuffleTone phase

Although the product never got finished, I feel it's important to share some details on the work I had made on a new version of ShuffleTone. It was going to be my effort to begin monetizing on the application.

I was going to offer a free application that essentially had the same features of the original product(shuffling ringtones for calls and texts). A premium version would also be offered that would add ringtone shuffling for any application notification, a ringtone shuffling alarm clock, and playlists that would be applied at given times or cycles(like a work playlist or a Christmas season playlist).

The project began to get in the way of my personal life, as I had a mostly full-time job, and was full-time at school. I had most of the back-end finished, but the front-end wore me down to a point that I needed to step away. Unfortunately I have not picked the project back up; I still believe in the success the application would have if I would just rededicate myself, so we will see what happens in the future.

That being said, the front-end changes were pretty innovative. The serialization process was completely changed to write ringtone playlists to JSON files instead of Java binary serialization. Also, to expand the capabilities of the application, the ShuffleService would start by an intent that had a serialized function that would set the ringtone based on what spawned the shuffle event.

I wrote a development blog while working on the project. This can be found here: http://shuffletone.blogspot.com/

Mr. Gravity - Published on Xbox Live

Overview
For the EAE Senior Project, we are to make full blown games that will work on the Xbox 360 and will, by the end of the class, be up on Xbox Live! for the world to try out. I pitched a very simple idea of a platformer/puzzle game that was based on switching the directions of gravity as the only source of movement. My original pitch document can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZWFlLnV0YWguZWR1fGNhcHN0b25lLXN0dWRlbnRzfGd4OjJjNjgxN2Q3Yjc1NzgzMGhttphttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifI&pli=1

I was lead developer throughout the project, and oversaw the technical side of the group. I was in a place where I could approve all code changes that came in, which helped us from passing in major fail bugs. Ive also been overseeing the PR of the group since the game has been released. I've used Twitter, and contacted media groups directly about assisting us in this aspect.

We've had a ton of reviews; Here's just a few of them:
Eurogamer - 7/10
VVGTV - 3.5/5
Extra Guy - B(Recommended)

Here's our Latest trailer(Made by me):


Here's a gameplay trailer:


Here's our Alpha trailer. You can clearly see the changes we've gone through from then till now:


Panel Presentation
Out of 31 pitches, this pitch was voted on the most in the class. It graduated into a list of 9 different pitches that we were to make prototypes for, which we would pitch in front of a panel of judges that included several professors and 2 EA Games reps. Here's a video we made for our pitch:


Nothing is tailored here. It is all in-game action that we recorded straight from gameplay.

On top of this, I wrote a Physics Engine prototype as well, which I also showed in front of the panel. It showed the flexibility that we wanted to have in the game, being able to change nearly all core values of the physics engine at any time. My theory about this was simple; if the player is continuously fed the same donut, they are going to get bored, so having the ability to change their environment a bit(visually queued, of course) could definitely be an interesting experience.

This presentation went over very well. We ended up getting voted in as one of the 3 games that will be made at the end of the year.

Links
We are required to update a blog every Tuesday and Thursday of our progress that we make, personally, which you could find here:
http://dizgames.blogspot.com

ShuffleTone - Android Application

Overview
In the fall season of 2008, I found myself in a state of over-excitement over the very first Android phone, the G1. I bought mine on the very fist day, and in less than a month I started pondering things that I could make that would not only be useful for me, but also something that people all over the world could find useful. It was in this brainstorm that the idea of ShuffleTone came about. It wasn't till Summer of 2009 that I was able to write the code for it, but since then, the original version has gotten over 100,000 downloads, 4.5 out of 5 review stars, and has had some honorable mentions in several Android fan sites and such. That winter I started from ground up to make a good looking interface and a much more efficient strategy for doing its job. It has also received, separate from the original, over 100,000 downloads, 4.5 out of 5 review stars, and over 1100 customer reviews.

What does it do?
At the time, I had an overwhelming number of ringtones that I hardly got to use. What I wanted was a way to randomly set the ringtone from a choosen list of ringtones every time someone calls. This eventually evolved into Text Messages as well, which was a majorly appreciated move by my customers.

The second iteration of the app upgraded just about every aspect of the app in efficiency and user friendliness but there were no new features past that.

Links
I have a 4 apps on the market right now. You can find out more from my developer blog:
http://dizware.blogspot.com

You can also view its current market status here:
http://www.appbrain.com/search?q=DizWARE

and at
http://www.cyrket.com/search?market=android&account=DizWARE

This first link doesn't include ShuffleTone OLD for some reason but the second link definitely has all 4.

Screens

Force of Nature

Overview
This was a game I made, in a group of 2, using Power Game Factory; which was a platform engine. At the beginning of class, we were all asked to develop some ideas for a game, which I thought a cool platforming experience would be one that retains a better experience when you are moving at top speed, and holding your momentum. I thought of it as a Assassin's Creed/InFamous/Prototype theory, where the fun in the game is really just all in the movement.

My partner(which we weren't partners at the time) presented an idea about changing the experience with the forces of nature that surround it. It was a fairly good idea, but nothing monumentally new, as there are many games that allow you to use nature as a way of solving puzzles. I decided that what would be really fun, would be a mixture of our two games.

Premise, Premise, Premise
It was simple. You were this character who, in normal form, had no real advantage anywhere. You could jump and move around but that wouldn't get you through most of the challenges that arose. These took special "nature-al" powers, which you would receive from morphing stations around the level. These morphs were timed, which forced the player to do the presented challenge before they lose the morph and have to move back.

These morphs included: Water, Lightning, Wind, Ice, and Earth and each had its own challenges and puzzles that the player would be presented with. It was a fun game and got A LOT of play time from the guests that came to EAE showcase at the end of the year. I was very proud of how well the game turned out and really liked the fact that so many people agreed with that.

Screens
Coming soon... Have to get to a Mac with Power Game Factory first.

Videos
Maybe coming soon...I don't know if the school has screen recording software for games on their Mac's.

Machinima Videos

Overview
In CS 3660, we worked with the Half-Life 2 Engine to make movies. Through the entire semester we had made 3 movies, which we made sure we were a standout group for each one. One important thing I should note is that I recorded and edited all the audio in all 3 movies(with the exception of Geralds voice in the last movie)

Bob, Joe, and Peter - Movie 1
The first movie was called Bob, Joe, and Peter and chronicles a fake meeting that the teachers had with each other. Before we started production, I decided to tinker with the Half-Life experience, which I found out how to completely replace and add in new characters into the game, which we were the only group that figured this out throughout the entire year, actually. With this new discovery, we decided to actually put our teachers in the game(not including Bob, who was already in the game). This gave us a whole new element of awe in the movie.

Without further a do, Bob, Joe, and Peter:


PSA: Protect Our Ants - Movie 2
This one was interesting, and in my opinion, still unfinished(unfortunately). We decided to take a completely different approach and remove humans from the storyline(mostly at least). We dug around for an interesting, non-human character that we could make a grabbing story, and bingo, the PSA: Protect Our Ants story line was born. We were on track for most of the production...We built a custom level that we felt fit the scene, and we had all the effects that we felt would grab the viewer, but I had a family emergency to attend to, while in the process of getting the characters to move through the level as expected(as you can tell, became a much harder feat to accomplish). After 3 days and 2 all-nighters I managed to get the video to the team on time. Don't get me wrong, the movie turned out great, in my opinion, but it kills me to know that it could have been much better.

Without further a do, PSA: Protect Our Ants:


Just Another Hero Story - Final Movie
Our last movie was a big group project(team of 10 I believe). This is where things begin to REALLY stand out from the rest of the class. During Spring Break, I wrote a java program that would take the character files from Half-Life 2, and would allow you to scale all or just portions of their bodies. I did it as an experiment, but after some tinkering I was able to make some extremely interesting characters. It should be noted that this wasn't perfect but it worked, and so I pitched the idea of using completely customized characters...ones that didn't look anything like the characters we started with, that would stand out way above the rest of the group. They all agreed on this, so I started dishing out characters. The most notable ones that I created were:

Gerald, Beast, and Mr. Chomworth

all based off the same initial character. Throughout the process, I ended up having to retool these guys because they were having errors in some of their moving parts(like their mouths and fingers), and actually came up with beautiful, and fluid looking characters that worked 100% (compare Gerald from the beginning of the movie and Gerald at the end of the movie for an example).

On top of the characters, I also made some of the most important scenes, including all the scenes in the school, the theater scene, and also the final scene in the park.

I'm done jabbering about the work; Here's Just Another Hero Story:

Port Defense

Overview
This is probably one of my best completed projects I have done. It was for our CS 3505 final, in a group of 4, which I was team leader. The development process was the Agile process, which we used Scrum to keep ourselves on track. The entire game's development took a little over 3 weeks.

Game Description
The idea spawned from other Tower Defense games which I had been playing a lot at the time. I pitched the idea to the team and they all liked it so we started coming up with ideas, which we started with theme. We landed on a Pirate theme, which meant it would have to be in water. These allowed us to stem all our other ideas, such as boat types, path development, and a gameplay structure.

Here's the skimmy on the ironed out idea:
A tower defense game where the player has the ability of building fleets of ships to protect their city port from the enemy pirates. The player has 6 different ships in their arsenal with differing rankings on fire rate, health, range, attack power, and stengths and weaknesses against enemy ships. The player's responsibility is to strategically decide on locations for their ships that will do the best at protecting their port.

What makes it different?

This almost sounds like it came straight from a Tower Defense template, but we did add some pretty remarkable features that help stand out. The biggest game changer we added was the ability for the enemy to attack your ships, which means you have to pay attention to how well your ships are doing, and replacing any that get destroyed. The player must think about organization of their fleets if they want to be successful. The complexity adds a lot of opportunity for different strategies which is exactly what we wanted.

The second game changer that we added was the ability for real-time special attacks, which included:
* Artillery - Attack that hits a large area, and does a pretty good amount of damage
* Napalm - Attack that repeatedly damages the ships hit by it(limited by time). This has a small area of attack, but does a lot of damage.
* Cleansing - Heals a large amount of your ships 100% or until the special wears off

These attacks could only be initiated during a wave attack. This usually leads it to be a "last resort" type of attack.

Couple Special Mentions

When we were showing the game off, I was approached by a local game developer who said that he was extremely impressed with the amount of balancing that went in the game, especially in only 3 weeks. I was actually very glad he had mentioned this, because we literally spent about half the time testing to make sure nothing was going to dominate throughout the whole game. For example, the Carrier is the strongest ship in the game, but because of its weaknesses to certain ships, it actually can die pretty easy, especially in the last waves. Having a whole map of them would inevitably end up dooming your chances of winning.

Videos

This is an old video...I will try to get something a bit more recent up as soon as I can get a hold of some worthy recording software.

Screens

Title Screen


Napalm Special Attack


Artillery Special Attack


Small Battle


Epic Battle at Wave 11:


Aftermath after Wave 11's Battle:

Multiplayer Pinball

Overview
This one's a little crazy. Our CS 3505 teacher had us work on our own personal pinball games at the beginning of the class, so that we can get a handle on how the XNA engine works. After the 2 week project was finished he asked us to partner up with somebody and take the basic pinball idea and make it multiplayer.

The idea that we had come up with was fairly simple.It was a split screen setup, but only one player has the ball at a time. This player tries to hit as many bumpers as they can to increase their points, while avoiding launching the ball through a gap on the side of the screen which would immediately trade turns with the other player. While the player with the ball was playing pinball, the other player was presented with a mini-game, which if won, would steal the ball from the other player but has to be played from where the last player left off(so if the ball was about to hit the bumper on player A's side, and player B steals, the ball would hit the bumper for player B)

The game worked well, but we were disappointed on where it didn't end up going. We wanted it networked, but when we were testing it, we were having nasty hangups all over the place which lead to a lot of inconsistencies.


Links - Requires XNA & Visual Studio

http://www.mediafire.com/file/rl4l56c8m9q8b5d/Pinball++.zip

Screenshots
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