08.09.07
Posted in Amoebax, Projects at 7:42 am by Jordi Fita
Finally!! After almost eleven months of developing, testing, cursing, drawing, and making musics we arrived at our first stable version of Amoebax: version 0.2.0!
This version has a lot of improvements from the previous version, but that is because during this version we focused in polishing the whole game, and this is an almost never ending process.
Since this is a final / stable version, we thought that is time for the game to have a proper web page so our non-programmers users can get the game easily. So besides our trac page (which sometimes is confusing) we created a new page for Amoebax at http://www.emma-soft.com/games/amoebax/.
I hope everyone enjoys playing Amoebax as much or even more than we did while making it 
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06.05.07
Posted in Amoebax, Thoughts at 11:48 am by Jordi Fita
At least this is my case. As many hobbyists game programmer I have started a lot of games, always trying to start small and as my skills were improving going to harder game designs. My biggest problem is still to maintain my motivation high enough to finish the game / application / web / whatever I am currently trying to make and it is a shame, because this last part is probably the part to where I can learn the most.
I’m not saying that setting up the framework (let it be DirectX, OpenGL, SDL, ClanLib, etc…), figuring out a data structure for my little sprites or 3D models, making up the code that follows the game rules I have so carefully crafted, or any other task you can think of are boring or easy to learn. The problem with these tasks is that normally they are done at the beginning of the project when my motivation is at highest and I feel that I will make the greatest game ever known to humanity (or something like that, you know what I am trying to say ;-)), so normally I tend to do these task almost for every project I start, so I have come to understand them well and I’m not feeling like I’m learning something new.
What have finishing a game that is so interesting? Finishing a game, as most of you know better than me, is a very hard part of the game. I don’t know you, but I lost count of the times I think myself: “That will work for know, I’ll make it better later”. It is not that I make a hack and I forget about it, it is just that the feature works as expected but can be done more beautifully.
For example, in Amoebax, the first implementation of the falling pair’s rotation was done by computing the next pair orientation and then perform the movement at the next frame. It worked as expected without the need of any hack or poorly designed code, but now the movement is performed gradually by computing the positions between the origin and the destination orientation, it looks really nice and, over all, more polished.
Other examples of this “beautification” that I can think of are transaction effects between screens, options menu, installation scripts, manuals, a proper web site, smoother animations, etc. These parts does not add actual value to the gameplay but are really important to make a finished product that looks professional. That’s why I think it is the hardest part.
What do you think?
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05.30.07
Posted in Amoebax, Projects, Thoughts at 11:52 am by Jordi Fita
A few days ago Ferran, Amoebax’s Windows® coder, sent our latests release through IM to one of his friends so she can tests it and send us some feedback for our non-GP2X builds since we did not make too much “advertisement” of them and so very few people has tested them.
After some problems installing the game, related to a badly installed Microsoft® Windows® Installer which I believed it came with Windows® XP but seems that no, she asked: “So, shall we start a game?”. Of course she though that the game was playable through Internet which is not.
Nowadays is so common that a game has a network mode that most players expect them to have it, not matter the game type or the intended audience: the game must have a network mode, either cooperative or competition but they must be able to play it through Internet, not only on a LAN. No excuses!
Then, why Amoebax does not have a network mode? Because I designed the game initially for GP2X only which does not have any communication device unless you are using ethernet over USB on you computer, but then the console becomes less portable ;-). Another reason is the lack of resources: at the beginning I was the only programmer Amoebax has, and I am still the core programmer, so I though: “well, it is difficult enough to make the whole game with all the available modes and all the artificial intelligent players, adding network here will end up being too much work for me alone.” Besides I’m not very good at network code, but that’s not an excuse
I’m almost sure that, if we release a final version of Amoebax, the most requested enhancement will be a multiplayer mode over Internet. Heck, I even believe that a multiplayer only version of it would be more popular than the current version, like TeePop does, but then we would exclude the whole GP2X comunity, something I do not want to do.
Will Amoebax have a network mode available sometime? Perhaps, I don’t have a crystal ball :-). What I do know is that it won’t be available on the next version. Time will tell.
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05.21.07
Posted in Amoebax, Projects at 11:41 am by Jordi Fita
Right, is that time of the year again: we released Amoebax version 0.1.2. Actually, it doesn’t have anything to do about the time of the year since we are releasing versions as soon as we have enough new features to do so 
This time, Amoebax’s “big feature” is the addition of the tournament mode. This mode is the only available mode that lets two, three or four players play at the same game, but not at the same time of course ;-). The tournament mode creates matches of two players that fight each other. The winner gets promoted to the next match while the other competitor stays at the same place crying out of shame (well, not literally). Here are some screen shots:
What does it mean for the GP2X version of Amoebax? Well, in a previous post I already gave hints about a two players mode that we were working on for the GP2X version of Amoebax. This version is the first public version that includes this new mode only available on GP2X in which two players can play a match on the same console. I’m a bit nervous waiting for comments of the people who will test it
Hopefully this version will be the last “development” version, since we implemented all features we designed for the first stable version. So we are now in a “polish” stage where we won’t add new features but fix bugs and make some minor enhancements to the game.
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05.16.07
Posted in Amoebax, Projects at 12:12 pm by Jordi Fita
I’ve been playing with the devkitPro’s devkitARM toolchain for the last couple of days, just out of curiosity to see if I could do something that could run on the Nintendo DS. It’s not that I own a Nintendo DS, but a friend of mine does and he always asked if I could be able to build a port of Amoebax for him
Since I’m not new to cross-compilers (I’m not an expert either) I had little problems installing an running the devkitARM toolchain on my GNU/Linux box, although I presume it’s more for the fact that the guys at devkitPro did a wonderful job putting together a binary tarball that just works out of the box. Then I found a port of the SDL for the Nintendo DS created by Troy Davis, and that gave me that feeling that Amoebax could be compiled for a Nintendo DS.
Of course, just having the SDL libraries available doesn’t mean that Amoebax could be compiled and run as easily as it can be done with the other supported platforms. I had to learn how the sample Makefile works, how to put the graphics inside the DS rom, and which emulator to use
At last I was able to do it, but there’s a lot of missing “features” that renders the game unplayable, yet, on a real DS: no joystick support, no sound, no music, and it’s really slooooww.
Anyway, here are a couple of screenshots take with no$gmb emulator just to prove that I was once able to run Amoebax on a Nintendo DS:
I’m pretty sure that the Nintendo DS version of Amoebax (if we actually make the port) won’t be the most downloaded version, but for sure I’m taking a lot of fun with it.
I was also thinking about a PocketPC version of Amoebax, but I’m having problem building the toolchain. I’ve tried with the cegcc and mingwce version, but then I wasn’t able to compile the SDL library. I also tried Microsoft’s embedded Visual C++ 4.0 but I had the same results as with the GNU/Linux toolchain. I’ll keep trying, though
Oh by the way we are going to release the next version of Amoebax, version 0.1.2, Sunday 20th May. For more information about this version, see the milestone page on our Trac.
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03.12.07
Posted in Amoebax, Projects at 5:14 pm by Jordi Fita
Yesterday we released a new version/milestone of Amoebax, our Puyo Puyo free (as in free beer and free speech) clone.
Besides the fantastic graphics of Safareig Creatiu, this version comes with six artificial intelligence controlled players that act as your opponents in what we call the “Normal Mode”.
This Normal Mode is what most games would call it the “History Mode”. That is, you play as kawaii Kim and for some yet unknown reason you battle against six opponents, one after another: from the easy K. Quita (which means “shitty” when pronounced in Spanish) to the thoughtful Pen, the penguin (which also happens to be cute.)
Here are some screenshots (from the GP2X version):
This release is also the first in which we give binaries for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and of course GP2X. Since this is a free software, the source code is also available and can be used to compile the GNU/Linux version of Amoebax.
Keep in mind that this release is just the second release of the four planned releases of Amoebax, so it’s likely that there are some rough there in this version that needs to be fixed. But please, if you try Amoebax (and we encourage you to do so ;-)) and find any bug or have any suggestion, don’t hesitate to add a new bug report or send us an e-mail to tell us about it. We’ll appreciate it very much!
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03.05.07
Posted in Amoebax, Projects at 5:11 pm by Jordi Fita
In the last post I talked about the great amoebas’ design that the guys (and gal ;-)) of Safareig Creatiu did. Well, the past weekend we finally got the final graphics assets in SVG format (the previous screen shot was made with some temporal JPEG images exported from the original vectorial graphics) and, as expected, they are wonderful.
See it for yourself:
Here we are using a much better graphics for the amoebas and one of the new opponent’s background, in this case the background for Kerberos, the 3rd opponent in the normal mode.
We still have some rough edges that need to be fixed, but if everything goes as we want to next weekend could be the release of amoebax’s next version. This time for GP2X, Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux.
We are really excited 
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02.06.07
Posted in Amoebax, Projects at 8:36 pm by Jordi Fita
The initial team behind the Amoebax project was formed by Àlex Almarza composing sound and music, Chrisitan Mata in charge of the graphical part, and Ferran Brugat and me doing the code stuff. We did pretty well, if I can say that, but unfortunately Christian had the leave the team due to health problems. Sadly we couldn’t have any final graphic in our first milestone.
With noone doing the graphics is very hard to make most games, and since every team member already have enough work to do (and I have the same ability drawing as a rock) we decided to seek “professional help”. We contacted Safareig Creatiu which is an small group of designers in Girona, where I work. Well, it turned to be better that I initially though. Yesterday we received the first draft amoebas after just two weeks or so of work. Here’s an screen shot (keep in mind that most graphics are still temporal, so don’t take them into account):
Aren’t they sweet?
In other related news, we also released a new video on YouTube.com about a new two player mode which will only be available for GP2X. What does this mode have so special that is only for GP2X? It lets two human players play the game on the same console at the same time. How? Well, basically the grids are smaller and placed horizontally instead of vertically. Each player controls a console’s side: The left player moves her falling pair using the joystick and the right player moves her falling pair with the four right buttons (X moves left, Y moves right, B makes the pair fall at max. speed, and A rotates the falling pair clockwise).
We aren’t sure if we will put this mode into the final game or not, since our players’ response is mixed: some player like it and some hate it (mostly because the amoeba’s are even smaller!). So, if you happen to see the video and have some comments about this mode (either you like it or not), please don’t hesiate to tell us right away!
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12.10.06
Posted in Amoebax, Projects at 11:03 pm by Jordi Fita
Yes, I know that I haven’t updated this blog lately. Sorry.
Now, some of you have asked me if I’m going to continue development of ePDFView. Well, yes I plan to continue with it, it’s just that I don’t have too much time. And I’ve been spending most of my free time with a project I’m doing with a group of friends: Amoebax.
Why spending time making a game instead of a productive application? Well, developing a PDF viewer is not all fun :-). Now in all seriousness, it’s the first time that I had the opportunity of making a game with some of my friends, something I wanted to do since I was a child. I couldn’t skip this one!
Then, why such a simple game like a Puyo Puyo™ clone instead of a hardcore überl33t MMORPG? For two reasons: First, I don’t play MMORPG’s and second we lack the skills to something like this. It’s not my first game, but it’s the first time I work with a group. So, everything can go wrong
For those that don’t know what Puyo Puyo™ is, it’s a tetris-like game where the objective is to fill the opponents grids by sending garbage. The garbage is generated when you make chains of same coloured blob creatures. You can find a much better description at the Wikipedia.
So, why I didn’t tell a thing until now? I didn’t want to make an anouncement of “my new project” until I was sure that we could make something or it could be another dead project on the net, like it was the case with eGeki (no, ePDFView is not a dead project.) So I awaited until we reached some milestone. And we did today: we released version 0.1.0!
No, it’s not yet feature complete, and perhaps we could wait a little longer and offer a version more “challenging”. But we decided to release when the “training mode” was complete, because since I published a video on YouTube.com last sunday there had been some interest about our project in GP2X forums. Perfect time for a release!
Nothing more today. I hope to update this blog more often from now on
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