Spring Bonus is now available!

Community Forums/Showcase/Spring Bonus is now available!

Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#1]
Hi all, my latest BlitzMax game, Spring Bonus, is now available for PC and Mac! Please try out the demo and tell your mums/moms, partners and friends :-)

Demo: http://www.greyaliengames.com/springbonus/index.php (This game is DRM free!)

After leaving Big Fish Games in January I had an idea to convert my old Easter Bonus game to Mac so I could get it on the Mac App Store. But as I thought about it more, I realised that the game needed a complete overhaul in order to sell well in the modern casual market. So I embarked on a crazy mission to make Spring Bonus before Easter Sunday (April 24th). I hired an artist in Mexico, an art team in the Ukraine and a musician in Holland. Then I got my old Holiday Bonus code and completely upgraded it, made new grey alien framework additions, and then crunched like crazy over the last month to get it made (last week I worked 85 hours, 70 the week before and so on).

Anyway, it actually got done on time (and has been localized into 8 non-English languages) and has been sent off to all the big portals plus it will soon be coming out on iPad and Windows Phone 7 with the help of some people who are porting it for me.

I'm very proud of this game because it took such a mighty effort to get it done and I think it turned out well. The beta testers liked it a lot and I hope you do too. I also hope it sells well because it’s very important to my family.

Let me know what you think!













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GfK(Posted 2011) [#2]
Looks great - bit "sickly sweet" for my taste but I'm sure there'll be plenty of uptake.

Good luck with it!


therevills(Posted 2011) [#3]
Congrats!

All ready released on BFG I see :)


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#4]
Thanks guys! I could do with the good luck. Yep on BFG and iWin, more to follow soon.


jsp(Posted 2011) [#5]
Looks really nice!

I hired an artist in Mexico, an art team in the Ukraine and a musician in Holland.

Where did you find them?
I have the feeling it is quite difficult to find the right people and to express what you expect.


Naughty Alien(Posted 2011) [#6]
..im wondering how does it works this '60-Day No-quibble Money Back Guarantee' ?? I mean, any of this happen? And, cutsie game :)


CS_TBL(Posted 2011) [#7]
Where did you find them?


That crazy nitwit of a composer happens to own BlitzMax too, sometimes you simply find people on forums such as these.. :P


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#8]
@jsp: I worked with the composer before, he's excellent, if a little eccentric. ;-) As for the artists, I used social media to recruit (twitter/FB) and made a big chart of applicants then carefully reduced it down with tests etc to choose the final people.

@Naughty Alien: Guarantees like that are proven to boost sales way more than you ever refund. I've refunded a couple of times, mostly due to people screwing up the purchasing and buying it twice or something.


QuickSilva(Posted 2011) [#9]
Hi Grey, just wanted to wish you all the very best with this.

After playing the demo for a good hour or so I can clearly see that you have worked very hard on this. I`m amazed that you even managed to finish it at all and really did not expect it to look and play as well as it does considering the time constraints.

The look of the game is really nice and polished and the game itself is very addictive. I`m not normally a fan of match 3`s but I was hooked. The music is really fitting too and adds a lot to the experience. Great job CS_TBL!

An all round great job. And nice to see you back, hope this one does well for you, your Dad would be very proud I`m sure.

Jason.

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Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#10]
Thanks QuickSilva, yeah I forgot how much work it is to actually make and launch a game, even if you already have an engine. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, the artists did a great job of making my vision come true. Yeah lots of guys have enjoyed playing it and got addicted. My dad is in the credits actually, the one year anniversary of his passing was a couple of weeks ago, so the Spring makes me thing of him.

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Steve Elliott(Posted 2011) [#11]
Probably the best looking game you've produced Jake, very polished indeed. Congrats. A bit sickly sweet for my taste too, and a bit easy. But I don't think the game was aimed at me lol. Did I say polished? ;-)


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#12]
Thanks Steve. Most people say it's easy at first, but of course it ramps up, even within the first hour, but later on much more.


CGV(Posted 2011) [#13]
Looks great! Good luck with it.


MadJack(Posted 2011) [#14]
Any chance of a Happy Tree Friends edition?

http://www.happytreefriends.com/index.php/playground/playthings/smoochies/toothys-easter-smoochie/


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#15]
Actually someone else suggested a joke Easter-themed game. Problem (for me to survive) as always is what is the market size.


degac(Posted 2011) [#16]
Congrats for the game!
Nice and very smoothed.


Tri|Ga|De(Posted 2011) [#17]
Its very nice done, but not my kind of game.


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#18]
Thanks! The game is no.4 on iWin today and no.12 in the BFG match-3 chart (hoping it will get higher than that, but they didn't give it much exposure other than 1 day on the front page).


Dabhand(Posted 2011) [#19]
Must say, I love the artwork... Top stuff!!!

Your average 35 year old housewife will be slaving over this I reckon! :)

Dabz


Grisu(Posted 2011) [#20]
Looks quite polished.
Hope it sells well.


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#21]
Thanks very much! I hope it sells well too, it will give me a bit more leeway with what I do next before I have to start scrabbling for cash.


Chroma(Posted 2011) [#22]
The art is great but man I wish you would branch off and do something new...

In full screen, the arrow cursor is very laggy.

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Chugs40(Posted 2011) [#23]
Congrats on getting it done on time - sounds like hard work. Very cute game, looks very nice and lots of kids should love it this easter. Good luck with it!


Snixx(Posted 2011) [#24]


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big10p(Posted 2011) [#25]
There really are some negative numpties on this site. Grey Alien is free to develop whatever games he wants. I'm more sick of 'oh no, not another match 3 game!' posts than I am of match 3 games, themselves. Show us what you've done instead of slagging other peoples work off.


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#26]
In full screen, the arrow cursor is very laggy.
It seems to be a DX9 issue that I'm looking into solving. When you say very laggy do you mean a couple of frames (which is what I see) or like a huge amount making it unplayable?

@Big10p: Aye, I'm used to it. I posted in another thread my reason for making another match-3, which basically boils down to keeping my family housed and fed whilst I make some more risky games.

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Chroma(Posted 2011) [#27]
In windowed mode the cursor has no noticeable lag. In full screen mode, there's noticeable lag. This has plagued BMax forever. The only solution I came up with was to use a 48x48 .cur image. Not sure how to replace the system cursor on a Mac because I've only had my MacBook Pro for about 2 weeks now and use only Monkey on it. No plans to install BMax on it at all.

Looking forward to your next game GA.


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#28]
Thanks for the info. All I'm doing is hiding the system cursor and drawing my own based on the mouse x/y. So the size of the cursor in that case shouldn't make any difference. Is there a different way to do it then in Bmax? I've never used a .cur image.

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CyBeRGoth(Posted 2011) [#29]
Meh dont worry about what people who have basically done nothing interesting say about your games, you have to make money, not everyone can make world of goo or something, match3 games are still one of the most popular genres for casual gamers only a fool would not see that as reason enough to develop in that genre, unless you arent coding for a living, just a hobby.

It is a good game my nieces and sister are playing it even though my sister isnt exactly known for playing games.

As to the cursor problem try this:

Local MouseHack:TPixmap
MouseHack = GrabPixmap(1, 1, 1, 1)


place that code just before your flip command, it forces blitz to swap the buffers immedietly or something similar, the result is your mouse is no longer laggy, I am sure it might have a small performance hit but try it and see.


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#30]
Thanks I'll try that! I think people used to do that in DX7 until a slightly different mouse lag fix was added by Skidracer. Let's see what this does in DX9.

Glad your family is enjoying the game!


Chroma(Posted 2011) [#31]
I don't mean the size of your image that you're drawing at MouseX() and MouseY(), I mean you can load a 48x48 .cur file and use as the system cursor in windows. But I'm not sure how to do this on the Mac as I've only had it a couple weeks.


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#32]
Ok. I'm not sure many games actually change the system cursor do they?


Chroma(Posted 2011) [#33]
AFAIK I'd say most do. It absolutely defeats the cursor lag.


GaryV(Posted 2011) [#34]
Congrats on getting it released, Jake. It looks really good (you hired some awesome artists) and I hope it does well for you. I also hope your wife is doing better now :)


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#35]
OK thanks Chroma.

Thanks GaryV, yes the artists worked out really well. I spent quite a while choosing the right ones. My wife is gradually on the mend thanks for asking.


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#36]
@CyBeRGoth: That fix appears to work in full-screen mode thanks! But doesn't work in windowed mode unfortunately.

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Steve Elliott(Posted 2011) [#37]

That fix appears to work in full-screen mode thanks! But doesn't work in windowed mode unfortunately.



So just use the code when fullscreen is selected! I thought it was fine in windowed mode. :)


Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#38]
Actually I need to test again when it's not 3am, but I think you are right: the lag is only in full screen mode, not windowed mode, and so I only need the fix in full screen mode - although it doesn't appear to cause any problem in windowed mode.


CyBeRGoth(Posted 2011) [#39]
Good to hear it works, on my PC I dont see any lag in windowed mode, but that does not mean your customers wont, every PC is different and all that.

Like Steve says just use it for fullscreen and disable for windowed mode maybe, I was playing a game the other day I cant remember the name of it now, it was a few years old but it did use DX9, it was a big commercial game and it had mouse lag in full screen mode so we are not alone :)

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Grey Alien(Posted 2011) [#40]
Most people play in full-screen mode so it's a pretty neat fix thanks! It could be I don't have much lag in windowed mode either, I need to test again as I was tired last time. Thanks again.

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