It has been a while since my last Halogen related post: many apologies! It isn't because the game has been forgotten or development has stopped. Quite the contrary - this post is late because Halogen has demanded so much time! And now, it is time for a special announcement!!

Just a mini Dev Diary entry:

It's Part 3 of a week long iPad app-from-scratch project, which covers the final day - Saturday. As mentioned in Part 2, things are getting tough: We have a game now, and there is 'fun' there, but there is a lot which is incomplete - not all powerups are implemented, some of the scoring presentation is lacking, art has only been first pass so far. There are a bunch of gameplay issues: The puck gets stuck occasionally (if against a bumper this tends to machinegun the sound effect), enemies have a tendency to swarm you, and sometimes the action gets too fast and frenetic, and you feel less in control than you really should. Not only that, but to get things done on time I have had to cut features that originally felt very 'core': The level based system, and multiplayer mode.

So with less than 24 hours left, what did we do?

It's Dev Diary part two, and things are getting serious. To recap, I was looking to see how much I could get done on a new iPad game in the week leading up to the iPad Launch App Submission Deadline, starting Monday and ending Saturday sometime. In Part One  you learned that I fell asleep on Monday night, and on Tuesday/Wednesday I got some basic code up and running which actually does a fair bit: You can drag your paddle around the screen and hit the puck, which will bounce off the screen edges. I added some token enemies, but they were no different from the puck really - they don't hurt you and you can't destroy them.

So we don't really have a game yet. Oh, and it looks ugly, like a 2600 took a memory dump knowwhatimsayin? Time to take care of business...

Just over a week and a half ago, when my friend Nick told me that Apple were accepting iPad app submissions, I didn't think much of it. Sure, it would be cool to be a launch app, but there was a one week deadline. Apple were rewarding people who had started early and anticipated this. For me, it would mean starting something from scratch. With a week's dev time, a full time job to go to, and a family to look after, that would be impossible right? 

Right?

Like every good band, a creative company should have an interesting story behind how they decided on a name. RocketHands does have such a story, and we're going to tell you it now!

Well, the RocketHands crew has finished another Global Game Jam, and come out smiling. We're in the process of catching up on much-needed sleep, and we're starting to check out the games made by our compatriots in other locations around the world.

In less than 24 hours, 00100000b game developers in Perth will be taking part in Global Game Jam 2010. RocketHands will be there With Bells On. We're proud sponsors of the Perth event, and well chuffed that Perth was the one and only venue in Australia for last year's event (this year Sydney and Melbourne have rustled up a handful of participants, but Perth still remains, by far, the largest Australian gathering, and one of the larger of the 130 or so venues worldwide).

I plan to develop an iPhone game in 100 hours, and you can follow progress on The Magic Pantry.

Call me crazy, but I'll still be attending Global Game Jam in Perth.

All this will mean less Canabalt and less Captain Forever, unfortunately.