Kepher made it into the Showcase at CitrusEngine.com

My just released platform puzzler "Kepher" made it as the latest entry in the showcase page of the Citrus Engine, the great flash framework that was used to develop the game.

Kepher

I just finished my recent game project with the CitrusEngine for Flash. Hurry over to the download page and grab yourself a copy for Windows.

Resistance is futile

Join my meetup group and lets get together on the 19.10.2012 in Cologne to found the

Cologne Independent Game Developers Network.

Yay!

Can't touch this. Thoughts on independent artists.

I went to see "No means No" tonight, a band that the "Stadtrevue" locates back in 1979. And there it was: the true spirit of independent art, performed on stage by three aged guys dressed in comfortable sport clothing, no particular hairdo playing a lefthanded Gibson SG and a Fender Bassguitar that where from about the founding time of the band. While the younger visitors happily pogued away on precise riffs and a banging drumset, I got carried away in thoughts a little and found out that what I saw happening was what being an independent artist of whatever profession is all about:
You find yourself sweating the hard parts, sometimes mumbling WTF half-loud but with a grace earned by working on your pieces for a lifetime without  being backupped a lot by others than your friends and family.
These guys I guess wouldn't give up - they seemed to be doing it from the bottom of their hearts, and also seemed to be sure that theres nothing they'd rather do. I had a great time seing them.And I guess this is what acts like the late Pink Floyd or even the late Liam Gallagher can't touch.

Making a platformer with the Citrus Engine Part 1

climbing and jumping enabled, but
the art department is still on holiday...

A little while ago I stumbled upon the Citrus Engine,
a Flash framework for making platform games. Included in the framework are lots of classes for platform objects, collision control via Box2d physics and camera and input controls giving you a headstart  with your next platformer. My game is still in the early development stage but the engines classes are well documented and easily tweakable to all my needs. I soon modded some build-in objects with custom functionality. On top of all the engine comes with a nice editor (an Air app called "Level Architect") that makes the level design a painless and fun time. Above you see a screenshot of a level done in the Level Architect, still with my development textures I will swap out for the final game art later.
Stay tuned for the next entry in that category to learn more about the development of a multilevel platformer done in Flash!

Bonzai

While recovering from my not-so-funny time in hospital I made this little running game. You must guide your tiny samurai throgh the parcour with up and down swipes of the mouse while collecting health and shield potions. Every now and then a  wooden "soldier" blocks your way which must be destroyed with sword attacks- i.e. your left mouse button. That way, while attcking you cant swipe and fall behind and have to run harder.
The engine for this game was written from scratch in Actionscript3 and is still in a somewhat early stage. The game is playable but might be a bit rough around the edges.


Play here:
http://www.daarboven.net/bonzai/

or on kongregate:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/daarboven/bonzai?acomplete=bonzai

Global Game Jam 2012

Since not everybody is able to follow me on the eponymous FB, heres a repost of my GlobalGameJam 2012 aftermath:
Together with the great Julien Lalleve from France we made this imho totally spitpolished game for up to 4 players IN JUST 48 HOURS (sorry for the amount of caps here. I'm veeery proud of the game )





GiantRobotSnakes GLobalGameJam2012 site is to be found here:

http://globalgamejam.org/2012/giant-robot-snake

 for a downloadable version either Mac or PC.

The 36th chamber of Pong

Right after the global game Jam I started this fun little experiment with currently 17 of planned 36 variations of the Stick-And-Ball classic.
just head over to http://www.daarboven.net/36th_chamber/ and grab a racket.

Back to the drawingboard

After a loooooong latency caused by
a) a slight shift of my attention towards more design-centric matters and
b) a not-so-funny time in hospital

I decided to revive my techblog a little, but with a twist. Since I'm heavily walking towards game design I will post less general things Flash and more about finished and upcoming games. But rest assured, most of the stuff will be done in Flash anyway...

FLash Standalone Player deploys IE Cache!

I just found out that the Flash Standalone Player on Windows caches images in the Internet Explorer cache to store images, which is especially annoying when using a self coded flash based editor for graphics and text where you frequently update contents and wonder why you don't see your changes. So ifyou happen to have an exe thats pulling in updated image data from outside you'd better STRG+SHIFT+ENTF (CTRL+SHIFT+DEL) your IE cache from time to time... Ugly enough this goes hand in hand with Flash 10.22 standalone crashing a lot when forced to rebuild a large number of images at load time :-(.