...Or rather, my game is featured! Jayisgames has always been one of the flash games review sites that I visit for inspirations and this morning when I checked, blam! I saw my game!!

Pardon the horrific drawings, I am as excited as a small kid.

An isometric tower defense game that doesn't stray too far from the genre's established principals. The interface is a bit cluttered and complex, but the core TD gameplay is alive and well. Hopefully the music won't drive you too insane...

...Right. Though I didn't get a full review and it doesn't sound that fun, but hey, I am featured!! This is my second attempt at game designing for the masses and I think things are looking good!

One small step for the game, one giant leap for me! Yay!

- Pixelshocks

http://games.pixelshocks.com/tower2/
It took considerably less time to develop the sequel (less than 3 months) and what was lacking in its predecessor has been addressed in this version. More maps, more creeps, more options and more depth.

The most obvious change you will observe is the change in the UI which is now more intuitive and less clutter. There are 6 different Game Modes and each mode has its own sets of rules to play with.

This is probably the most complicated flash application I have ever made (the last one was Road Safety in schooldays!) and I guess it is also the most complicated tower defence game out there! Making this series has taught me a lot about flash game designing and a number of people online has approached me asking how to make games. Whoa! Don't want to scare anyone but I think should you be interested, you should be picking up actionscripting now and you will be able to make one soon. I think.

As of now, I do not have plans to start version III soon but I will give regularly updates to the game (maps) to keep things fresh. I have some rough ideas for the next version and I think it will be really cool but I really need a break from the TD genre (almost a year at it!) and explore other possibilities. Well, probably I'll see how next year and till then, enjoy what's here!!

In case you are wondering what the heck is this, I made this application out of Adobe's new technology call Adobe AIR. I have been playing around with its features and made this really useless application to test its capabilities. Desktop Sheeps! is an inspiration I got from an odd application I encountered in my primary school days. Basically it lets you drop lotsa of sheeps in your desktop and they will just pace around the screen. Yeah, you can drag them around too. In short, it is a really useless application. Desktop Sheeps! is coded rather sloppily because I am not familiar with the syntax yet and please pardon me because my application is buggy. (Sheeps can get 'lost' and right click context menu placement problem)

The Adobe AIR Logo.

"The Adobe(R) AIR(TM) runtime lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating systems."

-- adobe.com

To run AIR applications, head to http://get.adobe.com/air/ to get the software. After which, you will still need to install Desktop Sheeps!

Take note that my application is not digitally signed because a verified certificate costs US$300. Figured out it's not worth it to buy now because I don't have any commercial use for it. This warning dialog serves to inform the user that the AIR application is capable of doing really nasty thing should it fall into the wrong hands unverified. If you are not comfortable with installing unsigned files, then it's better for you not to install it. After the installation, you can access the program via the start menu and you are ready to go!

Desktop Sheeps!
.fla source file (Requires AIR plugin for flash)

There are times when I realize my brain is actually not infinite and I am hitting the limit like crashing into a concrete wall. Below is a page flip transition effect that I took half a day to make. Not a good thing and once again, I realize my maths really suck. It's quite ironic that I am an actionscripter but my maths is an absolute disaster.

Anyways, this effect is done with the drawing function and it runs on actionscript 2. The actual function also allows you to customize the colour and has a callback function.

Google has just released the beta of their wonder web browser which has an icon that looks like a pokeball. Then again, it will be great if it can catch all the bugs and web vulnerabilities out there. Check out its features at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/.

Dralnu, Lich Lord

Been many years since I manually drew something. Really rusty now. I guess I have returned all my skills to my lecturers.

Innovation plays an important role in game designing. However, through the design process, some ideas though seem cool, turned out not practical. Below is one of the ideas that I really wished to implement but was eventually axed due to various reasons.

This is a mock-up of a small portion of a multi-level map with creeps moving through path over path. Part of my vision is to have the creeps move slower up the slope and speeds up while moving down. Towers placed on higher grounds gain more range and creeps on higher grounds suffer less damage from towers on lower grounds.

However, as I expanded the idea further, I came to quite a number of problems design issues.

• Firstly, like Singapore, land space is scarce in my game, all the multi-levelling will take away precious buildable areas. I attempted to solve it by getting a larger map and reducing the amount of multi-levelling. In the end, it looked really redundant to have multi-levelling.
• Certain areas will be blocked by the higher tiles. Attempted to solve by having the user toggle between the first and second level to see the creeps like 'The Sims.' It might work but it simply adds another chore for the user.
• Bigger/taller creeps might not be able to fit into the tunnels. What about flying creeps? I can make the tiles wider and higher but it did not work out aesthetically.

In the end, what seemed like a good idea has to be axed because it is simply less feasible to implement.