Aug 26, 2018
Stormbound (2018)
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Stormbound (2018)
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGytCwsX0w8) A new take on the classic game of Pinball.. Momonga Pinball Adventures by Paladin Studios Seaven Studio & Plug In Digital on the PlayStation 4 #PS4 Check out my Nalyo Gaming GAMEPLAY PART 1. & if you enjoy it please click those LIKE & SUBSCRIBE Buttons, SHARE w Friends and then leave me a COMMENT.. Thanks for your support.
Bandai Namco has released Galaga Wars for iOS and Android devices in Australia, Canada, Netherlands and New Zealand with the other regions coming in the near future.
As a Galaga Fighter, players will blast insects with powerful lasers, give them a run for their money with the mighty rockets and drop dangerous space mines on the Queen Bee.
Players can pick one of their favorite starships (based on famous games from the past), launch into the skies and prove your worth on the galactic battlefield. If you can save players from enemies, it will activate the famous Twin Mode which doubles your firepower. The game also features an epic soundtrack, responsive touch controls and beautiful graphics.
“I played the original Galaga in an arcade booth when I was 10, so it’s a dream come true to create Galaga Wars for a new generation of players, especially this year being Galaga ’s 35th anniversary. It was a great challenge re-inventing one of the most famous titles in videogame history, trying to keep the essence and spirit of what makes this game unique, but also adding cool new ideas to really excite players.” said Chanh LY, Producer and Project Owner at Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe.
“We are honored to work on such an amazing IP with BANDAI NAMCO. Galaga is iconic in every way, and the Paladin team has done a great job re-imagining the game for the 21st century. We stayed true to the heart of the game from 35 years ago, going so far as working with the original game design documents and analyzing every pixel in the original art. That said, the new Galaga Wars is a unique game with some very interesting innovations. I think it will bring a big smile to players around the world!” said Derk De Geus, CEO at Paladin Studios.
Galaga Wars Coming To Mobile Devices Bandai Namco has released Galaga Wars for iOS and Android devices in Australia, Canada, Netherlands and New Zealand with the other regions coming in the near future.
Momonga Is Coming To The App Store Tomorrow
Hi everyone,
I know you have waited long for the release. The original announcement was in April…
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Jimmy Pataya Multiplayer – Live Dev Blog
We are working on a multiplayer version of Jimmy Pataya, deadline this afternoon. I am liveblogging the progress.
The Idea
The goal is to make a multiplayer version of Jimmy Pataya for the Winnitron. Today we have an open house for the CabFab (our HQ) and we thought we needed a nice showcase for theWinnitron arcade cabinet we pieced together a couple of months ago. And what would be more awesome than Jimmy Pataya multiplayer?
The idea is to dodge blades and get as far as possible while blocking your opponent. All that on the good old Palatron cabinet, with old-fashioned joysticks.
Update 1: Getting Started
We started with the idea yesterday afternoon. Niels got started right away with a splitscreen multiplayer mode to see where this would go. Turns out, it is awesome. That’s when we decided to go for it. Here is a screenshot of the initial multiplayer mode in action:
Jimmy is created with 2D sprites in a 3D world. This works pretty well in single player mode, it seems almost 3D. In multiplayer mode, you can clearly see that it’s a paper-thin model. There’s not much time left – our deadline is today 2pm – but we decided to make a 3D model out of Jimmy.
Here’s Jimmy, Tim and Benjamin (our artists) working on that:
It needs a 3D model, UV map, texture, rig, and animations. I hope we’ll get it done today :)
Stay tuned for updates! We will post updates today as we progress. All updates will be added to this blog post. The deadline is 2pm so I will post a video of the game in action when people are playing it. Be sure to follow @paladinstudios on Twitter so you can see the latest news.
Play Momonga at Indigo this weekend!
It’s not Monday but I wanted to give a small update. Even though we got sidetracked with some other projects recently, we are still progressing with Momonga. Stay tuned for Momonga Mondays, we will be posting a lot more in the upcoming weeks.
Art of Momonga talk
I gave a talk last week about The Art of Momonga at the Adobe User Group in Rotterdam. I had 160 slides packed with concept art and inside info.
Missed it? They recorded the presentation, so you can check it out here: http://www.adobeusergroup.nl/meetings/meeting/online-3d-content?o=onderwerpen/art-momonga-pinball-adventures
A lot of the blog content is condensed in this 40-minute presentation. So if you want a quick overview of how we approach game development with Momonga, or want to see some of the goodies that have not made it to the blog, be sure to check it out!
Momonga at Indigo
Next week there will be more updates to share with you, but for now I would like to invite you to the world’s first hands-on preview of Momonga. This Friday and Saturday, Indigo in Utrecht hosts the best of the best of the Dutch indie games scene, and Momonga will be there. You heard that right – you can play Momonga in a hands-on preview!
This is our first public showcase, so we are super excited to have folks come over and play the game. I expect we will learn a lot from watching people play, so I’m curious to see what feedback they can come up with.
A lot of our Dutch indie friends will be showcasing their latest creations – games like Toki Tori 2, Dwarf Quest, Castaway Paradise, Awesomenauts and Cello Fortress will all be playable and all the devs will be there. So if you have a bit of free time this weekend, hop on the train to Utrecht and check out Indigo!
Want to join the party? You can come over either on Friday or Saturday. Access is free, registration is not required.
See you there! :) -Derk
Momonga Monday: The Making Of Panda’s Challenge
Howdy folks! Recently we have covered the history of Panda, your mentor. He is a funny old chap with a bamboo stick and a herb pouch. He saved Momo from the owl raid and healed him – something any panda herbalist would do.
This week I am taking you on a tour into Panda’s Sanctuary, the place where you get your training in the game. It is a lush, dream-like environment, up high in the clouds.
You probably remember the concept art for this level from a couple of weeks ago:
Now that the level is done, have a look at this image:
It is a screenshot taken from the actual game, but from a custom point of view. Not bad for an iPhone game, right?
This area is the first of three stages for this level. The concept art showed the third stage, so the concept art and 3D art are slightly different.
Here is the same area with wireframes, taken from a different angle. We try to keep the triangle count low, as this is bad for performance. It is a balancing act between making the scene look good, and making the scene run smoothly.
And when we dive a bit deeper, here is the environment without textures:
If you did not see any difference, that is correct. Apart from some minor details and lightmaps, we do not use any textures at all. Most mobile devices don’t handle texture memory well, and with all the loading times and slowdowns we figured we would give vertex colors a shot. So all the colors you see in the scene above are painted right onto the vertex points of the models. The lightmap handles the shadows, and it looks pretty sharp.
Here’s a closeup of Panda, including wireframes. The green lines are the collision models. These are used to detect if something hit Panda or his stick.
What do you think? Did you like the concept art better or the final result? Let us know in the comments!
Cheers, -Derk
Momonga Monday: 8 Hard Lessons We Learned From Our Dev Blog
A couple of months ago, we decided to start writing blog posts about the development of Momonga. We called it “Momonga Monday” so folks would know when to look for fresh updates.
After three months, the results are not bad at all. We have learned many invaluable lessons and I would like to share them with you.
1. Previews Are Okay
When is something a spoiler? You have seen the end boss, Kuton. You know his background, you know you will face him. You have not yet seen the final fight yourself – you have not played it yet. But is the fact that you know he’s there a good thing? Or is it spoiling your game experience?
Here is my humble guess.
First, nobody wants ANY spoilers for something they are totally into. Suppose Game Of Thrones would blog about the filming process for season 3. I would not want to read it because it will give away the plot.
The other side of this is the cold fact that hardly anybody knows this crazy pinball game we are building. If you don’t know that it exists, you can’t care about it.
My takeaway so far: Plenty of people have seen a picture of the Eiffel Tower. I did. Then I visited Paris, and it is still amazing to see it in real life. Pictures of the Eiffel Tower will not make people say “no thanks, I’ve seen it already”.
(Not the real thing)
I also believe that if you see the hard work that goes into making a game, you might want to taste the end result.
It’s a fine balance. No spoilers, but no secrecy either.
2. Some Posts Work Better Than Others
It is hard to blog about things. One post every week, on Monday. It works pretty well, but is it worth it? Are we giving away too much? Are the readers getting bored of the little snippets? Perhaps we should just make a big splash with a press release and new trailer and new screenshots, coming out of nothing?
For this question, let’s look at the stats:
The Top 10 Craziest Pinball Games Ever (June 18) – 144 views
My Dirty Secret Of Worldbuilding (June 11) – 5144 views
A Challenge And A Lost City (June 4) – 104 views
Did We Fail Miserably? (May 28) – 98
4 Work-In-Progress Updates (May 21) – 108 views
33 Cutest Momonga Pictures Ever (May 14) – 706 views
The New Retina Interface (May 7) – 224 views
Screenshots (April 30) – 122 views
Momo character design (April 23) – 778 views
General Kuton character design (April 16) – 156 views
Panda the Panda character design (April 9) – 201 views
Fry the Firefly character design (April 3) – 149 views
Six Things You Did Not Know About Momonga (March 26) – 1207 views
The Owl Guards (March 19) – 117 views
There are huge differences between posts. The worst post ever was one where I apologized for missing the deadline. Maybe it’s a good thing that nobody read it ;-) And the best post of all-time was the week before that – on worldbuilding. Note that some of the blog posts have been running for quite a while now, and they all generate some hits after they have been first posted:
It is hard to conclude anything from this. Some posts work, others don’t. I know there is a small base of awesome people who check in regularly. Then there are some posts that have social media sex appeal (like the worldbuilding post). Then there are Google-friendly posts like the Unity Facebook tutorial and the 8-Step Guide to iPhone Interface Design.
What topics work best? Here’s what I have learned so far:
Tutorials
Stories
Creative updates
Curated content
Ideally, you want to mix them all. Tell people about this really awesome way you’re doing things. Give a peek behind the scenes to share the creative process. And then connect it to some other blogs / sites / games to give it context.
3. Your Blog Has A Purpose
It is important to think about why you want to blog. Do you want to post a weekly status update, get more traffic, or get feedback? You need to have the primary goal in mind.
We set a simple goal: To blog every Monday until the release of Momonga Pinball Adventures. We don’t have a clue what the effects are so we kept it within our own reach. I believe that if you are making consistent, predictable effort to create good blog posts, folks will start to follow you eventually.
This makes the blog a big experiment – like many of the things we do these days. We hope that people like it so much that they will actually buy the game when it comes out. But this is not the immediate goal of this Momonga Monday blog. The immediate goal is to share weekly progress updates.
Along the way, we get feedback, improve our Google ranking (search for Momonga and you will see us on page 1), and hopefully convert some poor souls into fanatic followers. ;-) but the goal is the same: A New Momonga Blog Post Every Monday.
A final takeaway from this is that you need to define your target audience. We have struggled with this, as we are building a game not for game developers but for gamers. And I don’t have an answer to that yet – I cannot seem to find a great way to connect with players directly with this blog. Perhaps in the future, but for now we are still looking for the magic bullet.
4. Plan Ahead
We had a week-by-week topic list from the start, and that has helped us greatly. It is hard to determine what you are going to write about when the deadline is TODAY. When you have a preset plan, you can start early and gather the information days or weeks ahead of the deadline.
These days I am a bit short on topics. The reason is that the deadline has been postponed. This means we have some extra weeks to fill. Some of the best posts have already been written, and now we need to think of other stuff. And you know what? That’s not a bad thing at all. The best performing posts were off-topic, and there’s more to come. We will ramp up the blog when we get closer to launch.
Still, it is not ideal to build “hype” (if you can call it that) too far in advance.
The takeaway is to plan ahead and drip the good stuff over time. Be sceptic about the schedule unless you are 200% sure you are going to make that deadline.
5. Read
I read game blogs and developer blogs. I read about writing. I read about content marketing. I subscribe to a handful of great bloggers. I read business books. I read books on game design. I read just about anything I can get my hands on.
Reading is important because it gets you inspired for the next step.
6. Write, Write, Write
Write as much as you can.
I am a busy guy, but I try to find the time and energy to write daily. It is important to keep your writing skills sharp. Even when you don’t have the job description for it, it is always good to improve your writing. I keep a personal journal, blog, and write whenever I get the opportunity.
You will need every inch of writing skill when you sit at your keyboard and you need to get the bloody blog post out the door.
7. Gather Feedback
I watch the stats of the site religiously. It is hard to get the nuggets of gold from the graphs, but the gold is there so I study them.
When the Worldbuilding post went up in Reddit, it was amazing to watch the visitor stats go up and up and up:
Woohoo! We got more than 2k visitors that day. But the interesting part came when I digged deeper: The bounce rate of Reddit traffic was 90% and the average visit lasted for 29 seconds. With nearly 4k visitors, only 10% really read the post and felt like they should check out another page on the site.
The stats don’t lie. Dig deep and learn.
Then there is the feedback from the other outlets. Facebook likes, retweets, responses on forums – this gives you a pretty good indication of the awesomeness of a topic. When we got 30 likes and 7 comments on Facebook, I knew it was a good post. The truth can be harsh (we had 0 likes and it hurts!) but that is the beauty of it.
The takeaway? Open Google Analytics. Watch. Learn.
8. It Works
All in all, blogging works. We have had some hits and overall, our site has gotten more and more traffic.
I will keep on writing!
Now it’s your turn. Are we on the right track? Does it suck? How’s your blog doing? Let me know in the comments!
Cheers, Derk