Casual Gaming Programming, News and Tutorials.
Posts tagged Games
Druids – Battle of Magic – New Version Available
Aug 14th
There is available a new version of Druids – Battle of Magic Game, with with several improvements :
- Totally new High Definition Music and Sfx.
- Improved Graphics, Visual Effects and Particles Effects.
- New Loading Screen.
- Many Bugs Fixed.
- Better Windows Vista/Windows 7 Support.
- Now you can change Music and Sfx Volume.
Who still does not know the game, it is worth taking a look. And for those who already know, new music and effects are the most attractive one to further improve the experience. Be sure to check it out!
Download the demo version of Druids – Battle of Magic.
Abra Academy and Abra Academy Returning Cast
Nov 11th
Features
Abra Academy was one of the first Hidden Objects Games in the market, and until today is great international success. It and his sequel Abra Academy – Returning Cast, were already played by hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world, and were highlight long in the majority of large portals existing casual games. Both, in addition to it’s English Version, it also gained versions in French, German, Spanish and the Japanese version is already in the testing phase.
In Abra Academy, you must help Wanda, a witch apprentice, to graduate in the school of magic Abra Academy. You must guide her through several rooms’ aid her in finding hidden objects and learn new magic. Each room will put her witching skills to the test.
- 24 scenarios to be explored.
- Helpful fairy guides to help you to find objects.
- Minigames will wise you new abilities and will give you more fairies to help your journey.
In Abra Academy – Returning Cast, unknown creatures have broken into the campus and are causing havoc! The children are frightened and the monsters are creating a huge mess.. Wanda and her friends have been called back to school, where should investigate these attacks and find a way to get rid of these mysterious creatures.
- 30 fully new scenarios to be explored.
- Use the Crystal Ball for help.
- New ways of finding objects.
- New and challenging Minigames.
History and Development
Few people know, but Abra Academy, had a not released version, where it still was named of Witch Scholl Graduation, and had other graphics, music and sound effects, another game interface, other minigames and completely different scenarios from the final version. This version used characters made in 3D, instead of graphs 2D Cartoon from the final version. This version was made using the Phoenix Lib engine, by Andreaz Lago. An excellent engine, the runs over OpenGL, and was the first game engine for Delphi, where there was the possibility to use images with no fixed patterns sizes, essential to store the large amount of objects existing in each game scenario into a single texture.
Before its official launch, Big Fish Studios acquired all rights over the Abra Academy Series and signed with us a partnership contract, where now like Game Producer, has decided on a complete reconstruction of the game, with new graphics, new scenarios and especially new music and sound effects, which now was done by Somatone Studios, a company which had already large experience with games sound effects and music and even in Hollywood´s movies.The team was kept, and with all the support from BigFish, Abra Academy reached a new level of quality, becoming a game of enormous worldwide success.
The final version was rebuilt using the Asphyre Engine, now in version 4.0. Mainly due to better compatibility of the Out-of-Box drivers for Windows XP and Windows Vista to DirectX over the OpenGL ones, that normally required the installation of new drivers in the machine to use all its features. But much of the work done in Phoenix Lib was not lost and was converted to Asphyre Engine.
For the Japanese’s versions, again, the engine was rebuilt from scratch, to include support to Unicode Strings, and to use the new and revolutionary version of Asphyre Engine, version 5.0, which now have support for Dirext9, Dirext7, OpenGL and Software Rasterizer, thus fully compatible with hardly any existing computers on the market, even old computers with out of date video card drivers. This conversion was also made thinking in a future support the Mac, where using the Provider for OpenGL and compiler FreePascal, will soon be possible to compile the Asphyre Engine for Mac, with practically no changes in the source code already done for the Windows version.
Abra Academy – Trailer
Abra Academy Returnign Cast – Trailer
Links
Abra Academy – Official Web Site
Abra Academy Returning Cast – Big Fish Games
Druids – Battle of Magic
Nov 6th
Today I will talk about my first published game, Druids – Battle of Magic.
Features
Druids – Battle of Magic was one of the first Match-3 game which did not use standard Square Boards, what the most of the Match-3 used up to his launch, thus enabling an infinity of different levels and challenges, having 110 challenging level on his launch, and also including an Level Editor, allowing players to create his owns custom levels. In addiction, it was one of the first games in category to allow accumulate mana and cast 4 different types of magic spells in the board, bringing a fun new to the game genre, and being a great diffential over the games available that time…
In 2007, Druids Battle of Magic wins the award Best Puzzle game of 2007, from the Bytten website.
Development
The game did use the Asphyre eXtreme 3.1 engine, and was compiled in Borland Delphi 7.
It also used the Sprite Engine from DraculaLin, and the Particle Engine from 2MorrowMan.
The graphic was created by Mario Russo, and the music composed by John Wattscrick.
Links
