Casual Gaming Programming, News and Tutorials.
Posts tagged Phoenixlib
Phoenix 2.0 – Preview Version
Feb 12th
Andreaz Lago announced the launch of the preview version of Phoenix Engine version 2.0!
Here is the official release :
“Hello everyone.
As some of you have been aware i’ve worked silently on Phoenix since the last release. Researching alot on methods to make API independent renderer and other designs.
Now i feel i have the groundwork made of what will become the next version. The tight coupling to OpenGL is gone, a Direct3D renderer will be written in the future (I’m currently concentrating on getting the OpenGL one rock solid as well as adding more features).
All rendering is done via a common interface, and using vertex buffers, this will make the renderer interfaces alot easier (and hopefully encounter less driver hazzels as the older versions) and faster.
Currently its only tested on Turbo Delphi for Win32 but FreePascal and Delphi 7 support will come if it doesnt work as it is.
There’s also a prototype version of the new image editor, basically the same but better interface and, finally with source!
I’d love any feedback and idea’s on what you like and what you don’t like.”
It is worth taking a look at their new features and tools! Always remembering that he is always open to new suggestions for improvements in engine!
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Phoenix Lib
PascalGameDevelopment.net Phoenix
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
About – Wagenheimer´s Game Development Blog
Nov 5th
This blog objective´s is to be a center of news about the development of casual games, where constantly you will find news, articles and tutoriais on the development and programming of casual games. I am also developing several additional tools for Asphyre Engine, which very soon i will post more information, and once they are finished, I will post one by one all this tolls that improve even more, in my opinion, the best engine for casual game development of all times, the Asphyre Engine.
My name is Cezar Wagenheimer, I’m from Londrina-Paraná-Brasil, I’m a Delphi programmer for more than 10 years, since the begining, I always been interested in game development, even I always been working with Database Systems Programming, in my free time, I always studied the art of game development, where within this 10 years, I learned a lot of useful tricks and gained a big amount of experience.
In this time period, I tried and learned several game development engines, including the famous but outdated DelphiX Engine, but i never did found none that attended all the requirements of resources and performance that I hoped to find. Until I met the Asphyre Engine, that at the time was in its third version, where for the first time I found an engine of everything that is needed to make a game, and that did let me happy with their resources and perfomance.
With this, in 2006, after some months of hard work and development in partnership with my friend Mario Russo (that have very high artistic skills) , I finished my first commercial casual game, Druids Battle of Magic, where we have close contracts with 3 international publishers, BigFishGames, Reflexive Arcade and Trymedia. After this, we had two more games developed in paternership with BigFishStudios, and which were published internationally, Abra Academy and Abra Academy – Returning Cast, these two having a great emphasis, being a great success in the world until today, with versions in English, German, Spanish, French and more recently, a Japanese version. Soon I will talk more about each game, with an exclusive topic for each one with more details and information about it’s development.
