Beat Boxes Is Here!

 Get it now on the App Store!

 (Please?)

Beat Boxes–Coming Soon (I Hope!)

The day has finally come to submit Beat Boxes to Apple. Now it's out of my hands and the waiting game begins. Joy! What is Beat Boxes? It's a game of rhythm and reflexes that challenges you to tap the screen with the beat while avoiding incoming obstacles that threaten to end your game and generally ruin your day.

Each track includes three versions in Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulties, each custom designed for the right challenge level. Easy will require you to master the basics of avoiding obstacles while refining your timing, and Normal and Hard introduce new obstacle types that add frantic fun. A five-star rating system will push you to perfect your timing and work to achieve the best possible score in each level.

The game isn't the easiest game in the world to learn how to play, but it's a lot of fun once you pick up the basics and it takes real skill to manage to earn Five Stars (even on the Easy levels).

Coup-fourré

I feel like I've spent the past couple weeks constantly running up against obstacles with no idea how to overcome them, and running around in circles when trying to find solutions to my problems. This is the problem inherent with deciding one day to code video games despite no recent formal programming experience, and also deciding to do it all alone. Corona makes the programming stuff easier, such that it's possible for me to do this by myself, but some things would still be much easier if I had some true programming experience and education to help guide me. Still, I had a plan. Last night I forced myself to go to bed far earlier than I usually do, and I woke up refreshed and ready to go at 5:30 this morning, beating my alarm clock by two hours. I went straight to my computer and finally just sat down and solved all the various problems that had been holding me back. It was as though I'd been contantly hit with speed limits and stop signs in Mille Bornes and as soon as I'd drop a "Go" I'd get another hazard. Then, this morning I finally drew the "Right of Way" card. Finally, it's full speed ahead again!

I've been working on my game, Beat Boxes, pretty much non-stop for the past month.  I had a working prototype the first day, and I've had testers providing valuable feedback over the past three weeks or so. I love this game and I can't wait to see what other gamers think of it, so it's been especially maddening to be so completely unproductive for so long. I'm super excited to finally be at the point where I can fill in the majority of the content of the game and begin working on some polish to make the game App Store Worthy. This game started as a weekend proof-of-concept, and turned into a project that I wanted to try to complete within a month. Since this is the first game I'll be bringing to the App Store, I knew it would likely take more longer than a month, and indeed when I finally sat down and created a Gantt chart to plan development I realized the soonest I could be done with the game was the end of June. With this latest delay, I'll probably be looking at a July submission to Apple, which I'm okay with. I've been learning a lot, and I expect I'll have more realistic expectations about how long things will take for my next project, which I'm itching to get to soon!

Update on Sunday, December 11, 2011 at 5:05PM by Alan / Falcon

Did I say I expected to submit to Apple in July? Well, December is like July (if you wander over the equator)... Yes, I 100% intend to submit to Apple this month. And then I'll have a whole lot more to share about Beat Boxes!

Dreaming of Boxes

Development of my first game is well underway, and it's looking like I should be able to submit it to the App Store for review within a month. Developing the game with Corona has been a very pleasant experience: I find that I can have an idea in the morning and have it fully implemented by mid-afternoon, and out to my testers for their feedback by the evening. For a one-person development studio, that's a big deal, and I don't think I'd have the same success with rapid development if I was programming in Objective-C.

The title of this post is "Dreaming of Boxes" because that's what I do now. I go to bed at night and visions of my game dance in my head. Sometimes I come up with more efficient ways to implement game features while I sleep. Sometimes I get ideas for level design. Occasionally I'll see a vision of the game's graphics and wake up and change my graphics to fit what I dreamed about. I'd never been able to devote myself full time to a project like this for such a long period of time before, and it's just emphasized that this is what I want to be able to continue to do with my life.  This month I dream of boxes, next month perhaps I'll dream of gobins and spell effects. I'm looking forward to whatever dreams may come!

Learning the Corona SDK

I've been using the Corona SDK from Ansca Mobile to create my first game, with promising results so far. I've learned plenty on my own through reading the Corona and Lua documentation, but by far the most specifically helpful resource I've found while getting started are the Corona SDK videos from Dr. Rafael Hernandez (cheetomoskeeto). 

Here's a screenshot of my version of the Orb Smasher game by Dr. HernandezIn particular, I learned a great deal from watching the first 48 seconds of the Orb Smasher video, then closing the browser and digging in to create my own implementation of the Orb Smasher game. It took me most of a day to complete, but that included spending more time than was necessary making fun graphics in Pixelmator (more on Pixelmator later) and adding fun easter eggs and unnecessary graphical flourishes to the game (like undulating water). Since I only watched the first 50 seconds of the video before starting, I didn't realize the scope of the game was far more limited than I'd initially thought, and ended up creating a whole level system and other features that weren't present in the actual Orb Smasher video. This helped me find some of my limitations so I'd know what sorts of things to learn next, and also got me excited about diving in to game concepts of my own.

If anyone is considering getting into iPhone development but doesn't have a strong programming background (or is simply intimidated by Objective-C), I whole heartedly recommend downloading the free Corona SDK trial (there's no time limit as of this writing, so you can take as long as you want to learn and test the SDK and only dish out cash once you're ready to bring your app to the App Store). I would recommend checking out the sample projects included with the SDK, as well as the documentation on Ansca's website, but also spend some time watching and following along with Dr. Hernandez's fantastic tutorial videos on YouTube.

As for Pixelmator, I'm a fan, and had hoped to be able to use it for all my graphics needs. I kept running into small nagging limitations though and I eventually elected to spring for a Photoshop CS5 license and give up on Pixelmator for now. I should point out that I'm fairly proficient in CS5, and someone who doesn't know how to navigate Adobe's behemoth would probably be satisfied and better off in a program like Pixelmator or Acorn.

Hello World.

Hello, and welcome to the Falcon Empire Blog.

My name is Alan Carr, and I'm currently the sole creative force behind Falcon Empire. I formed this company with one goal in mind: to create captivating games for your iPhone. I'll be using this blog to write about my experiences developing these games and to share sneak peeks at some of the concepts under development.

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