Monstercraft Postmortem Part 3: Win32 and iOS

The port to C++ for Win32 and then iOS took about 60 hours.  As with Zombie Outhouse, I used Instant C++ to port the C# to C++ which took about a minute.  The rest was all manual labor.  Monstercraft runs on the same bioroid enhanced version of the bork3d engine that was used for Zombie Outhouse so it uses a custom C++ XNA style layer to ease the process.

There were a few parts of the port which I felt took too long and need to be optimized for the future.

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Balancing the next Cyborg Mice game

The Power of Game Balancing by Automating Benchmarking: 12,100 for the price of 1

While we haven’t officially announced our next game, it has been in the prototyping phase for the past few years and has been constantly evolving, devolving and mutating into completely different beasts.  Here is a peek into the development process for our upcoming game.

Without giving away any details, we finally settled on a workable game mechanic and needed to test and balance the various powers in the game.  I added a CPU vs CPU mode (just like there is in Street Fighter 4) which ran real time and most matches lasted about 5 minutes.  This was great for one-offs but for it would take far too long to properly benchmark all the various powers against each other.

Zombie Outhouse Development Part 4

Zombie Outhouse Development Part 4: Porting to the iPhone with the Bork3D Engine

[Apologies for the long hiatus but I hope be back on track and am planning on weekly updates for this blog]

When it came time to port Zombie Outhouse to the iPhone, I looked at numerous options to help ease the process.  After the dust settled, I decided on the Bork3D Engine.  Some of the reasons were:

• It’s C++!!!!
• Low price ($49 for an indie license)
• Full Source Code
• Lightweight and clean

Zombie Outhouse Development Part 3

Zombie Outhouse Development Part 3: Converting from C# to C++

While the official programming language for the iPhone is Objective-C, you can use C/C++ within it.  I prefer to work in C++ and try to avoid Objective-C at all costs.

To take the path from C# to C++ I used Tangible Software’s Instant C++ software.  The conversion of the files was fairly quick but that was the easy part.

Zombie Outhouse Development Part 1

Zombie Outhouse Development Part 1: Overview, design and development (Xbox360 & Windows)

This is the first part of a multi-part series which will document the development of Zombie Outhouse for Windows, Xbox 360, Zune HD and iPhone platforms.  I’ll be talking about the various issues and decisions that came up during the development process including details on porting the game from XNA/C# to C++.

Check out the video of the Xbox 360 version below to get an idea of what the game is like and make sure to have your audio on to get the full experience.