jeudi 25 janvier 2024

The filter shop - working on the CSS

So I jump from project to project, but I am finally back to the filter shop. And would like to find my way with the styling. I am a veteran Software Developer and as such like light application, i.e. everything opposed to many modern web dev, mostly front-end frameworks. And I am really not happy with a 1mb HTML page, 150 trackers, 600kb CSS file (minimised) and 10 Javascripts files.
Yep, I like to have a non-tracking HTML with the minimum needed, no tracker (but to be honest you do sometime need one or two professionally, as you might need to know the traffic), and the minimum needed for CSS and Javascript, so maybe around 100Kb all together.

So I will probably grind my way through CSS, starting with my fantastic gfx assets, in preview below. If you read that and know you can do better, please don't hesitate to contact me ;)
 
The filters:
The title:

mardi 19 septembre 2023

The Filter Shop - Filters with values

Filters can have values, how much, from 0 to 100, they apply to this entity. They can also be related to each others. Thus, the filters for an entity can describe quite well the quality of this last.

Here is a sample of filters (will be completed in time):

Game related:

Cheating Ads: when the advertisement for this game shows something totally different.

Insulting Ads: ads that takes you for an idiot like "Only person with an IQ of 140 can finish that", or a video of someone playing voluntarily very badly just so you install the game to do better.

 Improper Ads: ads that use sexual innuendos or similar. One game in particular very often inundates Youtube videos with such ads, reporting them does nothing.

Misleading Ads: this are games you get within the game, where they find hidden ways to open the ads store: a fake close button, a super-mini close button where everything else open the shop, a "Play" button, a mini-game within the ads (note that we are rather in support of such ads, it's nice to give an integrated demo) that continue with a fake level that open the shop.


The Filter Shop - breaking the existing rules

 The Filter Shop is mostly 2 things:

- a place to filter out the good from the bad :), and the filters can be good or bad, and will by default be in front of anything if they apply. So a game with many ads will get a "Too Many Ads" filter at the top. And the filter will explain what it means and what we suggest to fix it or to break it if it's a good one, in case you want to go to the dark side... I heard they have cookies.


- a place to push in the spotlight the less popular game and from the smallest team (all included, so no solo dev with a past in the game industry backed-up by a big publisher).

So the initial idea is to highlight one game each week when (if?) the filter shop is popular enough, eventually each day if it is super-popular. But right now it's unknown, so I don't want to highlight a game only for one week. But that's ok, as we already use a counter for finding the games to highlight. So the idea is to show a game a certain number of time, then go to the next.

samedi 13 mai 2023

Why my games are disappearing from Android

 I made my game as clean as possible, meaning without tracking, nasty IAP or Ads... But I also use Unity, that has a tracking on its own. So for all my Unity games on Android, I need to have a privacy policy, which is what you have on this blog, linked from the Play store page.

But now the privacy policy should also be into the games, which is something I am not sure I really want to do, for 2 reasons: 1 - It's near impossible to earn anything from apps on Android, especially when trying to play fair (i.e. not unlimited IAP, no paywall, ...), and 2 - It's nasty to update an app on Android, as Google updates and breaks stuff regularly. Unity being a bit of a mess as well, it is not so interesting...

For Nyaf there is actually a 3rd reason. I have a major update on the work for the PC version, and if I do an update on Android, it might get some of the new things from the PC (not all as it would be too slow and too big for a smartphone. The original Nyaf was optimized to be light enough for smartphone. Moving to the PC was the excuse to add many cool stuff, even when it's not obvious (like high-quality encoding of the musics).

The Archives of Evil Dr BA

A collection of games I wrote over the years in Java with their full sources. Some are rather complex games, and I tried to complete them to a playable state (Sea Wars being the most complex), some simpler (Similar, my 2nd applet game from 2006).
SeaWars is a relatively complete 2D strategic game that play on maps: a global strategic map and a zoomed tactical map. On the strategic map you play as you want, with only events that you can avoid without penalties (in this version). But you don't see the enemies, or your civil ships. On the tactical map you fight. You see the enemies only if they are damaged, otherwise you need to detect them. If too far you might not know if they are in your camp or not.
It's a simple game on some aspect, but complex on some other. For instance missiles and torpedoes can follow way points then seek for a target.
It became a bit too much for one person, so I finally "fixed" the gameplay this year, adding full save, separation of surface units and submarine (by default you will command surface unit, but you can manually decide), addition of civil unit and many small changes and fixes.
And it would be the ideal game to mod, complement, or use as a base for other game: use some algorithms or ideas within another game.

Draw was SeaWars. I accidentally discovered that the tactical map of Sea Wars could do very cool effects. Draw was born. The engine below if the same, the elements you see are still missiles and torpedoes, and they think they are in a naval game :). It's the most polished "game" here, and was finished around 2009, with only additions since then, and an automatic throttle system: the number of elements allowed changes depending on the FPS. But it's also one with many parts remaining from SeaWars. I kept them "in case". One of the latest addition was to reintegrate a SeaWars mechanism...
Similar is the oldest game. Based on a Palm Pilot game (for whose old enough to remember), it was aimed at being a very light online game. And it is. Using pure Java graphics systems, it is also suffering for that. It is still enjoyable, and had some good success when it was on the web (>10.000 players), but would greatly benefit from a remake. The score are not saved anymore, as I chose to keep the ghost code that was saving in a distant MySQL server ( DBSupport.addScore(playerName.toString(), score, nbColors, sizeGrid); ). Feel free to add a local DB support, or a modern score system. I will add any change to the code!
All my code is released under MIT licence, so you are free to do whatever you want with it. The games are mostly easy to change, up to a point - some parts might not be so simple - so can be modified by children, with a little help. Feel free to share new creations or modifications. If you contact me I will be happy to share them as part of the pack here!
All the games were originally Applets, so POJO without many dependencies. They can be compiled and run within Eclipse or another IDE very easily.
The current pack is ready to run on Windows, but it should be relatively easy to run on Linux. If you can do a distribution for it simply contact me. I will help you do that and give you a free key.  For some reason explained in another post (The Giant Ball, History), a Mac version is currently not possible.
All good modifications can be shared within the pack with the authors credited! Just be careful if you use API or assets for their respective licences. Be careful that GPL APIs cannot be used as this project is under a MIT licence, which allows commercial use without sharing source. LGPL APIs can be used if used as libs only (not part of the project's sources).
You can also fetch the code from the public repository: archive on BitBucket
Buying this pack will support creating more content such as that!
If you encounter any issue, please contact me. If you are a developer, feel free to look at the code! I will credit anybody that helps! :)
Font used in the title by Gluk.

mercredi 3 mai 2023

Looking for a new Job - My online CV

 As I am currently in between Job, the last job was again a limited time contract, I developed a Json viewer so I could structure my Curriculum Vitae, and eventually show an interactive Voronoi from it, but this last is pretty much a work in progress. Also an opportunity to use Javascript, which is not a language I used so much.

So, if you want a rather old but rather good software developer/analyst, here is my CV. And I am very very good at finding and fixing bugs, and quite quick at it too :)


Online CV

mardi 27 octobre 2020

NYAF Press Kit

 



NYAF Press Kit



NYAF is an enjoyable and relaxing experience featuring fantastic music and sounds recorded by the developer, his son and a friend. The game contains a full automatic save so you can quit at any time without losing your progress.

"NYAF is also a different hidden object game, where the engaging music together with the fluid control create a fluid experience", says Alain Becam. “I tried to make the game very dynamic”.

The backgrounds and the characters of NYAF are all hand painted and unique, some scanned from 1 by 1 meters canvas, from the artist Sébastien Lesage. The originals on canvas glow in the dark, thus the light green colour.

The pieces of music are from several great musicians, Chris Huelsbeck, Chan Redfield, Chris Collins, LiQWYD, Alexander Nakarada, Jean-Philippe Rameau and have been selected to match the current stage/game.


NYAF is also 4 games in one: NYAF, MMPG, YANYAF and a secret one! Play NYAF to unlock the other games, 2 will get unlocked by progressing in it, for the last one you need to find the secrets.

NYAF
  • Find the hidden characters on hand painted backgrounds. 
  • Select between 8 levels of difficulties.
  • Earn coins that you can use to buy 2 dogs that help you find the hidden characters.



MMPG
  • Battle the opponent in a massive minimalist fighting game. 
  • Unlock units by playing the other games.
  • Your units are placed automatically for you but you can always erase them to put them at another place. 
  • Use brute force to get more units or try to go as far as possible being a strategist. 
  • Once a level has been won, you can unlock it.



YANYAF 
  • Find the small symbols in an infinity of generated backgrounds.
  • No goal, no ending just for those who want a challenge looking for tiny symbols.



Additional Information

About Alain Becam
An independent developer in Heidelberg, Germany, he started programming when he was 11 years old, always mixing game and science-related programming, and never stopped since. After his studies he did 4 years of R&D in Game development, then worked on serious gaming for a short while, before a long pause from full time game development to work in an international institution. He never fully stopped developing games and other tools, from a naval war game (https://tgbb.itch.io/the-archives-of-evil-dr-ba) to a powerful but ugly name generator (https://tgbb.itch.io/alname-generator) with many in between, like a collection of stereoscopic 3D experiments for the now-defunct auto-stereoscopic HTC EVO3D. NYAF is his first leap to Steam.