Elecorn: The Animated Coder

When I first designed Caster, I wanted to have the option to play as a male or female character.  You can see that from these designs made in 2004.

Here’s a little run sequence I just finished for the new character in Caster.

I plan to include the new character in the next update on iPhone.

The character will of course also be available when I update the Desktop versions as well.

Thanks!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Caster Redefines Mobile Gaming with Novel Manga Approach

Apple’s App Store opens whole new channel for publishing games in frequent, chapter-size increments

Duvall, Washington – September 21, 2009 – Independent game developer Elecorn LLC is bringing a brand new style of game delivery to the App Store with Caster, a high speed free roaming fantasy themed third-person shooter. Unlike traditional games that deliver story lines in large sequels or expansion packs, Elecorn is leveraging the power of the App Store to use an incremental publishing style that resembles Japanese manga and anime.

“With the App Store, you can quickly distribute updates and new content to every end user with a few clicks. This allows us to do something new in games.  We can make a truly episodic game that unfolds one episode at a time,” says Mike D. Smith, principal of Elecorn and Caster’s key developer.  With the debut of Chapter 2, Caster advances its brand new format of episodic releases that expands the gameplay and explores an incredible epic story.

Chapter 2 “The Lydonia Chronicles” was released September 18th 2009 and is a free update to all those who currently own the game. The game normally sells for $2.99, but to celebrate the release of Chapter 2, Elecorn is holding a 33% off sale.

ABOUT CASTER
Caster is an episodic game that presents an intense third-person action shooter experience with pulse pounding music. In the game, the player dashes across scenic locations destroying bug like creatures called the Flanx using six unique attacks that include massive terrain deformation and high speed barrages of energy blasts. All new episodes are released periodically for free.
Caster is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and iPhone at http://www.casterthegame.com

ABOUT ELECORN LLC
Elecorn LLC is a small, independent software development company operated by Michael D. Smith. Caster is the latest in a series of games developed by Elecorn, which is also known for its animation software TweenMaker (www.tweenmaker.com).  In addition to leading Elecorn, Smith also serves as a senior programmer for Hidden Path Entertainment.

Here are the slides in several formats from our presentation on porting games to iPhone at GDC Austin.

The notes section on each slide contains the real meat of the information.

Bolded notes were bullet points for me while reading the slides since many of the slides just had simple pictures.

Hope you find the info useful!  Hopefully I’ll have a video up soon.  Thanks!

http://www.elecorn.com/mikedsmith/data/iPort_GDC_Austin_2009.key

http://www.elecorn.com/mikedsmith/data/iPort_GDC_Austin_2009.ppt

http://www.elecorn.com/mikedsmith/data/iPort_GDC_Austin_2009.pdf

I’m heading off to Austin tomorrow morning to attend GDC Austin.

I will be giving a lecture on some stuff my friend and I learned while doing the iPhone port of Caster.

We hope that it will help other people considering porting their existing C++ games to the iPhone.

If you’re going to be at GDC Austin, look me up!

I’ll be posting the slides and notes after the conference.

Thanks!

Someone requested I post up this image for people to use on their desktop etc, so here it is!

Right click HERE and save as to get the full sized version.

It is very large and you will most likely want to shrink it down before using it.

Enjoy!

My first job in college was to create several dozen 16×16 icons for an engineering software package.  Obviously at this level you work per pixel since every pixel counts.

In the app store, icons need to be 57 x 57 pixels.  While this allows you to do quite a bit, it’s still a small space to work in.

When designing the icons for Caster, I wanted to convey a sense of movement and power as well as display something representative of the game.

Here’s the icon I came up with for the first version of Caster:

While I like this icon because it’s clear, I don’t really like how it looks.  I decided to do a new icon for the next update for Caster using this source art:

Click HERE to download a high res version.

Here are a few icons I came up with:

I think I’m going to go with with the last one.

Hopefully this will help it stick out a bit more.

Which icon is your favorite and why?

To celebrate the upcoming release of Caster Episode 2, I have asked famed video game rapper Random (aka Mega Ran) (www.megaran.com) to record a new theme:

Caster – Random (right click to Save As to your desktop).

I am looking to you awesome player/game videographers to put a sweet Caster vid to this score. So I am holding a competition to create a dynamite music video to accompany the theme song. The competition starts today and lasts through the end of July.  I will choose several finalists and let Caster enthusiasts vote on a winner!

Winner Receives:

• Custom made Caster t-shirt
• Piece of original Caster artwork
• Credit in the game
• Notoriety of having their music video used as promotional material and the intro for the iPhone version of the game.

Qualified Entrants Receive:

• Caster iPhone or desktop wallpaper

Rules:

• You must only use Caster art or other art that you have a license to use.
• You may add additional sound effects, but they should not obscure the base music track.
• Keep it clean / family friendly.
• Use the entire song.
• Use the Caster title in the first part of the video.

Suggestions:

• Fast action.
• Showing off the different attacks and abilities in the game.
• Something that fits with the song.
• Please use a high quality video compression scheme that is a fairly standard format.

When you have something ready that you’d like to submit, just e-mail me a link to where I can download the video (like a file share website) or write me to obtain access to my FTP server.

And that’s it!  Have fun!  I’m excited to see what you come up with!

Let me know if you have any questions:

Inspiration (some existing YouTube videos to check out):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSQSkINkT0s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVXWa7ll5_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVcxKKwtthQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EwlICILWIc

Last year at Casual Connect in Seattle, I met Omaha from iGame Radio.

Here’s a recent interview we did on Caster.

Enjoy!

http://www.igameradio.com/2009/07/09/podcast-ep-75-plants-vs-zombies-9-innings-and-elecorn/

So I gave myself and some of my friends a challenge to make a game in 10 hours.

My purpose for this was to have an excuse to finally try out the Unity engine for real.  Not just playing around with it here and there, but legitimately trying to make a real game with it.  Here is the result:

A, S, W, D and Arrow keys to move / shoot or use an xbox 360 controller.  You’ll need to download the small unity plugin for your browser if you haven’t already.

www.mikedsmith.com/Moderation.html

And here’s what Kyle Schouviller did using the Flat Red Ball Engine:

www.kyleschouviller.com/files/AcidBoots.zip

I went through the Unity tutorial and played around a little bit before getting started.

I had an idea for a game design… however, I never got to that point with this project.  I still plan on trying out the game design idea (probably with the Caster engine), but the main purpose of this was to take Unity 3D for a test run.

I met with the Unity Team a year ago at Casual Connect in Seattle.  At the time they were just starting to get some traction.  I was immediately impressed with their tech and paradigm for game development tools.

There are so many good things I can say about Unity, but I’ll just some it up with it’s done right and it’s awesome.

So where does that leave me with my Caster engine?  Well, I’m a “right tool for the job” kind of guy.  There are some things the Caster engine does better than Unity and some things Unity does better.  Depending on the type of project I do next, I could go either way…. I could, but I think I’ll just stick with the Caster engine.  More control (I can fix bugs in the engine instead of hoping Unity does it), better performance, super sweet features you won’t find in any other engine ^_^.

So when looking into what engines to use for your next indie project, I suggest you check out the following and see which one best fits your needs.  Prices vary, but FlatRedBall is free.

FlatRedBall  (www.flatredball.com) Xbox Live Communities / PC / Silverlight in the works, best developer support you will find anywhere.

Blade3d (www.digini.com) Xbox Live Communities / PC

Unity (www.unity3d.com)  Mac, PC, Web Browser, iPhone, Wii

Viva la Indie!

If you use Firefox for your web browser, you can check out the Caster persona here.

This will decorate the border of your browser window.

Also, if anyone is interested in making a Caster themed persona, let me know!  I can provide source art etc and can approve the persona that you want to submit.

Thanks!