I’ve been putting together a small scrolling arcade / casual game for the Tizen App Challenge called Ragin’ Pirates, which the deadline for was this evening, December 8, 2013, shortly before midnight.
I was late to the game for this contest, which opened in July. I started development mid-November. Everything was a frantic pace, and many late nights after work, but I feel the game came together really well in the end. Chris Clark, over at ginik.ca, put together a fantastic tileset that I used, Kurt Barlowe made my awesome icon and title screen. I used some assets from Reiner ‘Tiles’ Prokein at reinerstilesets.de, and David E. Gervais created the art I used in my level select screen. Thanks guys! I have lots of various people to thank for the sound effects and music, too many to list in a blog post. Thank you all. Thank you to my beta testers for the valuable input and suggestions.
The development process was likely what most would encounter. A concept that progressively matures and gets refined to the point its something half entertaining. Then scrapped and started over as something better. A few minor bugs were encountered and fixed and while it doesn’t have as many levels as I would have like to have had in it for the challenge, I do plan on releasing a level pack as an update.
Almost missed it by a whisker – Submission into the Tizen app store didn’t go 100% as expected. First two tries I was rejected! Panic! With the deadline so close I didn’t have time for anything major. It took some time to find out what was happening, turns out their icons size is 117×117 (mine was), with a 2px transparency boarder around the icon. Mine also had that boarder, with the exception of ONE half transparent pixel, from the tip of my pirate’s moustache poking into it. Resized, submitted, and 8 hours later, near the deadline for certification, I passed. Absolutely nothing wrong with anything at their end. Their seller store is actually pretty neat, I don’t have anything to compare it to yet, but I do like the layout and information provided. Anyway, I’m in! I’m excited to be a launch day indie game developer for a new platform with my cheesy little game.
Check it out here: Ragin’ Pirates!