Fair enough, I get what you're saying. What is it about this situation that pushes it from tasteful pin-up art to being trashy? Is it the illustrations themselves, or their prominent use in the promotional screens and movie?

Here's how the drone operators appear in-game... Is this appropriate or do you find this cheap too?

Some people will find offense in anything. I happen to like pin-up artwork and I'm hoping there's more people out there like me who appreciate it than people like you who are offended by it. If it's not to your taste that's fine, but I think you're missing out.

It's out now - https://itunes.apple.com/app/droneswarm-command/id575450339
Available for $1 for the launch week.

[It's out now on the App Store - here's the link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/droneswarm-command/id575450339]

Trailer on YouTube:

[edit]It's out now on the App Store - here's the link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/droneswarm-command/id575450339

DroneSwarm is my latest game, and my first commercial indie game. It's developed with the iTorque 2D engine. If you've got any questions about the game or Torque feel free to ask me here. Here's the press blurb...

-------------------------------

DroneSwarm Command is a unique real-time strategy game for iPad featuring multi-touch controls and an experience system that allows you to upgrade your drones to suit different play styles.

Features:

• A detailed tutorial and training missions.
• Command three drones simultaneously, each with unique abilities.
• Level-up your drones to enable special attacks.
• Game Center achievements and leaderboards.

Your three drones must work together to maximize your score. They are...

• The Redback, an air superiority fighter armed with long range air-to-air missiles and possessing high speed and maneuverability.
• The Groundhog, focusing on close air support it has guns and rockets to take out ground targets and can laser designate targets for cruise missile strikes.
• The White Crane, an electronic warfare and countermeasures aircraft which can hack enemy missiles mid-flight or disable enemies with its EMP weapon.

DroneSwarm Command will be available for iPad on November 29th, at a special launch price of $0.99

Screenshots (click for full version)


I'll update this forum post with the iTunes link once it's out.

Paul - yes the old forum is still available, there's a link to it in the links section on the right of the frontpage. It's locked in read-only mode to keep the spambots out, but all the old tutorials and resources are still available for everyone to read. It was quite interesting transferring the entire site and forum from one webhost to another!

Hima - the sign-up quiz image is random screenshot from a large selection of games. It seems to be keeping the spammers out for now 

Some of you may remember shmup-dev.com, the forum for shoot-em-up developers. I've recently been given responsibility for managing the site and I've relaunched it with a new forum and a news page (http://www.shmup-dev.com/) featuring tools, engines and upcoming shmups from the forum.

If you're interested in learning how to develop shmups, of if you already make shmups and would like to discuss the genre with other developers please drop by.

Video 5





New background art, multi-touch controls and drone upgrades are now in the game.

It seems slow when you're watching the video, but when you're playing it there's actually a lot going on at once. You have to watch the main screen and the panel on the left, and you have to pan around to make sure you're not missing any sneak attacks. I think if it moved any faster players wouldn't be able to keep up with everything at once and it would become frustrating and overwhelming.

Also, this is still in development. I still have to add lots more enemy types and more detail in the background.

Video 4 - Showing experience points, special weapons and countermeasures.

Week 3 - This one shows some of the software and tools I use for iPad devleopment, as well as an update on the game.

Some of the drone models:

[Update - Video 5]

I'm developing an RTS game for iPad with the Torque 2D engine. I thought it might be interesting to post work-in-progress videos as I go along. I'll try to make a new video every week or so.

Week 1 - prototype video (no audio):





Week 2 - This video has an audio commentary explaining the game's controls.





Week 3 - This one shows some of the software and tools I use for iPad devleopment, as well as an update on the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXvpgo_J8Xg

Video 4 - Showing experience points, special weapons and countermeasures.

Video 4

Update - Video 5 - New background art, multi-touch controls and drone upgrades are now in the game.

DroneSwarm Comand - iPad Development Video 5

Ban This Game is a small game about censorship in Australia. I made it in a couple of days using Torque Game Builder. It's a pretty simple game but I'm hoping it will draw attention to this issue among people who didn't already know about it and perhaps spark some interesting discussions.

Trailer on YouTube




Download the game from: www.banthisgame.com

Alex - thanks, this is only my 2nd 'social issue' game so I'm learning what works with the medium as I go.

Movius - I agree with you, it's an over-simplification to say it's just Atkinson, but you have to make some simplifications when you want to make a point quickly. However I did include Conroy and his insane internet filter in the same game, to illustrate that the Australian Labor party is censoring Australian media in many ways.

The German rating system is basically a way of blackmailing publishers into censoring their own games.

That's very sneaky! That way it looks like the publishers are doing it voluntarily and the government avoids responsibility.

Alex - Thanks again for the detailed reply. The point about Harpooned being successful because of its shock value is very true. This game is unlikely to reach the same level of media exposure because it lacks that shock factor. I'm banking on the fact that the issue of game censorship and internet filtering is quite popular in the media at the moment - perhaps that will be enough for this game to cross over from the game/internet culture websites into the mainstream media. Also when I released Harpooned 2 years ago Twitter and Facebook weren't as big of an influence on people's lives. It will be interesting to see if those outlets have any effect on spreading this game.

Like you said though, the success of this kind of effort isn't clear until some time afterwards.

Movius - sorry, Minister Atkinson, or more precisely, Attorney General Atkinson. If you'd bothered to play the game you'd see that I got it right in the game's introduction 

Actually very few games are banned in Germany, and even those put on the index as being restricted can still be sold, just not to minors. The only things that will 100% get your game banned in Germany is using Nazi imagery outside of a historical context, or holocaust denial. Most publishers voluntarily tone down games for German release to increase sales by getting a lower rating.

http://mag-murphy.net/2008-10-29/video-game-censorship-in-germany-how-it-works-how-it-doesnt

Australia however has no R18+ rating for games, because one conservative Christian senator (Michael Atkinson) is blocking it. This means that ALL adult games are unrated, and therefore unavailable for sale. Leisure Suit Larry is illegal in Australia!

Thanks very much for the feedback everyone.

I realise this is a very simplistic game and doesn't go into much depth into the actual details of the issue, but that is deliberate. There are 2 reasons for taking this approach:

Firstly, detailed and accurate social-issue games are invariably boring. Government simulators, eco-games, feed-the-world games, they're all rubbish games and nobody plays them unless they have to (ie students forced to play them in the classroom, or people who already work in the field).

Secondly, the impact of a social-issue game is not a result of people playing it, it is a result of people talking about it. My experience with Harpooned is that while many people hear about such games, very few actually play them. Harpooned's trailers have had about 85,000 views on YouTube, and it was shown on G4 TV (I'm guessing another 100,000 viewers right there) and featured on NineMSN's news frontpage (perhaps 50,000 thousand more hits) however, it has only been downloaded 20,000 times, and in the last year only 2,000 new high scores have been submitted.

So less than 10% of the people who learn about the issue go on to play the game.
That's ok with me, because nearly a quarter of a million people who knew nothing about whaling learned something about it by seeing Harpooned - I don't really care if they play the game. Even if only 1% of them go on to do something about it, that's a big impact.

Having learned that lesson I am making this a much simpler game. My objective here is really to expose this issue to the public who weren't aware of it, not to make a brilliant game. While it may seem cynical to manipulate the media like this, I think it's an effective tactic. I'm quite capable of making a good game (I made Go Beryllium) but that takes a LONG time, and making this game more detailed/accurate isn't necessarily going to make it more effective as an information broadcasting tool.

I didn't know the Australians were worse than the Germans with their game censorship. Scary. 

That is exactly the result I'm going for. If a newspaper or large game blog like TIGSource or Kotaku picks up this game and writes about it then my time will have been well spent.

Ban This Game! - Windows demo, 4.5Mb.

A game about censorship in Australia.



It's pretty much finished. Let me know if it's too hard, if it's fun, if there's any bugs, if there's anything cool I should add to it. I'll be releasing it for Windows and Mac in the next few weeks.

My top score is 28 - can anyone can beat that?

One thing, not sure if it's been mentioned already,... but why not leave filtering off? (aka use nearest-neighbour interpolation or point-filtering) Filtered pixel art makes my heart weep.

Seconded - turn off the filtering!

It's worth buying an iPod just for this! 

(and Hook Champ, and Skull Pogo).