Graphics for all my games were made in Paint. I used to create one huge bitmap, fill it with gray color and draw objects and animations frame after frame. It was very efficent way to draw things. I had access to other sprites just by scroling up and down.

Problems arose when I wanted to upgrade the style a little bit. It was just before I started working on Elf Elfonsinio 2. The goal was to give it little anti-aliasing and increase the overall contrast. It was really tiring and monotonous work to smooth all the gradients and borders by hand. Below is the graphic that I’ve posted at that time on previous blog. As you can see, on the left is the old style and on the right the new one. This picture is in 4x zoom but in normal size borders looks quite natural.

While working on this new game, I decided to evolve the style again. I wanted to preserve the overall feeling of the graphics (thick borders, visible dithering of the inside), but use vectors instead of bitmaps. Vectors are so much better when it comes to resizing, rotating and distorting the image.

I’ve made a test and converted some older raster graphics to vectors. Below are few of the items.

Some of you may already know the project I’m working on!

More than a year ago, I started learning Objective-C from great lectures by Paul Hegarty. It was good introduction to iOS, as this series covered pretty much every aspect of the system, its structure, memory management etc. I stopped after maybe 10th lecture, because at this point I knew that learning whole new language would take much time. Also, I didn’t want to spent my holidays on doing so. Instead, I started thinking about things like touch controlls, level design, and generally about what factors are important while designing game on mobile devices. I remember especially one great talk on this subject with Karol Pikor as we were walking at the sea and brainstorming ideas.

After few months, while searching the web for other solutions how to develop games on iOS, I came across interesting game engine—Cocos2d-X. According to its developers it allows to write one codebase and make it work on various operating systems (mobile and desktop)—great! In addition, It’s C++ engine—even better! (as I already knew the language).

So when the opportunity arose in September (had to create a C++ project for the classes at the university) I jumped at the chance and wrote simple scrolling-based game on iPhone using Cocos2D-X. The idea was that player will be steering a ship by tilling device up and down, and shooting by tapping the screen. Shooting down certain number of asteroids will increase the level and speed of them, and on and on.

Of course, it’s not something of which I’m immensely proud. It was more a test of the engine and my getting back to business. I liked it so much that I decided to use Cocos2d-X in my new project that I’ll be starting very soon!

It’s been over a year without a post here and 3 years from the release of the latest game. It seems as if time stopped here.

Been thinking recently about the future of Kalafior Games, the direction where it all should go next and — of course — about new games. It’s not easy to return to thinking about game design after so much time of absence in this area, though. I made some final decisions but can’t be sure that they will work in practice.

The object of thought was of course Robot Robuś 2. Everything has been carefully written on a piece of paper and now waits for its turn. And by the way, Robuś is likely to see its name change to more English-speaking.

As we know, during recent years a lot has changed in the distribution of games. Now we have Steam, App Store, Android Store etc. I’ll take it into account in the new productions, especially that I surely give up making games in Multimedia Fusion 2. It’s time for the real programming and possibilities.

I won’t reveal any details yet. The purpose of this post was to let you know that something is going on, despite the fact that it seems a little deserted here.

Today, the moment has come when the past does not matter anymore. It is the beginning of a new chapter in the history of Kalafior Games.

For now, I will not reveal any details what can happen here in the future. I will not promise anything anymore. Everything there will be going with the natural flow of things.

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