Welcome to the official blog of My Owl Software, creator of the excellent Apple Jack games!



Tuesday 19 July 2011

Rather than name the levels after UK towns and villages as in the first game, I'm going to make up names for this one. Scribbled down so far are:

- The Pain Engine
- The Dawn of the Naked Eye
- The Bacon Exchange
- The Sky is Filled with Astronauts
- The Panda Factory

and so on.

I'm taking plenty of inspiration from short stories and chapter headings in J G Ballard books - I really love their pulpy surreal-ness.

PS- To answer Chris Mingay's question in the comment section below, I did set up a My Owl Twitter account but I never used it and I no longer even know where it is or what my password was! Perhaps I'll set another one up nearer the game's release.

Sunday 10 July 2011

Quick update:

I've designed a number of levels now and things are going well. There should be a great deal of variety from level to level, more so than in the first game, and most of the difficult-to-program 'objects' I've added seem to be behaving themselves. Little alterations to the code here and there as I go along helps keep everything else honest (pigs were literally flying during the last level!).

Just being able to set the size and shape of the level multiplies the possibilities many-fold. So for example I can have a vertically scrolling, block pushing puzzle fest followed by a forced horizontally scrolling saw and spike dodging level, with a free roaming enemy chuck-fest after that. Ideas are coming thick and fast and I hope I can do the game justice.

There should be some stuff in the game that even seasoned platform veterans haven't seen before.