• Rebuild iPad is out!

    Rebuild for iPad 2
    Rebuild iPad was born in the jungle

    Rebuild is now available for the iPad 2 on the Apple app store!

    I am happy to report that the game plays great on the iPad 2. Sarah’s done a great job rethinking the interface for the touch screen and this is probably the best version of the game. You can almost feel the zombies clinging to your finger tips.

    Sarah also made some new content for the iPad 2 version. She didn’t really have time to stuff all the features into Rebuild 2 that she wanted to so this was a chance to get that stuff into the game. You could think of the iPad 2 version as the “complete” version of Rebuild 2.

    I don’t want to spoil all the new stuff but there is a new plotline (which I wrote, props to me!) with a new building and a new ending. The new plot is unique because it’s more of a selfish path through the zombie apocalypse.

    Rebuild for the iPad 2!
    Rebuild for the iPad 2 is out!

    There are also Watch Towers that you can use to keep tabs on the zombie hordes. If you research things right you can even use them to mow down troublesome clumps of zed (a great way for advanced players to keep the danger rating down).

    As with Rebuild and Rebuild 2, Rebuild iPad was written entirely while traveling. While Rebuild was mostly written in europe Rebuild 2 was written in Central America. Rebuild iPad was written in Japan and the Philippines!

    It was great fun to test. I’ve played hours and hours of Rebuild and Rebuild 2 but the iPad game really revitaised the fun for me.

    I hope you find playing it as great an adenture as making it was!

  • Rebuild 2: Coming to iPad 2

    Rebuild for iPad 2
    I wrote most of Rebuild for iPad in the Philippines
    I wrote about AIR for iOS earlier in the year, but got caught up with Rebuild 2 before I could actually release any iOS game. By the time I got back to it, Adobe had just released AIR 3.0, and FlashDevelop 4.0 now comes with an AIR Mobile AS3 project that makes building Flash games to run on iPhone/iPad and Android a snap.

    AIR 3.0 is definitely faster than 2.6, but I still ran into some major performance issues when adapting Rebuild 2 for iPad. It came down to dragging the big map around. In its original vector form, the map moved slowly and chunkily as all the buildings were rendered at every frame. As one gigantic bitmap it was quick as can be, but a 2000×2000 bitmap takes up far too much ram. I found an optimum middle ground but including the bulky AIR interpreter I regularly need up to 100mb, and the iPad 1 only has 256mb ram in total. So, what I’m saying is… Rebuild 2 is coming to iPad 2 and only 2. Sorry early adopters, you should have waited a year for the iPad with twice the ram and faster cpu & gpu. And a camera.

    I also had to work around a shocking number of bugs in AIR 3.0 Mobile. Mostly display issues that could be solved by converting things into bitmaps before displaying them, each time increasing the amount of ram the game needs. Then, I was pretty sad I couldn’t add Game Center support without fiddling with Native Extensions in Xcode. I’m looking to pay someone to do this, because of course I’m The Girl Who Wrote An IPad Game Without A Mac.

    Almost. Apple removed their web-based system for uploading binaries around the same time 3rd party compilers made it possible to build from Windows or Linux. Now, you can only upload using Apple software running in Mac OS. Sigh.

    New Buildings in Rebuild iPhone
    What are those new buildings there?
    But enough with the technical. Although the iPad version is a port of Rebuild 2 Flash, I added some new content to the game as a thank you for fans of Rebuild 2 who buy it. There are two new buildings, and one is linked to a new branch of tech. Some fresh events spattered about, and an entirely new story arc and ending written by my husband Colin. You can discover it for yourself (assuming you have an iPad 2) later this month.



    Fun Rebuild fact: in the programming code, survivors are called “Colins”.

  • Rebuild 2: Free at last

    I was so busy enduring (or more like enjoying) typhoons in Japan and the Philippines, I nearly forgot to report on Rebuild 2 being live and in the wild! It’s now playing at at portals near you including Armor Games, Newgrounds (where it’s featured!), and Kongregate!

    Feedback has been mostly positive, though some fans are disappointed that it wasn’t more different than the original game. I’m with you – I should have focused on adding more crazy new stuff rather than trying to improve what was already there. I suppose I saw all the flaws in Rebuild 1 very clearly and wanted to fix them all and make Rebuild 2 better in all ways. Turns out that’s incredibly time consuming, and believe it or not, Rebuild 2 took me (not to mention EvilKris who did much of the new art) longer to write than the original game. I get the anti-franchise sentiment and I totally agree that originality is one of the most important aspects of good Flash games. On the other hand, I feel all good inside knowing that Rebuild 2 is the lean, mean, post-apocalyptic city building game it was always meant to be.

    EvilKris put together a video of his ending animations in their glorious full form, for those who want to revel in their un-cut awesomeness. Spoiler alert – here it is. The game’s already been mentioned around the web, including a review on JayIsGames and a game pick on the Indie Games Blog. Let me know if you see or write a review, I’ll collect them all in one place.

    Finally, Rebuild 2 is going to be played in HorribleNight’s 24 hour gaming marathon benefiting Child’s Play. The guys need your donations to keep them playing games like Rebuild 2 ALL NIGHT LONG (and the next day) this Friday the 14th.

  • Rebuild 2: Sponsor Get!

    Synergy
    Rebuild 2 + Dead Frontier: Synergy
    Rebuild has been sponsored – hurrah!

    That means it’s coming out very soon, and what better time than October, when everybody has ghouls and zombies on the brain. And things just got zombier, because my primary sponsor is another zombie-themed game: Dead Frontier, a free to play mmo where you battle the hordes in an extensive ruined city. It’s quite pretty (I think so anyway though I know some of you don’t share my appreciation for gore), and it’s a good example of the cool shit you can do with Unity.

    The sponsorship bidding process was long and stressful just like with Rebuild 1, and as before I’ve been screwing things up left and right. I was wallowing in One Cup sake earlier and wishing I could hire someone to handle this business stuff. But alas, history has shown that partering with producers is more trouble than it’s worth, especially for a small game like Rebuild.

    Plus, if I didn’t do it myself, I might miss out on fun marketing stuff like doing interviews and this blog, plus I like being credited as “Sarah Northway” rather than some faceless studio. Likewise it’s nice to deal directly with people, like Neil Yates of Dead Frontier and Daniel McNeely from Armor Games, who I’m happy to also be working with again.

    So look for Rebuild 2 soon on ArmorGames and other fine gaming establishments!

  • Incredipede Interviews

    I did a few really good Incredipede interviews in the last week. They have a lot of good information on a variety of subjects.

     

    John Polson did a great interview that talks about how the game works and SOWN and other stuff. You can find Part 1 and Part 2 on DIY Gamer.

     

    Christian Fratta wrote up an interview for Italian indie games site The Indie Shelter. This one is more philosophical and talks a lot about travel and evolution. It’s really interesting. It is on The Indie Shelter here. And in case you don’t speak Italian you can read the (pretty good) google translation here.

     

    Lastly there is the intimate conversation between Alec Holowka of Infinite Ammo and myself. This one is more about the Indie Game world than it is about Incredipede specifically. If you’re a dev or interested in making games then you’ll probably like this one best. You can find it here.