Is Cownado still a thing?
tags: postmortem space beaches
Happy Befana everybody, I have some presents, and some news for you.
Holy bouncy boilerplate, Batman, it’s been 7 years since the last post. What happened? Is Cownado still a thing?
The tl;dr version is yes, Cownado is still a thing, but there have been some changes.
Since the last update, we continued working on Space Beaches, reached about 95% completion, and we also showcased it at the Indiecade Europe Festival in 2019 in Paris.
Then life happened, for everybody.
The artist who worked on the graphics for Space Beaches just plain disappeared, even though that was kind of expected, considering that after some life events that, among onther things, made her move from Canada to the USA, the quality of her work (and communication) started to suffer.
Other than that, initially Cownado was founded by 3 people, with clear roles:
Andrea handled game design & level design, Carlo handled the business side of things, and I handled programming & music, with graphic design outsourced to freelance artists.
But, as I said before, life happened for everybody, and Andrea & Carlo do not have the time to invest on Cownado anymore.
I still have passion for making games though, so, from now on, Cownado continues as my solo project.
Honestly, I have no idea if I’ll ever release Space Beaches, let’s just say that the project is on hold for the moment.
In the meantime I did a little redesign to this website, to give it a bit more colour, and also I’m working on a new game, but it’s still too early in development to showcase anything.
Lastly, at the beginning of this post I promised you some presents, so here they are:
Considering that Google removed our games from the Play Store, you can now download the Android APK packages of Frank the Dillo and Dawn Of Ultra Pong directly from this website.
As the development of my new game progresses, stay tuned for more news.
There are comments.
A new start
tags: postmortem space beaches
Happy Befana everybody, I have some presents, and some news for you.
Wow, it’s almost 2 years since the last post, so what happened in the meantime?
Read MoreThere are comments.
How to fix stuttering in scrolling animations
As I started working on our next game, I noticed a very strange and unpleasant behaviour: when scrolling the viewport, the animation was stuttering. Here’s how I fixed it.
Read MoreThere are comments.
Implementing WiFi multiplayer on Cordova-based games - Part 3
Concluding our series about local multiplayer via WiFi, we are going to address the Android bug that prevents local hostname resolution, and we will see the aspects to consider when using directly IP addresses instead of host names.
Read MoreThere are comments.
Implementing WiFi multiplayer on Cordova-based games - Part 2
Last time we have seen that a great solution for implementing local multiplayer on WiFi networks is to use Zeroconf and WebSockets. In this article we will see how to use these technologies, and some implications that are not obvious at first.
Read MoreThere are comments.
Implementing WiFi multiplayer on Cordova-based games - Part 1
Continuing our journey of local multiplayer technologies, in this article we will see what are the considerations to make in order to implement local multiplayer on WiFi networks.
Read MoreThere are comments.
Using the accelerometer in games - Part 2
tags: technical
In a previous article, we have seen that using the accelerometer for input in games is harder than it seems.
In this article we will explore other ways of using the accelerometer, with the experience gained from releasing Dawn Of Ultra Pong.
Read MoreThere are comments.
Multipeer Connectivity Plugin for Cordova
tags: technical multiplayer cordova
As you may remember, one of the downsides of the Multipeer Connectivity was that there was no Cordova implementation available. Well, not anymore.
Read MoreThere are comments.
Using the accelerometer in games
tags: technical
The accelerometer can be a good input method for some genres, think for example of racing games.
Using it is easy, it’s just a matter of mapping a value to a direction, right? Well, let’s find out.
Read MoreThere are comments.
Researching local multiplayer technologies for mobile devices - Part 2
In this last part of this series, we will see a couple more technologies that can be used to implement local multiplayer on mobile devices.
Read MoreThere are comments.