‘Developer Corner’ Category Articles

Christian Whitehead On 'Sonic CD' and His Retro Engine

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

sonic_cd_titleThis certainly has been an interesting last couple of days, between Sega's challenge to gamers to come up with what game to make next and then Christian Whitehead's surprise response unveiling a remarkable Sonic CD proof of concept port created with his own Retro Engine Development Kit.

Eager to know more about both Sonic CD and the iPhone Retro Engine and Retro Engine Development Kit (or RDSK), we fired off a series of questions. The interview is totally worth a read, but beware, it will only make you want Sonic CD and other games produced by the RDSK even more.

Eli Hodapp: How flexible is the RSDK? Is it tied to a game like Sonic or would something like Castlevania with RPG elements be possible?

Christian Whitehead: All of the actual Sonic CD logic is script driven, so the Retro Engine is more than capable of different styles of gameplay. A game like Castlevania would definitely be possible, since the engine excels at handling 2D side scrollers. Stuff like top down RPG's would be fine too, I wouldn't count it on doing something like a full on 3D racing game though!

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Posted in Action, Adventure, Developer Corner, Interview, Platform, Upcoming Games, iPhone games, iPod touch games | 21 Comments »

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Dev Corner: Mark Andersson on Freeverse's Flick Baseball

Friday, March 6th, 2009

This is a developer guest post written by Freeverse's Mark Andersson and details some of the design challenges in Freeverse's upcoming Flick Baseball game. While the content is aimed more at developers, it also provides fans an early peek at this upcoming game.

My name is Mark Andersson, and I have been working with Freeverse for over a decade. I was the Lead Programmer for Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab, Burning Monkey Casino, Wingnuts, Wingnuts 2: Raina's Revenge and Neon Tango. Most recently I've been working on games for the iPhone, and developing versions of Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab and Burning Monkey Casino.

In that effort big chunks of code came over from the original Mac versions largely unchanged, making development on the iPhone that much easier. You really can consider the iPhone platform to be like a tiny Mac, which is great for old-school Mac developers like me and the other Freeverse guys. The real effort goes into rethinking the interface for the smaller screen and the innovative control methods, and of course maximizing performance within the limitations of the hardware.


early development shot of Flick Baseball

My current project for Freeverse is an original, ground-up, iPhone game and the next title in the Flick Sports series: Flick Baseball. So when you're not bowling or fishing you will be able to enjoy America's favorite pastime in your pocket! (Hmmm… that didn't come out quite right)… In this post I hope to give you some behind-the-scenes peeks at the game during development and touch on some hopefully interesting aspects of the process.

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Posted in Developer Corner, Exclusives, Free, Upcoming Games | 23 Comments »

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