We launched our first game, Beesly's Buzzwords, towards the end of November. Currently, the game is available through:

RealOne Arcade (http://games.real.com/game.php?gameid=B57439CA-1E22-11B2-A9B9-00D0B7142009&pageid=index-hotnew)
Big Fish Games (http://www.bigfishgames.com./downloads/buzzwords/index.html)
Direct 1st-Party (http://www.playbuzzwords.com/)

I posted a longer history of our development in this thread (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=20553#post20553), which may interest some readers.

Right, this is the game that sells 100 units a day. As if this wasn't enough to frustrate me (and my almost 1 sale a day :P ), the game is perfect enough that I can't think of anything I'd want improved about it - either this or I was simply tricked away from trying to find improvement ideas and lulled into simply enjoying the game. I add this to my list of "textbook" games - to be studied and analyzed.

Well, there was a tiny moment of confusion when I had just started to play when I had selected a correct word and I didn't know what I was supposed to do - perhaps the "submit" button should start to shimmer - the same goes for the last letter of the word (which, if clicked, will clear the word).

I especially loved how the game's theme and music is nostalgic, almost sad. It gave me a very strong "Don't cry little bee, I will collect enough honey for you" feeling.

Submit should blink if you have a correct word selected. Additionally, if you use submit to finish a word more than a few times it'll do a hint popup about finishing a word by clicking the last letter again (if hints are still enabled).

I'm glad you liked it. We spent a lot of time polishing and arguing over the design--mostly about whether to add features--and we feel it really turned out well. We're working on two new projects that should be completed in early Summer; ideally those will come out as well as Buzzwords did.

Cool game! (I played to something like year 7 autumn at my first try - after having a lot of trouble finding the first word... (I deliberately ignored the annoying word hints))

However:

- invisible/blinking mouse pointer makes it a bit annoying to play.

- trashed background graphics in the game, and also other graphics like the buttons once I move the mouse over them (they stay trashed when I remove the mouse)

- I just launched the game a second time to check that the mouse pointer was indeed invisible (since I tried the game yesterday), and after clicking on "quit" the game crashed.

Athlon 850, 480MB RAM, Savage 4 32MB, Windows 98se, Directx 8.

How does Virtools work out for you?

Is it similiar to Director/Multimedia Fusion?
Judging from code-by-behaviors it does appear to be similiar.


Easy to use?

Alex

One teensy little bug...

I made the word "TERRIBLE" and in Beezley's thought bubble the word appeared as "TERRIBL_"

Originally posted by Anthony Flack
One teensy little bug...

I made the word "TERRIBLE" and in Beezley's thought bubble the word appeared as "TERRIBL_"

The thought bubble gets cropped for larger selections (just click-drag across the board). The font isn't very clear, but it's actually an elipsis ("...").

Sirrus: I'll post some screenshots of Virtools schematic a little later, it's fairly unique compared to other similiar non-code-based solutions.

yeah, i'm intrigued by VirTools. wish they had a demo download.

Beesly's Buzzwords was made using Virtools?

I have heard of Virtools before and was turned away by their price and publishing agreements.

http://www.virtools.com/solutions/ordernow/virtools_publishing.asp

There is also an alternative to Virtools, which is called Quest 3D,

http://www.quest3d.com

I never used either tools before so I can't say how they compare in features but they seem very similar.

Perhaps with shareware (ie none of the options listed on the publishing list - seemed mostly for display) they offer a "Made with Virtools" splash option to waive the publisher fee.

Alex

We managed to dodge licensing costs by creating some demo material for Virtools in exchange for the licenses we needed to publish Buzzwords. It wasn't trivial, though--the project we did for them took around three weeks of my full-time attention.

They do have a demo of Virtools available. It's fully-featured, just protected with a time limit under NetQuartz. Just email or call sales to get a hold of one.

http://www.flashbangstudios.biz/tests/schematicexample/pics/ has some authoring screenshots from an internal prototype. The prototype itself is at http://www.flashbangstudios.biz/tests/schematicexample/Virtools.htm

Here's a 60-second crash course in the schematic concept with an example. The fundamental concept is Building Blocks. They can actually be viewed with several traditional paradigms, but principally: functions and statements. They take in parameter arguments and spit out results (function usage), but can also be activated with multiple inputs, which, in turn, can activate multiple outputs (statements).

In the example pics, something like Get Component BB is a straight function which takes in a vector, rectangle, color, etc, and spits out its component floats.

Get Row BB is a bit of a blend. It primarily acts as a function, returning the contents of an array's row, but also as a statement by activating either a "found" or "not found" output.

Counter BB is a straight statement. Its input/output structure is In, Out, Loop In, and Loop Out. When activated by the In, it activates the Loop Out output. Activation of the Loop In increments an internal value. Loop Out is activated after execution until this internal value meets the conditions of the parameter inputs (count, start index, and step).

The other core concept is Behavior Graphs. These are the blocks with grayish text. Essentially, you can encapsulate bits of schematic and treat and wrap with inputs/outputs. These Behavior Graphs are conceptually treated exactly as Building Blocks (you can think of it like creating a function).

Behavior Graphs are primarily used for two purposes: organization and code re-use (functions). The Get Random Colors BG is an example of a function, while most of the other BGs are simple used as organizational layers.

Finally, there is also a built-in scripting language. Personally, I use Virtools because I'm not much of a system-level programmer, so I generally avoid VSL. The code here is detects clusters on the grid, which is something that would be more difficult in schematic. VSL also creates Building Block look-alikes, which works well for integrating coders and scripters on the same project. In Buzzwords, there are only two VSL scripts to go from hex-to-pixel coordinates and back (which would just sloppy with schematic). Even the more interesting bits, like hunting the board for valid words, is done completely with the visual schematic.

Virtools is actually much more than a 2D engine. It's fully-featured, and their upcoming 3.0 even adds shader support. Our long-term plan is to introduce 3D concepts to the casual audience. Feature-wise, we won't need to change our process or pipeline if we keep using Virtools.

I run a blog where I experiment with Virtools at http://devlab.flashbangstudios.biz/ , and we actually did a project for last year's IGF (didn't make finalist) with it too: http://www.muridaemassacre.com/screens/screens.html

I ended up typing more than I thought I would. Hopefully it satisfies some curiosity!