the Official Hero Interactive Blog

Hey everyone!  Being that everyone is so stoked up about Bubble Tanks 2, I thought I’d release this BT2 wallpaper my intern Eric made for me over the summer.  Honestly, I think it looks pretty good, I’ve had it up on my computer for several months now.  Enjoy!

  800×600 px

  1024×768 px

  1280×1024 px

  2560×1024 px ( Dual Screen!)

Here’s the official list of changes that will be made to StormWinds to create StormWinds 1.5. Turret lists and enemy lists will be provided as they are produced!

1) The easy, medium, and hard difficulty settings will be abolished. Instead of playing one long ass game, there will be an overworld map with selectable campaigns the player can choose to play in any order they choose. Each campaign will have an assigned difficulty. Rather than just changing enemy hit points based on difficulty, harder campaigns will actually have harder enemies and harder situations.

2) Each campaign will be about 15 levels, but the levels will be much shorter. Each campaign will also have it’s own background artwork. Levels will try to me more intense and varied in game play.

3) Each campaign will have it’s own subset of weapons and enemies, forcing you to adopt different strategies and experiment.

4) There will be 2 or 3 campaigns that will be locked out as extra content.

5) There will be many more weapons and enemies in the game. Much more content is a key component. A few ideas are a drone decoy (which I think is sweet), as well as a time altering gun of sorts (either slows down or stops altogether enemies). I’d also like some turrets that can be used in combination. Depending on time, it’d be cool to make a turret that gives you control of a unit airship you can drive around and shoot from.

6) Some sound effects will be added.

7) There will be a few extra *challenge* campaigns. They will be REALLY short, and will have goals associated with them, as well as high score boards. An example would be having a few levels where the goal is have the best accuracy using a certain gun, etc…Points are awarded based on time or some other objective. Another challenge campaign might incorporate auto firing turrets you can use, and you can’t let enemies get by. Challenge high score boards will use armorbot.

8 ) The auto gun level up thing is going to be scrapped in favor of a system that allows the player to manually distribute how they upgrade. They’ll either spend money or experience points, not quite sure yet. Each gun in “buy” mode will have info next to it such as the level of the gun, as well as a “more” button that opens up an upgrade screen and detailed stats for that weapon.

9) Going to try to make further optimizations to increase the game speed and frame rate so it doesn’t feel like it’s lagging on slower machines.

10) Each week, for Armor Games and Hero Interactive, I’ll add an extra *challenge* campaign.

Everyone’s been asking me what’s going on with Bubble Tanks 2. I get emails with subject lines reading “NEEEEEEDDDDDD BUBBLE TANKS 2!!!!!!!!!!”. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, in cold sweats, and I can still hear the screaming…

So what’s the deal with getting this game out? The answer is two fold: time and money.

The problem is that this game is massively ambitious. It will boast in the deluxe edition 125 total enemies, 51 different tank states (reached through several upgrade paths), a large assortment of weapons, game engine optimizations and more. It will also have 2 more brand new game modes. To date, this is my largest project yet, far surpassing StormWinds in the amount of time needed for completion. And StormWinds was a huge undertaking, trust me.

All of these amazing features are taking a LOT of time to develop, and as a result, need a lot of funding to develop. Many people think I just do this as a side gig or as a hobby- nope! Making flash games is what I do for work, all day, every day. And that means, without the funding, deciding to work on BT2 without pay means I don’t get to eat. And if you’ve seen a picture of me, you’ll know that I like to eat.

A lot of work has been done on the game. Already BT2 easily surpasses the original Bubble Tanks in quality, and I (along with many other people) think all of the hard work required will certainly pay off when the game is released. However, that doesn’t do me too good as I watch bills go unpaid and my ass is thrown out into the streets.

The plan then is to build up some financial backing to allow me to make that final push to get the game through to completion. That’s what these middle games that are popping up are meant to do- get some money saved up so I can focus on the game and get it out the door.

This game is going to happen, I promise. It’s very high on the list of priorities. When is it coming out?… that I’m not sure of yet. I’m still hoping to get it done before the end of the year. I guess it all depends on the amount of support I get from all of you!

Hey, I’m back… and I’m just married!

I’ve got a lot of stuff planned ahead and I’ll be trying to post more frequently as people are getting in on the discussion, it’s becoming more worthwhile!

I’m going to be out of town for a week and a half, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care!  Leave some more feedback, and I’ll respond as soon as I’m back.  I’m also going to try to post much more on here as people are actually starting to get some discussion going.

I appreciate everyone’s feedback, and I definitely take comments and suggestions seriously!

Hey Everyone!  Another big announcement here…

I’ve gotten a lot of amazing suggestions and good feedback on StormWinds.  It sounds like there are a few things that would really make the game more enjoyable for players.  Rather than settle, I’ve talked to my sponsor and we’ve agreed to go back and release a new version in about 3-4 weeks titled StormWinds 1.5.  I’ll be addressing all the of the criticism and try to make a game we all can enjoy much more.  Specifically, I’ll be adding many more guns and enemies, shorten the levels and make them more interesting, speed up the game, and try to implement a way for you to manually distribute how your guns upgrade.  Thanks everyone for your support!

Also, as a small note, all keycodes for the extra content will still be valid for version 1.5.

Check out the link to Digg (and of course, please digg it!)

Digg Link!