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So, where have we been? Yeah… it’s been a while. About nine months. And I know that’s a long stretch without updates, so let’s just be straight about it. As most of you have probably seen, Arcade1Up was acquired by Basic Fun!. Normally, that kind of change is exciting — new leadership, new direction, new opportunities. Right now though, we’re in a bit of a holding pattern. Since the transition, those of us developing for the IGT/B platform haven’t had a way to publish new content, and communication has been minimal at best. We don’t yet have any clear contacts at Basic Fun! or any real guidance on what the future looks like for third-party developers, just silence. So at the moment, everything is paused. But here’s the part I think people deserve to know: The projects I’ve been working on over the past year? They weren’t delayed. They weren’t abandoned. They were finished — and ready to release. They didn’t go live because they weren’t approved for publishing. Not due to bugs or broken builds — just internal decisions that didn’t go our way or are not agreed with. But that’s a whole different story and I raised a stink, trust me.  That’s been the reality behind the silence. Not a lack of progress — just a lack of a path forward. And yeah, that’s been frustrating. Extremely frustrating. Because I know what’s sitting there. I know the time, effort, and care that went into those games — mine and others’ — and I know they would have been a great addition to the platform. The upside is this: Those projects are still ready to go and if Basic Fun! decides to open things back up and work with third-party developers, I won’t be starting from scratch. I’ll be ready to move immediately. No long wait. No “coming soon.” Just content that’s already been built and is waiting for the green light. Because despite everything, I still believe in the IGT/B. It’s genuinely fun, with a lot of untapped potential — both for developers and for players. I’m hopeful the new ownership sees that and chooses to invest in it. So yeah — things are uncertain right now. But they’re also… close. I hope. Closer than they might seem from the outside. If the door opens, we’re ready. Thanks for sticking through the quiet stretch. I’ll share more as soon as there’s something real to say.

So, after a hiatus So, after a hiatus for a couple months, work is swiftly progressing. I just needed time away, do my job job and forget game dev for a bit. Things and decisions weigh you down and impact you greatly, and sometimes you just have to escape. But, that time is over! Progress on the mobile controller for Acros has been moving along quite fast and it’s almost done. I’ve replicated most of the functionality from in-game to JavaScript to work with the webpage that is the controller. By the time the game is done, it will be playable by up to 8 players, 4 using the table and 4 more using mobile devices. You’ll be able to play the entire game from your phone with only a couple interactions on the table to actually start the game, and when it ends. Theres still a tiny bit left, like the voting routine and then showing some kind of game over screen on the mobile device, but that’s only a couple days part time work. Once the voting is done, the game should be completely playable. So far avatar and name selection are in, displaying the round number, the generated acronym, getting the players answer with a lot of validations taking place, and the timer… That was fun, but I managed to get the timer on the mobile controller almost perfectly synced with the timer on the table. It may be like .3 seconds off, but it looks great!  I’m still tweaking things, I don’t like the acronyms it generates, and I’ve been tweaking those to make it a little more friendly… plenty of time for that though. There’s still a lot to do on the game itself, all the menus, title screen tweaks, house rules, in game pause?! Not sure how on earth I’m going to manage that one since I’d have to pause everything, even the mobile controllers… I’ll have to figure something out though. I need to see if there is a way to “pause” an interval in JS.. if I can do that it will make it a lot easier to do. A quick search provides nothing other than saying you can’t. I may just have to only allow the pause to be hit at specific times, anytime a timer isn’t running. Not perfect, because you may still have to finish your turn out entering an answer and voting.. or ya know, just walk away and let the others continue. Oh well.. figure that out later. Alright, I suppose it’s time to get back to busy!

The Time Has Come… The time has come, the replacement laptop is here, all the backups (mostly) have been restored, and what feels like hundreds of applications are reinstalled and set up. The worst part was after stealing my wife’s laptop, we realized it too was having some serious overheating issues. They sent a tech to the house, replaced the heatsinks and still ended up having to ship it in to have more repair work done. On the bright side, both laptops are now working flawlessly the way they should have from the beginning!   Unfortunately, my real job has been keeping me extremely tied down lately so not a lot of progress has been made, however I was able to get back to work on ACROS: Battle of the Wits!   The premise is simple, and (I love this part) fully voiced over by a voice some people may recognize from television; all thanks to some AI genius and people donating their voice models to be used by developers like me. The game will create a random acronym, and a category. You, the player, must decide on what that acronym stands for. Enter your answer and then wait on everyone else to finish, then vote on your favorite!   In ACROS, you can play directly on the table or scan a QR code to use your phone as the controller. The game itself is mostly done (except for options menus, etc.), it’s the mobile controller aspect that’s been taking the longest time to develop. I ran into issues with the web server asset I was using within Unity and had to reach out to its developers for some assistance. Now that we have it configured, it’s a matter of creating all of the different game scenes in an HTML format that your phone can send back to the game table. In the end, it will be a seamless integration, and this should end up as a great party game!   So far most of the basics have been implemented and I’m currently working on player customization through the webpage allowing you to enter your name and select your avatar. The next step is a simple waiting screen for the game to begin. Displaying the acronym is already done and animated, then it’s a matter of building out the logic and checks and balances to allow you to enter your response and vote on other players’ responses. Should be easy enough, it was the background processes that took extra time, sending messages back and forth between multiple phones and the table.   Overall things are progressing nicely, and this should be shaping up for a release to the testers here in the near future!!!

Stuck Waiting… Still.. So I Stole It! Waiting is one of the things I hate the most. And when the computer dies, and I have to wait on a replacement, it’s just a recipe for disaster. So far I have been physically without a computer now for close to 2 weeks..   Sure, I picked up a chromebook with an I3, but it’s no where near a replacement. The best it was good for is web browsing and some xbox cloud gaming. On the bright side, I did manage to complete Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2.. Amazing game even if the story has been done before.. Definitely recommend it! So when I bought my Alienware, (the last dell/alienware I will ever buy), I also bought the wife one. Not as powerful, but still a damn nice machine.. and it sits on her desk in a pink plaid wrap, barely getting used mored than once a week. Today, Dell finallllllly came up with a replacement system and sent me the info.. April 7th..   ANOTHER TWO WEEKS… I’m already going insane and the boredom is killing me.. So I stole hers… Currently getting it set up with the stuff I need, and had to open it up and install more ram (16gb was all it had!!!!!).. So now at least I can mess around with some stuff again.. Finally!   Have fun, I’m going to finish dinner and then finish installing packages so I can get busy!

Stuck Waiting… Well, work has been put to a dramatic halt lately. I actually have developed three more games that are ready for release, but the powers that be aren’t sure of them right now, and so they sit on hold. They may still see the light of day eventually, only time will tell I guess. It’s extraordinarily frustrating to put that much time (and not to mention COST) into developing something for it to end up sitting on a virtual shelf, especially when you have an audience that’s calling out for more games to be added and for some more variety.  I see both sides of the argument, certain groups want to curate to make sure a market doesn’t get saturated in crap, and at the same time, that causes market stagnation with nothing new coming out causing player/user attrition because of that curation. In my opinion it just harms the overall reputation / view of a market. As long as certain requirements are met (keeping the garbage where it belongs), it should be released. Let the players decide to hate it or love it. If you’re going to spend dollars on people overseeing testing and more, and have already spent that money, why not just let it go out and recoup even a tiny amount of the cost, even if sales aren’t the greatest. The downside to this, is several ideas I was going to work on have now been put on hold because I no longer have the confidence that they will be seen as unique titles and not compared to other things that look similar, and I can not sink the time and money into something that may just get rejected. It’s not worth it, especially for someone like me that does this in their spare time. Sure if I was a larger studio with money to spare, it wouldn’t be an issue. But when I sink even $500 into a project that gets rejected, I’m never going to see that money again. It may not seem like a lot of money to some people, but to me that’s a month and half of car payments, so it’s an eye opener and makes you think twice about doing anything else. But this is a rant I could go on for days about, so I’m just going to shut up now. In the meantime I have a ton of ideas but nothing to develop them on. My lovely little alienware laptop I spent a small fortune on is sitting in a dell repair center currently because of constant crashing, lockups and worse problems. I sunk about $600 into it myself trying to correct the issues, new SSD, new ram, nothing was working (but I got some nice upgrades! 8tb of disk space!!!).. When the cpu cores are reaching 212F while sitting at idle, you have issues.. Thankfully it was still fully under warranty. I know they’ve already replaced the motherboard, they won’t tell me yet what else they’ve done. My guess is the overheating caused damage to other components..  Supposedly they should be done with it by the 20th, then shipping time back to me. Hate the waiting game especially when you spend 3k on a device, you kind of expect it to work without issue.  In the meantime, have several new ideas that should be a lot of fun, just have to wait to start development. I did pick up a chromebook with an Intel I3 in it, and got Unity installed on it, but it’s slow and difficult to work with. Maybe if I get really bored in the next week or so I’ll try messing with it. Until then, new stuff is in the works.. Just have to wait…

With A Little Nagging, Phazed was born As the new year progresses, we have already transitioned from January into February. The pace has been rapid, and it shows no signs of slowing down. This momentum has brought forth numerous projects, some met with approval and others with resistance; nonetheless, work continues. Within the past month, I have completed and released two additional games to the beta team for evaluation. “Backlash” is currently in testing and has undergone several modifications to enhance its gameplay experience. Moreover, after much encouragement (nagging? =D) from my wife, I developed a game that had long been on the IGT Wishlist: a clone of Phase 10 for the game table. While not an exact replica, there have been notable changes throughout the development process, but it truly came out as a beautiful well-polished project. The only thing lacking is AI players to play against, but after beating my head against the wall a few too many times, I deemed it better to release now. I just have not been able to wrap my head around a good way to handle a game like this and making the computer choose what cards go where. I may come back and do an AI for this when it’s updated to add connected play, we’ll see. My skills are not the greatest and I learn every day and there is always something new to learn. For now, this AI is out of my realm of capability. For now… The beta testers have just started picking away at it, and I’ve already fixed most of the issues found, so now we let more people get their hands on it to see how much they can break, what can improve, and we move forward from there. Pharaohs Passage Work has already started on the next projects, yes plural. First up in development is Pharaohs Passage which is going to be a copy of the board game Quoridor, in an Egyptian setting. It’s a relatively simple but fun game for 2-4 players. Your goal is simple, get to the other side of the board. Sounds so easy, until you add other players who own walls, just like you do. And they can place those walls right in your path to block your way. Title screen is done, and most of the music for the game has already been chosen and purchased, and work has begun on the actualy gameplay. I know compared to most developers I sometimes do things a little bit backwards, but to me, the feel of the images and everything in the title tends to form a picture in my head of how I want a game to look. Sometimes I do start straight on gameplay, I did with Backlash and then built the title and chose the music around the game, in this case though, it was backwards. I guess sometimes seeing something helps bring it to life. The next board game concept I also have a new idea in my mind, a board game, a square shape with 5 rings. The center has a single space, the next ring out 4 spaces surrounding the center, and then the next ring expands out, etc. until you have all 5. Players start as peasants in the outermost ring on their journey to become a king. You must move completely around the board ( and gather the needed ? materials? steps? skills? reputation? I don’t know yet. ) before you are able to navigate to the next ring in as you build your skills from a peasant to a blacksmith, to squire and knight, and finally one to rule them all. There are a lot of things to work on out this game, but I love the idea and I’m probably going to start developing it shortly. I have no idea where it’s going or what it’s going to end up as, but it captured my curiosity and I’m eager to explore it!

First off… So first, the Dice Games Megapack was finished and released to QA right before new years eve, so that one is sitting with the QA team awaiting the beta testers. Included are seven different dice games for up to 6 players, with AI players for each one. Shortly thereafter, I saw another game on Amazon.com called Jinx. It involved rolling dice and placing pieces on a grid to line up matches. Cool concept, but it needed something a bit more so that turned into BackLash! I worked a few too many evenings and nights, but I started this one on New Year’s Day and just sent it to QA early this morning. For such a short development cycle, it’s a rich but simple game. The concept remained the same, placing pieces on a grid to make a match, but was amped up with different board spaces that provide boons and penalties. In this game, to further differentiate it, I even added an option to add a third die to the rolls, if you control one of the boards rune spaces. Just to add to the replayability we added a couple of game modes to allow for a shorter game instead of the standard multi-stage playstyle. This one was definitely the quickest work I have done but doesn’t lack in design. All the bells and whistles and polish are there, like I said, I just spent way too many evenings and late nights (a 4am stopping point rings a bell) away from the family to get this one done. It had me excited, it was fun and challenging, and I wanted to finish it so I can share it with the world! Next Up… Next up will be looking at a couple more games to clone, including an interesting strategy game called Quorridor and the ever-popular Phase 10. The table needs these, and I aim to provide!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! https://squigglyfrog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/HolidayReel-1.mp4 First and foremost, Merry Christmas and probably a Happy New Year too, since I doubt I will post again. Work has been keeping me extremely busy so time for coding has been slimmer than normal, but I haven’t been idle, that’s for sure! Below you’ll find a video preview of 5 of the 7 completed games in my upcoming dice games pack! I have two more games to do for this pack and then I will ship it off for the lovely QA and beta teams to rip apart. Speaking of, here shortly I need to pick up the notes from Scratch N Score and do some bug fixes and get the next version of that over to them. Holidays have a magic way of slowing down the entire process, but that’s ok. So far, the bug reports have been few and far between, except for some dice that refuse to stay on the ‘table’ and keep falling to oblivion, but I already know the problem and the solution, it just needs to be implemented. That’s really the biggest problem reported, and it seems to only show on the older hardware, which has slower components, so physics is failing to do its job there. Well, back to work! It may be Christmas Day, but I am still sitting behind the keyboard hard at work.. Least till the turkey is done!  

First… Scratch N Score has finally moved into the beta process. What does that mean? A month of never-ending bug reports where people press the weirdest combinations of buttons known to man, that no user will ever actually do, all in an effort to break things. So now we sit back and wait for the reports to start coming in so we can work on fixing all the little things. I’m pretty sure the most common ones found have already been taken care of ahead of time, but there are those people… *ahem* that I know will find more. Hopefully it’s a quick process overall so this can get a scheduled release date. On another note, I also switch to a different video production software that’s much easier to work with than Corel’s and gives me a much better end result! Considering my level of expertise in video editing, I am quite impressed with Wondershare Filmora. Good price for the value, definitely worthwhile. A ton of projects in the works I have a ton of projects in the works, but a lot of them need more thought and fleshing out on paper (well digital paper) before I start work on them. A couple board games and the like. They should definitely be fun and great products for the table, but for now I decided… Dice games! Why? Because I just did one and enjoyed it, and thought WHY NOT? And having certain people kind of try to talk me out of it just made me want to do it more! Sorry J! lol We’re talking about your simpler dice, party type games like Over Under 7, Ship Captain Crew, etc. And since they are simple, we’re going to group them in packs, starting with 7 games in the first one. I started development on the first of the seven, and it’s the one that will take the longest. It’s not complex at all, as a matter of fact it will probably be the quickest of them all, but it’s all the other stuff that goes into a new project and choices that will carry through every single included game. Things like the user interface, sound effects, particles, the general programming structure and framework. That all takes time to develop, even when you’re using components designed from other stuff, and it all has to work and be reuseable. Once it’s done though, it’s a simple matter to adapt each piece to the next game, change the rules and write whatever specialized code is needed for that game. I’ll still have to do GUI’s for them, but the basis of what that looks like will already be done. Simpler games Another thing about simpler games is while they are fun on their own, you have to amp that up with your sound and effects to capture a player’s attention. If you’re just rolling dice and there’s nothing else going on, it’s going to get boring and guess what, you lost a sale but more importantly you lost a customer’s confidence in your past and future products. One thing I chose to do to help amp it up a little is to add some AI generated voice narrations. Playing it with and without those is almost 2 different worlds, even if it is just some simple words being spoken. Gameplay on the first game is nearly completed, it just needs a few more FX touches as well as a game over / play again option, and the in-game settings menu. After that we can move on to the next game. I’m hoping, with the market and audience the table has, that this will be a success, but that’s something only time will tell. I do have plans for at least one more volume if not two of these dice game packs. There’s a lot of cool simple fun ideas out there that wouldn’t work as a standalone game, at least not something you’d want to pay for by itself really. It also pays to listen to people, as one game I had been thinking about doing was just asked for by someone who just picked up a table. There’s a ton more going on in the background, but this will see light of day soon! Simple projects are fun, and it gives me something to work on and think about while working out the details on the bigger ones!     Well, time for bed.. for now…