Author Archives: Matt Roszak

EBF5: Mobile Update

Hey guys. On Monday I started writing a blog about why I’ve been so unproductive this year, but it sounded really pathetic, so I immediately got back to work. The interface is almost done for the EBF5 mobile port – I’ve added boxes around all of the buttons to make them clearer for touch controls, everything’s been made larger, and the game is generally totally playable now. I even played around with the vibrate feature during big attacks, but I didn’t like it so I gave up on that.

I’ve started setting up the Google Play Store page for the game, and that’s where things get more complicated. There’s a lot of hoops to jump through to get the app approved, and to add features like ads, in-app purchases, achievements, and mayyyybe even cloud saving. It’s all very technical, but there’s a lot of documentation for me to read, and a lot of services I need to sign up for, and then I still gotta actually program and test the stuff. At least I can re-use the Steam trailer.

Oh, and I’ve only tested the game on my device so far. I’m sure there will be a lot of new problems on other devices.

Overall it’s pretty exciting though.

Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid

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Hey guys, Bullet Heaven 2 is part of this massive bundle on Itch.io.
For $5 you get hundreds of games, and while not everything in there is a masterpiece, there’s definitely a bunch of great indie games worth picking up. Minit, GNOG, VVVVVV, Nuclear Throne, and Anodyne are some good games that I recognized in there. And well, it’s for charity, so the games aren’t the point.

I’m gonna dig into it today and see if I find any hidden gems.

Lego: Big Chunky Pikachu

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Hey guys, I made a chunky Pikachu, based on one of the game sprites, but with some more colors.
Sorry I don’t have anything more exciting to share. The weather’s been nice, so I’ve not been working lately.

BH2: Works on Mobile

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Hey guys, I wanted to see if a mobile port of Bullet Heaven 2 was feasible, so I spent some time today fiddling with the game.In just 3 hours I got the game to a playable state on my Galaxy Note 8. It works great with a stylus, and even detects my Xbox controller. The framerate is pretty high with the graphics settings turned down, even on Heavenly difficulty.

That’s the fun stuff done, the other 99% would be just polishing off the rough edges. The controls would need to be simplified for touch controls, the memory management would need to be improved to stop the occasional garbage-collector stutters, and I would have to consider adding a vertical aspect ratio as that may make more sense on mobile. Overall, it looks like less work than porting the EBF games.

Anyway, that’s not gonna happen until I finish the EBF5 port and the EBF Collection.

Also, don’t let anyone tell you Flash doesn’t run on mobile. Flash with Starling has incredibly fast performance!

Bullet Heaven 2 is now DRM free! And maybe works on Mac and Linux

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Hey guys, I’ve updated Bullet Heaven 2 to be DRM-free on Steam, and I’ve also published the game on Itch.io.

On Steam you can opt-into this new version by going to the game properties in the Steam client and selecting the betas tab. It should say version 1.2.0 when you start it up, and the only difference is that it can now run without Steam. I’ll make this version live for everyone once I confirm that it works.

On Itch.io there’s a 2nd version of the game, never before released, that runs as a normal .swf Flash file, rather than a Windows executable. In theory this version should run on any operating system, but results may vary. Shoot me a private message on Twitter or via email, if you are a Linux or Mac user and want to test it out.