Welcome to the official blog of My Owl Software, creator of the excellent Apple Jack games!



Wednesday 5 September 2012

Hello!

Since I last, er, blogged, I've been s-l-o-w-l-y working on converting the two Apple Jack games to PC. Not a difficult task, you might think, given that they were developed on a PC in the first place, but you reckon without three important factors:

1) I was a bit burned out after the year+ working on AJ2 and haven't been motivated to do much programming.

2) While the games runs perfectly with a controller on PC, keyboard & mouse controls are a different story and 'aim mode' has been a pain to implement. The best I could come up with is a system which uses the keyboard to move and the mouse to jump, pick-up and throw. By holding the throw button the aim arrow appears which you can then move around with the mouse. Takes a bit of getting used to but it works.

3) Reprogramming all the menus has been a proper pain in the arse. It's almost as if I didn't plan ahead when I did them initially and made things ten times harder for myself!


That said, most of the work has been done now, and after a bit more polishing up they'll be ready for testing.

4 comments:

  1. I for one am looking forward to (finally) getting to play it. I have had my head buried in the sand with regard to youtube videos so I can experience it properly when you finish the PC build. Though I must say if you're feeling burned out, take your time and just chill with it for a while. We will still all be here when you get back :)

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    1. Cool. I've just got the installer to do so it won't be long now...

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  2. I just awoke a few hours ago to my roommate playing the first Apple Jack, a game I had never heard of, and I was absolutely delighted with the music. After searching for hours, all I've found was an interview saying the music came from Josh Woodward. It appears he has released many songs, and I can't figure out which ones you chose for your game. Is there any way you could give me a list? Or at least tell me which song was used for level 5? It was nice to wake up to such relaxing music.

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    1. The soundtrack of the second game includes the two best tracks from Apple Jack 1, so that's probably the best place to go. You can get it here: http://thiseden.bandcamp.com/album/apple-jack-2-ost

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