Why do we call it 'X'. Well because it is our cross platform version. We are heading into testing with Android this week? (I am small part of that project, so I am looking over my shoulder to get confirmation, yes... Chad is nodding that is what he *wants* to do. Ok that is properly caveated. We have the Windows 8 Win32 version working quite well and passing the WACK too! That leaves 64 bit and ARM to be worked out, it is rather non-trivial though. You Surface users will NOT be left behind. I am doing this for you. I really need to get off my desktop and get one I guess. The simulator only goes so far (i.e., Win32/x64)

We are using cocos2d-x to port the existing HD version of the original game over to  the new platforms. There is no reason we have to stop there. We have almost gotten over the tipping point effort wise.

For people looking for help, look me up. I simply have no time to put stuff out right now. I may change my mind if a lot of people want help. Let me throw some search terms out there:
Windows 8
Cocos2d-x
CC_PLATFORM_WIN8_METRO (which I have renamed CC_PLATFORM_WIN8_STORE for accuracy reasons. Metro is not a template type (anymore))
Chipmunk (yes I have gotten chipmunk to compile and run in windows store project. I know the settings. Seriously I will write and share about this, but don't wait. just ping me if you never found it. If anything it will force me to post once, and share if a lot of people are looking for it. There is no reason *everyone* should suffer. I make a good martyr eh! ;)

I have taken the last two weeks as vacation from my day job to just bunker down on this porting and Windows 8 problem for Appsomniacs. The cocos2d template was not v2 (API) so I bit the bullet and made it support that API for the calls we used. A complete update is a bridge to far and I don't trust my C++ 100% yet. It doesn't mean I won't share what I got, in a pinch I'll just send it to you, but eventually I will add it to the official project fork I made. 

Happy super duper holidays. Remember to hug your kids and loved ones. Enjoy the moments and let the less fun parts of life just sit in darkness for a while. The new year will be upon us and we can start to tackle all our open issues with renewed vigor once we take a moment to remember what we are fighting and striving to promote, protect, etc. Am I calling for a holiday cease fire? I guess I am. It has been a really hard week to work on violent games. Really hard. Especially with kids involved. Some of you guys may never get that, that's something you will get with time. An appreciation of life in general comes with time (on average I think that is true.)

For the few that actually read this. Thanks for watching, and see you next update.

Grind, Hustle, & Payoff. That is our mantra right now. And never forget the battle cry... "FFAP!" "For Fun And Profit!" what else! (This really is still a hobby job atm.) If something is truly fun, the profit part follows. I am always seeking balance, but don't get me started about mainstream marketing, that is a bridge too far right now without some serious help from a larger firm/platform. Can we even afford that? Can we even support growth. Questions we need to ask, be ready to scale. We know how to increase server capacity, that plan is in place.

Porting Doodle Army to Windows 8 and Android continues. Rapidly.

ALERT! We have a fix for Doodle Army 2 right on the heals of the 1.7 release. We introduced a bug in the Bluetooth code late in the game (and the fix is sitting waiting for review at Apple now.) [sorry about that!]

On the topic of Doodle Army 2 hacking. We do really care to solve this. We are trying to stop it. We are going to start a thread on reddit at some point to ask the dev community for thoughts on how to stop it as well as community ideas. So rest assured we are watching. We have names, game center accounts, we know who many of you are. And when we can can confidently say without a doubt, we are nailing these punks on a few vectors. You will see them drop off the scoreboards one of these days if they keep it up. We have spent too much time and money on these guys having their fun at the expense of the honest gaming community. It bugs us. It really does. There is not a planning meeting it does not come up. If it was easy it would be done. Period. Give us time, hang in there. We are going to roll out ways for the community to deal with it as well. We are catching many in game hacks as is possible, and when we do those folks are rendered inop as possible. BUT we have to be super careful, if an accidental detect occurs and we take action, to us that is just as bad if not worse as hacker deterrence, and if that is happening we need to know. We have to be super careful.

Damn hackers. Go away, bug another game. The real lame part is the code is optimized for minimal network involvement and that makes a lot of hacking vectors easy, but reduces lag. Any fix we put in puts load ont eh server (++$) and network load (++lag). The cost is in the wallet and network performance (WHICH really makes you stand up and say, oh hey we found a fix for this particular hack [there are many btw] but it doubles/triples our server costs. SUCKY huh, I am trying to figure out where on the doll I made the hackers touch to get them to do their thing... I know it is mostly script kiddies  but the hack devs gave them the hack capability, those guys can go frag themselves.) So we will have to try out new server side code and see what the game play is like (hopefully not bad!) So I see LOTS of testing in our future...  That is why this is TAKING forever to solve.

Well I a lot has happened since last update. Lets see if I can summarize.

Doodle Army 2 (DA2) has gotten a lot of attention this round. It was due. We have always had a serious hacker problem. It stems from an architecture choice made from its inception that makes hacking easy. At the inception it was easy to handle bluetooth near proximity networks, and community policed. You just walk over to the offender and knocked the device out of their hand and had words ;).  I could care less about the piracy of in app purchases. I give a lame kudo for keeping a buck or two out of my pocket per script kiddy using your hack. Its a game after all, and those purchases function within the normal expected bounds of the game experience, but what I can not abide by is people hacking to gain "1 shot" kills, infinite life, etc. That affects the positive multiplayer experience in a negative way, which effects the number of people who want to play, etc. So DA2 is getting some serious client and server tweaks as we take steps to make it annoying to hack, etc. The sad part is it ups the amount of work the servers have to do, so it actually costs us more. A downer, but that work has went well. We added some new weapons. Fixed some odd bugs (rocket launcher and map related. We had some issues integrating an ad framework into DA2, that slid us to the right several weeks.

In other great news we are still working on an Android for Doodle Army (the original) and now we are just starting a port to Windows 8. It is a matter of time before we are simply building games in an agnostic as possible fashion then porting to every platform. The days of use being a one platform pony show are coming to an end.

Zombie Road Rage is doing well enough. Not super amazing, but interesting to see how many people are still playing (about 1/15 the amount as DA2)

Flip the Bird... (Flop the Bird) Well the kids love him. We see him going free someday when we have a slow moment. Otherwise it is just underwhelming. We think we know part of the problem. It needs a tutorial, and a 

I am sure I am leaving out something interesting... In any case I better get back before someone realizes I have slipped out of my enclosure.

What I really want to do is fire up Dwarf Fortress and Tekkit (Minecraft)... But that will have to wait... There is much work to be done yet.

On our quest to conquer every platform there is and to satisfy our tablet craving that is only to be satiated by Surface I quote the following:

"Congratulations! CodeWorx Studios, LLC is now a member of the Microsoft BizSpark program!"

SOOOooo now the real work begins. My day job has me already using and training up on windows 8 development, now it looks like I will be doing a little more of that in my free time.

I was pondering the origin of some languages I work in the other day and this gem happened to pop into one of my many information spy bots I have running to go find me pretties I might like (they must be watching me too.) This find combines two of my favorite things. Programming and data visualization.

http://exploringdata.github.com/vis/programming-languages-influence-network/

I hope you like it too.

The simplest tool is a wedge... since I am a simple jack of all tools and master of none. Am I the ultimate wedge wielder or just in possession of sufficiently diluted skill sets?

Wait... did I just call myself a tool... Well if I did I can say with complete honesty that is not the worst of things I have ever called myself...

I am not sure why everyone is so bent about using Windows 8 (which is not windows phone 8, but hang in I will get to that part, as I believe MS will get Windows 8 to be more attuned to windows phone 8 too.) So W8 has essential what is a Windows 7+ interface *and* the new interface formerly known as Metro (IfkaM)

If you don't like one part use the other. Essentially very little changes in that regard if you use the win7 style interface. Personally I think the IfkaM interface would make a great screen saver of sorts. The live tiles are interesting concept. So it may make a great interactive desktop. Give it a chance I say. Be open to change. Hell give it a month and someone will have a Windows 3.1 interface if that floats your boat.

So I am not bent about the existence of windows 8, but I do loathe that my world is about to have ANOTHER dang platform to consider... but this news actually piqued my interest today: http://www.edge-online.com/news/unity-announces-windows-phone-8-support 

Supporting multiple platforms is a real time sink and I think I am ready to commit to a tool to make it happen at the cost of control at or near the hardware... I think I am... Ask me later what I thought about it. ;)

I tinker with my Linux because I have to.

I tinker with my Windows because I can.

I tinker with my Mac because I was told not to.

Did you know Zombie Road Rage is now free? Go check it out!!!

We added ads and got rid of the entry fee of .99. Anyone who bought before and posted scores should not have ads. Contact us if you do in any case.

App link:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zombie-road-rage/id513670129?mt=8

And if you can bring yourself to admit like us on the Facebooks... We accept any state of decay. We are decay tolerant organization (i.e., zombies welcome)

http://www.facebook.com/zombieroadrage

Software is never really done. It is just stuck in an infinite loop of improvement iterations with varying degrees of usefulness...

So given that. All that a release or project abandonment really represents is a blocking call in the overall effort of the loop in question...

That is all... I hope you were not expecting more!!! I think this needs accreditation in parts, I have heard this in parts from others, my hope is I have made it my own enough to claim that it is from my own mind...