lazy game developer
lazy game developer
This is a space-themed endless runner. Unlike other runners, it stands out with its setting. The game features a variety of ships, each with unique characteristics.
The game was also developed at Synesis. I worked on the engine and the game code itself, while other specialists at the company handled the rest.
Almost my first game developed for iOS. I worked on this game at Melesta. The company’s engine, written in C++, was used with my modifications to the renderer. For the UI, I created my own simplified polling-driven widget system. At the time, I thought it was a good and justified approach.
The game was developed between 2011 and 2012. I only worked on the iOS version; later, other developers ported it to Android and Windows. One of these developers was the excellent programmer Sergey Greshnov, sadly passed away prematurely. There was also a Flash version, but it was most likely written from scratch.
Development proceeded in bursts — first a feature would be implemented, then cut, and replaced by a new one. This happened quite frequently. When developing a game with a “floating” or completely absent design document, this can be considered normal. Still, the development of this game stood out compared to others. Not necessarily good or bad — it’s just a fact that stuck in my memory.
It’s worth noting the particle system used in the game. I won’t name it, but the library was quite well-known, with a Windows-only editor. The particle system itself was decent but very slow. Sergey Greshnov once tried to improve its performance, fortunately, the system came with source code. In my opinion, it would have been better to write our own particle system with proper architecture and cache-friendly data layout.
For this game, I also wrote an external level editor. I developed it at home on Linux using one of my older engines. Of course, the release version was for Windows, as the game designers were using Windows computers.