Insectoid has gotten another positive review. You can read the full article here.
“Exciting game play, plenty of opposition in a variety of colorful forms, bugs, and critters make Insectoid a winner for anyone who loves the simplicity of a single-shooter game.”
For a while, the Update Code feature has on rare occasion not worked, but it was an intermittent problem making it hard to fix. But today I’m happy to announce this has been fixed.
Not only this, but also a separate problem, where getting an updated code from within Midnight Mansion, was not working, has been fixed. This problem was a result of website upgrades when the website was redone.
All this to say, if you ever have to re-enter your Midnight Mansion code for some reason, the process should now go much more smoothly!
The past few days, the forums have been offline while upgrades have been made. The upgrades are now completed, and the new forums are up and running, all new and shiny. Thanks for your patience while we upgraded them, and Merry Christmas!
Insectoid 1.0.2 has just been released. It adds GamePad support for Windows, and more importantly, fixes some start-up issues where music would play, but nothing would show up when starting up on some systems. This is because Insectoid would attempt to switch to the maximum resolution possible, which would sometimes exceed the capabilities of the video cards in some systems. Insectoid now tries a more reasonable approach. 
The positive reviews for Insectoid keep rolling in. Today Insectoid got its third review, which you can read by clicking the link below.
Quote: “Insectoid is a fantastic shooter worthy of your investment. The entire package is a melding pot of well-drawn 2D visuals, moody space-age music, and intense arcade action. If you fancy yourself at least one shooter this year, make it Insectoid by Actionsoft.”
Right now I’m working on very early experiments with porting Midnight Mansion to SDL, a cross-platform library which in the long run will let Midnight Mansion run on iPhone, Windows, and also natively on Intel Macs. I’m only just starting to do early tests in SDL, but it’s so much FUN! Reminds me of what I have been missing these two plus years doing work in the ever-so-frustrating GarageGames Torque engine.
And this is how I realized today that I’m doing what I ought to be doing… I passed the “lunch test.” It’s now after 2:16 PM, and I’m pretty hungry — and yet, I keep wanting to try “just one more thing” first before breaking for lunch, because I’m having so much FUN! The geek in me is liking what I’m doing. And when you want to keep working and delay taking a break, despite being very hungry — THAT is when you know what you’re doing what you should be doing.
Another developer has a pretty cool idea for Christmas: open a panel each day to see a new game! Indy developers were able to submit their games to get free press, and well, if you check, you might find a game you recognize:
Come back each day to find a new game each day that you’ve probably never heard of! (Although do note that many are Windows-only.)
…and they are quite positive! The first came out Nov. 24ths, where Insectoid got a 4/5 rating:
Quote: “What sets Insectoid apart is really the presentation quality. [SNIP] Insectoid is by far the most well-designed and entertaining ‘alien-blaster’ style game I’ve played thus far.”
The second review came out today on a much more high-profile site, Avault, where it gets 5 stars:
Quote: “ActionSoft’s goal was to create a Galaga-inspired game for anyone who grew up playing classic arcade shooters and remembers when arcade games actually cost only one quarter to play. I’m happy to say the developer has succeeded on every count.”
Avault is also working on a best-games-of-the-year roundup that looks like it may include Insectoid, and I know of some other sites that are working on reviews as well. Here’s hoping this will get the word out about a game that few people seem to know about yet!
Here is an example of why I hate customer support at large companies. I recently visited GameHouse’s website to inquire as to whether they’d be interested in selling Insectoid on their site. After finding a Contact page, I was taken to a Business Development form, which I filled out. Upon hitting the Submit button, it stated in bold red letters “Please fill the form correctly.” No explanation of what was wrong. No matter what I tried to do differently, the form would not resubmit, and on top of that, would erase itself each time. I tried several times, on both the GameHouse site and on RealArcade’s site, with no success. Even tried a different browser.
I contacted GameHouse email support. They told me I could write to their physical mailing address or call them on the phone. I tried the phone option. The support representative on the phone gave me a support email address I could write to. Today I wrote to that email explaining everything that had happened, and the representative referred me to the “Contact” page I had started with in the first place! (Apparently ignoring everything in my email about how their Business Development form was not working, or else being so ignorant of the site that he didn’t realize the Contact page lead one to the Business Development form I had mentioned.)
This is why I hate dealing with “customer support” at large companies. And one good reason why I vow to never treat my customers in the same manner. Every support email written to ActionSoft gets a personal reply directly from me, often the same day, dealing with exactly the issue raised. Rather than getting a reply from someone who is unknowledgeable about what you are asking about, and only prepared to give scripted responses.
In early 2007, I began work on a sequel to Midnight Mansion, which I then put on hold to create Insectoid, and also to give mansion designers time to create their mansions for the game. Now that Insectoid is out, I can resume work on the Midnight Mansion sequel, which is already 70% or so complete. It’s a lot of fun to come back to it! Midnight Mansion is a great game that stands the test of time, and has developed quite a loyal following of fans. I look forward to making those fans happy with a major improvement to the game that adds lots of new artwork, several new monsters, new types of puzzles, new music, and much more.
Here are a few screenshots that show some of the new tile artwork in the game. One thing the game has now is several outdoor environments. It also has effects like real-time rain, snow, or falling leaves, which add a surprising amount of atmosphere to the game.
Click on an image above to see a full-size screenshot. Use your browser’s back button to return here.
