Yes, I know it’s only been 10 days…
But when I see the online topscores, I have the impression that a lot of people find the game rather confusing in the very beginning. So I added an in-game help system, that makes clear that the player should catch the big bubbles, and avoid the red bubbles

I’m also doing an experiment with the registration scheme. There are 2 schemes, and the game chooses the scheme on first run with a 50% probability.
The first one limits the game to 5 games for each game mode, and 10 for the easy mode.
The second limits the game to 60 minutes of gameplay (this is frequently used for games downloaded from portals).
My hope is to find out which scheme results in the best conversion rate! Or better, my biggest hope is to actually have some registrations

Finally!

After some hard work, and last minute bug fixing, I released version 2.0 of Bubblomania X today!
Just in time for the christmas holidays! This version features 8 different game modes, online topscores, and improved graphics. I find it rather exciting to see the scores that people obtain with it!

Bubblomania has a long history, starting way back in 1994, when I invented the game principles, and tried to code it in BASIC This game is actually the reason why I learned to program in Pascal, using the Mac API! I released the very first version for Mac System 7 on the internet in 1996, the year I went to university. I had been working on it during school holidays for over a year before that, and it inspired me to go study Computer Sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL)!

I kept updating and improving the game during ‘97-’98, and it was a modest succes in this period, receiving some nice reviews.
After that, I got too busy to code games. Until the summer of 2004, when I suddenly had this strong urge to port the game to MacOS X. In november of that year, I released Bubblomania X 1.0.

Which turned out to be a bit too soon, because the shareware games market had evolved quite a bit, and Bubblomania X was still a port of an end-’90’s game, with minor improvements.

So I kept improving the game and especially the graphics during 2005, resulting in Bubblomania X 2.0, a version I’m finally happy with! This version finally has features that I wanted to have for a loong time. But unfortunately, I have something called ‘a life’ that tends to eat away lots of my time…

Anyway, we’ll see how this one goes. Enjoy!

Hello everybody, and welcome to my blog!

This blog will be my little space on the web, where I can rave about games, music, life, the universe, and everything!

More specifically, I want to write some stuff concerning indie games development, as I’m trying to become an independent games developer myself. Visit the website of my little games company at www.darkmoonsw.com.
I have just released my game Bubblomania X version 2.0 on that site!

Besides that, I sometimes enjoy myself making electronic music, mostly trance, under the alias Moonspider. Unfortunately, I hardly have any time left for making music anymore…

Anyway, as I’m just starting this blog, I’m wondering if anyone will ever read this If you do, say Hi!