Until a few hours ago, I used to think that a certificate to digitally sign code was expensive. But then I read this post on the Coke and Code blog, pointing me to the Thawte Freemail Certificate. I learned that this certificate is indeed free, and that this great guide explains step by step how to request this certificate, and how to sign your JARs with it!

So I signed my Bubblomania webgame with my newly requested certificate, and now the applet will show up as trusted. This is a lot more reassuring for a new player, especially those not familar with certificates!

This week, I added a new game mode to my Bubblomania webgame. The new mode is called “Extreme Action”, and is somewhat similar to the Action mode from Bubblomania X.

This mode will throw you in the middle of the action, and is meant for players who like fast-paced gameplay. The bubbles are floating up even faster then in the other modes, but you get lots of ammo to throw at them!

I’ve been testing the game under Windows, and did some bug fixing. I also made improvements to the website layout, which behaved a bit weird in Internet Explorer.

Today I moved the Bubblomania X page to my new bubblomania.com domain. It makes more sense to put both the Bubblomania web game and the downloadable version for MacOS X on the same website.

I also changed all links on the Dark Moon Software website, and on some of the sites where Bubblomania X could be downloaded. This should drive some traffic to the new domain, and allow more people to play the new online version!

The last release for Bubblomania X is already 8 months ago, but it still has about 20 downloads a day, and even a registration now and then! But when there’s enough interest in the online version, I plan to extend it into a downloadable deluxe version, to replace Bubblomania X.

The Bubblomania web game is still in public beta phase, and some people are reporting very weird problems But according to people who know more about LWJGL, at least part of these will be fixed when the new LWJGL beta arrives. And that should be very soon!

Finally! The first public beta of the free online Bubblomania webgame is now available, at www.bubblomania.com!

To play it, you must have java 1.4 or better installed. For the moment, it’s signed with a self-signed certificate, so you should click the Trust button when asked to do so…

If you experience any problems, or have any feedback about the gameplay, graphics, etc, please don’t hesitate to let me know! You can either email me, or leave a comment here on this blog.

And now, go check it out!

Yes, I know this is the most boring blog post title of the year. No comments please

It’s been another week since my last blog post, and even longer since the last progress update! Shame on me! I just had a very lazy weekend, which started on friday and ended this noon…

Hmm, nothing to be proud of actually. I worked really hard last week, especially wednesday and thursday. But by friday my energy was completely drained I should try to spread my work more evenly over the week!

The good news: I’ve been able to deploy Bubblomania as an applet last week. There were some nasty issues to work out, but it’s really nice to see the game running in all it’s glory in a browser window! Now I can finally call it a webgame

The gameplay has also been further tweaked and improved. I decided to drop the mouse support, because it was mostly confusing and annoying for users. It really is a good idea to watch how users actually play the game! I was reminded to do this after reading the article An approximate guide to selling Indie games, which is a really interesting article btw!

OK, major issues left to do: Instructions screen, sound and a basic website. When these are done, I can start the public beta. I hope this will be by the end of this week!

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Mara pets is a free online game with virtual pets. We release three new flash games every week!
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Another week has passed since the last progress update. Time flies when you’re having fun! I had a creative week, and was able to remake most of the graphics (except backgrounds). I’m very happy about the result, it can be best described as the middle between cute and psychedelic!

Besides making new graphics, and learning to work with Photoshop a bit better, I also added online topscores this week and mouse control. Personally I think the game plays a lot better with the keyboard, but with today’s casual audience, mouse control is absolutely required!

Pictures say a lot more than words, but the actual game says a whole lot more than these screenshots! So if you would like to give the current alpha version a test drive, let me know. You can contact me by email, or just post a comment to this post. All feedback is welcome!

It’s time again for the monthly Speeltijd site statistics!

There was a slowdown in growth this month. The number of visitors grew with 24%, with a peak of 205 visitors on a single day at the beginning of the month! But after that the traffic declined a bit. The Google Analytics chart says it all:

What was unexpected, was that the site’s revenue more than doubled! It grew with 141% actually! And this is still from Google Adsense alone. I removed the CPA (click per action) ads from CJ, since they proved to be useless for this site.

Yesterday I signed up with 2 text link ad brokers: AdEngage and the relatively new partner program from Performancing. With AdEngage, advertisers can buy a text link with an small description for $5 per week, while Performancing has still to determine a price per month.

I hope these programs will be as succesful as Text Link Ads has been on this blog. I’m also considering selling text link and banner ads directly. So if you have a site that suits our audience (Dutch kids, parents and educators), contact me so we can work something out! Or use one of the above ad brokers…