Rubber Ninjas out for PC!

After a long wait (sorry guys!) Rubber Ninjas finally hits the PC! The game has been tested and should run fine on all the latest Windows versions (XP, Vista and Windows 7).

You can download a free demo and see how you like it at the Rubber Ninjas website!

The game requires a reasonably new PC (say 5 years or newer) and a decent graphics card to run properly, but scales nicely also to lower end computers.

If you like the game please help promote it by writing about it on your favorite forums, making videos, telling your friends, blogging and whatnot!

A big thanks to Wolfire Games for collaborating in a indie developers' cross-promotion. Wolfire is developing a great game called Overgrowth, featuring ninjas rabbits, wolves and whatnot, so we decided to bring some Overgrowth into our Rubber Ninjas and the results can be seen in their blog post.

Thanks for your patience and hope you enjoy the game!

New version and user-made campaign

Rubber Ninjas has been updated to version 1.03, this version fixes some hard to find bugs that could (very rarely) cause the level to freeze. It also changes some things which might improve the game's performance on your Mac. So it's a recommended update.

There is also a new exciting user-made campaign available to registered users in the member's area!
The campaign, Trolls, by Scooter is a great example of what's possible to make in Rubber Ninjas with good imagination and some dedication.

The campaign uses all features of the rubber ninjas modding system, and has new backgrounds, new characters (trolls, huge orc bosses, snakes and even a 3 headed monster!), and great new weapons.

Here are some screenshots:




Finally good news for PC users, the game is done for Windows, just need some testing and will be out later this month.

Newsy News

Hello everyone, summer is starting, time for getting tanned up, beach trips, and for playing videogames!
A small update on Rubber Ninjas, 1.02 out for Mac, a minor update that tweaks some gameplay parameters.
Progress is been made on the Windows version, game is mostly working, still needs a few things and testing.
Also we have our first fan-made campaigns done, available in the Rubber Ninjas member's area, thanks Nameless Tee and Mrdy!
While these new campaigns are fairly simple, hopefully they will get the community going to produce more elaborate and innovative campaigns!
Another thing I wanted to share is the awesome Ninja Puppet I found in a shop while looking for a present:


Needless to say I bought it and it is now the official Rag Doll Software mascot! It also inpired me to make a super deformed campaign with this type of ragdolls ;)
Cheers!

Rubber Ninjas v1.01 out for Mac

I've released the first update for Rubber Ninjas. This version fixes a camera bug that sometimes made the camera lose target when defeating the last opponent in fights with more than 1 opponent.

If you already have the full version of Rubber Ninjas to update to 1.01 just follow the instructions on your confirmation email and download again.

If you find other bugs please report them. Also difficulty of levels still might need some tweaking, so if you think some level is too easy or hard let me know.

A few guys showed me some fun new ragdoll ideas, but despite the game doing quite well nobody has released a new campaign yet. If you made one you want to share it, feel free to send it in! Otherwise I'll have to do it myself!

As for the PC (Windows) version, things are coming along nicely, but I still have no release date set, sorry.

Have a good one.

New website (and blog)

I wanted to have a hardcore "no frills" look for the Rubber Ninjas website, but it did end up just looking ugly. So I got back to it and I'm fairly happy with the results.

One thing I noticed is how much difference rounded corners can make in the overall presentation. Sharp corners seem really outdated nowadays.

Another trick of the trade of "modern" web design are color gradients. They look more natural and appealing than flat colors. This is because in real life we never see completely flat colors, light modulates everything into gradients.

The blog design does not match the website's perfectly but hey, nobody's perfect.

Have a good day!

Getting the word out.

One of the hardest parts of making an independent game is getting people to know it - try it.

Ironically this is easier for the Macintosh platform than on Windows, despite the share of Mac owners is something like 5%.

This is mostly because there are less games for Mac, and Mac users tend to be more enthusiastic about new games for their platform.

Another important point that makes marketing games for Mac easier are the Mac download sites, such as Apple Downloads and Mac Game Files.

Apple's site is especially good, they listed Rubber Ninjas in the games section of Apple Downloads (here) and it even got a "staff pick" award.

Another site that covered the release of Rubber Ninjas is Inside Mac Games, hopefully they'll do a review too.

Windows gaming sites are bigger and get much more traffic, but they tend to cover only the major games by the big corporations, and ignore independent game productions.

Still if you're a Windows user don't worry, we're working to get the game on your platform as soon as possible.

Rubber Ninjas for Mac OS X is out!!!

It's been tough, at times I though I would never make it but it's finally there, and you can get a free demo from the rubber ninjas website! A Windows version is in development, it might take a few more months.

Rubber Ninjas is by miles the most ambitious game I've done. I actually started thinking about it just after finishing my 2D fighting game Ragdoll Masters, about 3 years ago.

I had written Ragdoll Masters in a very nice language called blitzmax, especially thought up to make 2D game programming as easy as possible. The jump to X-Code, C++, 3D and OpenGL was fairly rough, I learned stuff mostly by doing, and opengl from the free obsolete version of the red book :P.

While I managed to get the basic ragdoll physics working for 3D fairly soon, I was going pretty slow with the project due to having to learn a lot of new things, so I kept it as a side project while I developed more 2D games in blitzmax, those that you can find at Ragdollsoft.com and other flash games.

Still I kept working from time to time on Ragdoll Masters 3D ( the name in progress for Rubber Ninjas ), and often getting stuck with some technical details. So I used to drop the game for months until some kind of solution just came up to me. For instance how to put multiple characters in a three dimensional while keeping the controls simple. The solution you will find in the game I think works well, and I'm quite proud of it since I think it's original.

Finally in the last months I got the biggest challenges worked out and managed to complete the game, at least the Mac version. The windows version is mostly working but there are some issues I need to work on. Unfortunately I'm not a windows programming wizard, so it might take a bit.

I'll let you know more information on Rubber Ninjas' features and its makings, for now I'm thrilled to know what you guys think of the game :)

Thanks!