dev log

Cally’s Caves 3 Free Expansion “Melvin’s Prototype Factory” Coming Next Week!

~ callyscaves ~ 4 Comments

After a busy couple of months, we’ve just submitted a huge new content update for Cally’s Caves 3, “Melvin’s Prototype Factory.”  The update should be out for iOS and Android next week.

Screenshot 2015-09-28 18.32.27

This is the biggest update we’ve ever done for a game, and will include a bunch of new features:
Screenshot 2015-09-26 16.46.53

Massive New Zone:
We’ve added a whole new 34-level zone, with all-new art, a fully functional map and lots of Checkpoints.

Screenshot 2015-10-05 14.52.33(2)

New Weapons: 3 new weapons and their final forms can be found in the new Levels!  Try using the power of the Slimes for your own benefit with the Slimegun, trap enemies and prevent them from hurting you with the Web Shooters, or use the Bow and Arrow from Cally’s Caves 2 to pepper enemies with arrows.  All of the new weapons have 4 evolution tiers, and can be used throughout all of the other game modes.

Screenshot 2015-10-02 12.23.41

New Enemies: Melvin has been creating bosses in his prototype lab for years, and to destroy him, you’ll have to defeat them all!  5 new enemy classes with unique behaviors mix up the combat and test your skills.

Screenshot 2015-10-01 13.52.25

Beyond all of the new content, we will have a ton of bug fixes and optimizations including the following:

iOS

  • fixed issue where Final Bladegun isn’t being awarded for beating Survival Mode
  • fixed issue where Bera would sometimes transform into Cally in “Bera: the Long Way Home”

Android

  • greatly reduced frequency of video ads
  • fixed missing Sniper Rifle issue – find it in level 101
  • fixed rating message in pause menu
  • fixed several small resolution bugs
  • several new tracks on the soundtrack

We are also happy to announce that the expansion is totally free and is not an in-app purchase or anything like that.  We wanted to find a way to thank all the people that have downloaded and supported Cally’s Caves 3.  We will have at least one more free expansion out before Christmas, and an announcement of our next project shortly after.

melvinszone

Dev Diary #16: Dealing with iOS Resolutions in GameMaker: Studio

~ callyscaves ~ 9 Comments

If someone who has never made a game before decides to try to create one, it seems like it’s going to be pretty simple.  Then that person will have a day – deep into the dev cycle – where they discover a technical requirement they didn’t think about, pull their hair out, and have a nervous breakdown.  When we were working on the original Cally’s Caves, there was a certain day when it dawned on us that we were going to have to account for all the different resolutions that iOS devices use.  It had never occurred to us in the planning phase that we were going to have to make the game work on anything more than one resolution, and it set us back quite a bit while we implemented our strategy.  Thinking back on those days, it seems like it could be a useful exercise to document how we handle the resolutions in specific detail.  We do this in the hopes that some others may come across the article and find it useful when they are dealing with the same issue.

Image Credit: Carst.Me
Image Credit: Carst.Me

Schools of Thought

There are a number of different ways you could handle scaling to different resolutions while developing a game.  Looking at GameMaker: Studio specifically, if you look at the tutorial on resolution scaling, it shows you a method of scaling that allows landscape and portrait mode.  It’s an adaptable scaling method that is run during every single frame of the game.  This is the first school of thought when it comes to resolution scaling on mobile devices: Continue reading →

Cally’s Caves 3 Announcement!

~ callyscaves ~ 2 Comments

This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone reading this.  If you finished the bonus levels in Cally’s Caves 2, or follow us on Twitter or Soundcloud, you probably know that we have been working on Cally’s Caves 3 for some time now.  After the wonderful time we had with Cally’s Caves 2, we decided to put the puzzle game we were working on to the side and try to keep the ball rolling with the Cally franchise.  So, what’s in store for Cally on her next adventure?

Cally 3 Title Promo

Cally’s Caves 3 is another chance for us to aspire to make the best platformer on iOS.  We’ve taken a lot of the feedback we received from the first two games and are putting it to use while developing Cally’s Caves 3.  The biggest change is that we are adding a new game plus mode, which will give players a lot more reasons to come back and keep playing.  After finishing the campaign (124 levels or so), new game plus mode will open up.  Another tier of weapon upgrades will open up, leading towards a god-tier final form for each weapon.  Instead of just making new game plus be like the campaign again but harder, we are adding new enemies and weapon types into new game plus, and the one “true” story ending to the game will be at the end of the new game plus playthrough.

final cally 3 gif

Continue reading →

Happy One-Year Anniversary, Cally

~ callyscaves ~ Leave a comment

Hey everyone,

Well it’s now been a year since the original Cally’s Caves was released, and sixteen months since we set out on this journey to make games.  Thank you to every one of the 20,000 people that downloaded and played our little free game!  If you’ve never checked it out, we have lots of dev logs on our experience making the game, and you can download Cally’s Caves here for free.  Here’s to many more Cally-versaries!

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