Team Blog

You've probably noticed from our Preview Page that Astraware Solitaire is coming soon, and I've been working on the graphics for it.

One of the more interesting parts is creating decorative card backs. When the game was in the planning stages, the staff threw around some ideas for card backs and the first one that came up was a set of characters from Astraware games. Some of the older characters, like Dirk Nebula, needed a makeover in the graphics department, so we've buffed him up a bit, and this is his new look.

Next, we asked our beta testers for some suggestions and got loads of great ideas including Landscapes, Pets, and Outer Space. In fact we had over 30 suggestions for themed card backs. Some ideas couldn't be used because they feature copyrighted characters, but many have been included and for the first release of the game we hope to have about 25 different card backs, some of which will be unlocked by achieving certain things in the games.

One of the suggestions which came from the beta testers was Mythical Characters, and this Unicorn is the first card from the set.

To give you an idea of how this is created, I start with a basic sketch on A4 paper which takes about 5 minutes. Once I'm happy with the basic picture, I scan it into my PC and use Photoshop to build up layers of colour and detail.

When I'm working on the picture I have to bear in mind that not all of the picture is visible when the cards are being played in game. Here's an example using our Cute Alien card. The production process takes about 4 hours in total.

When the full size image is finished, I flatten it, shrink it down and modify its colours to make it display well on handheld screens with only 256 colours. That can sometimes remove some of the detail in the picture, so I zoom in to the image and add it back in pixel by pixel. Once that's done I make 4 different card sizes to cover all the screen resolutions and I create a half-flipped version for the card animation.

The next step is to hand the graphics over to Kat and she puts them into the game.

We're always happy to get feedback and suggestions from the people who are going to play the games, so if there's a particular type of picture you'd like to see on the card backs, why not reply to this post in our forum? You never know, it might appear in the finished game!

The British Summer is firmly on its way now, which means the Astraware office will be getting rather warm for a few months. It's a very pleasant temperature outside at the moment, but when the sun is shining into our room full of computers, the temperature in the office starts to soar.

It gets a bit too much for most of us, so we go all out to try and keep the office cool. One of the best ways we have of doing that is Howard's ingenious scheme to block out the sun! Myself and Paul from the QA team get the lucky job of putting up the shielding, which is a shiny silver insulating material. We cut it into strips and fasten it to the windows, shiny side facing out, and we reflect lots of the sunshine away from the office.

We had a practice run last summer, so we've become quite nifty at putting the shielding up now. However, some of the developers still look a little bit worried when we start climbing over their desks.

I've always loved gadgets, but surrounded by the Astraware team who are technology obsessed, it is rare that I'm the first to be on board with a new gadget, whether it be a phone, game console or PC technology. So a bit of a surprise when it turns out I'm the first one to dip my toe in and try the new Apple TV product!

Mine arrived yesterday, and I had chance to install it (a very easy process!) and have a play.

Syncing with iTunes on my PC was easy - and it was really easy to find and play my music and playlists.

I was able to sync across a whole batch of family photos, and we spent a couple of hours looking through and reminiscing, accompanied to some classic rock!

While its not as powerful as putting in a PC (or other solution) that could do so much more, I'm really quite pleased with it - it does a limited number of things, but really well and fantastically easily.

I'm looking forward to the iTunes video being available in the UK so we can purchase films and TV shows too.

A good review which is the most balanced I've seen is at Ars Technica. Worth a read if you're considering one of these for your own home!

My rating - good fun, easy to install and use, might not be enough for powergeeks though!

Howard recently did an interview with Tam Hanna for Tam's Palm website. The interview covers a range of topics including developing for multiple platforms, which games are best suited to handheld devices, Symbian S60 development, hardcore vs casual gaming, and software piracy.

Check out the full interview here and then share your views in our forum. We'd love to hear what you think!

We get quite a bit of coverage in our local paper, but this weekend David and I had a mini-feature in a national UK paper, the UK Sunday Times.

They were writing about new industries, mostly technology based, popping up in areas where the traditional mining and manufacturing businesses have been in decline. Based on a science park at Keele University for the past 5 years, we're a pretty good example of a local "success story".

As you can tell, we don't take having our pictures taken too seriously, but at least the photographers get a chuckle when they get sent here!