The Pickford Bros Blog

Making Another Trailer

Blog posted by JPickford

Mon, 21 Mar 2011

Ste and I spent most of Saturday creating footage for our second (and final) Magnetic Billiards trailer. We filmed lots of gameplay footage on the iPad but the majority of the time was spent creating an 8 second animated sequence (250 hand drawn frames...

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Magnetic Billiards:Blueprint hits A...

Blog posted by JPickford

Fri, 4 Mar 2011

Yesterday I added the tutorial pages to Magnetic Billiards:Blueprint. This was the final missing element so we are now officially 'feature complete'. There's still a fair bit of work left to do but it's mostly polish & bug fixing.

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Making A Trailer

Blog posted by JPickford

Fri, 4 Mar 2011

A couple of weeks ago I came up with an idea for trailer to promote our upcoming iOS (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch) game Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint. Originally inspired by the wildly successful Dead Island trailer; I thought it would be fun to make a spoof...

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Blueprint Dev Blog #17

Blog posted by JPickford

Mon, 18 Oct 2010

Playing Magnetic Billiards on iPhone 3G. Speed problems seem to have vanished with appropriately sized graphics (previously I was using iPad graphics scaled down in realtime). The iPad controls are surprisingly okay - at least on the earlier tables.

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Blueprint Dev Blog #16

Blog posted by JPickford

Thu, 14 Oct 2010

Tidying up lots of loose ends on Magnetic Billiards today. Quite chuffed with the visual effects for 'Foul' and 'Buzz'. Really simple but effective. We're only missing cluster shape detection and a couple bonuses and the core gameplay will be done. Plen...

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Blueprint Dev Blog #15

Blog posted by JPickford

Tue, 12 Oct 2010

Magnetic Billiards now has four distinct control methods (switchable in-game). They all work really well so it's really a matter of person taste. Haven't tried them on the iPhone yet (just the iPad). At least one of them will be too fiddly on the small ...

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Blueprint Dev Blog #13

Blog posted by JPickford

Sat, 9 Oct 2010

Another ace reaction to Magenetic Billiards iPad in the pub last night. We might have a good game on our hands.

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Blueprint Dev Blog #12

Blog posted by JPickford

Sun, 3 Oct 2010

Implemented an alternate control method - 'DONUT CONTROL'. It's mainly aimed at the iPhone version as it allows you to control the shot using most of the screen space regardless of the balls size (or position). Seems to work pretty well and it's more pr...

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Blueprint Dev Blog #11

Blog posted by JPickford

Wed, 29 Sep 2010

Just a rough video of the new touch controls for Magnetic Billiards on iPad.

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Blueprint Dev Blog #10

Blog posted by JPickford

Tue, 28 Sep 2010

It always amazes me how often I find two completely different causes for the same bug. Fixed a persistent crash bug (twice) and got the game running on iPhone 3G. Well more limping than running but it's progress.

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BAFTA nominated!

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Thu, 16 Feb 2012

I woke up this morning to the news that Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint has been nominated for a BAFTA Video Game Award in the Mobile & Handheld category. Blimey! We're listed next to Quarrel and Peggle, and some game I've never heard of called 'Ma...

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UNDO - Blueprint new feature #3

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Mon, 13 Feb 2012

Here's another little demo of one of the new features coming in Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint version 2.0 - UNDO! We're really excited about this feature, it's our favourite of all the things we've been adding. Players will now have the ability to UNDO...

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Nominated for a Pocket Gamer Award ...

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Fri, 10 Feb 2012

We got a surprise email the other day from Pocket Gamer informing us that Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint has been nominated in their 2012 Pocket Gamer Awards. It took a bit of rooting around on their slightly odd web page (where the nominees in each catego...

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Struts - Blueprint new feature #2

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Tue, 31 Jan 2012

The new update to Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint (v2.0) is almost complete, so we thought we'd blog about some of the new features that we've added to the game. Along with Pegs we've also added another new feature to the Classic Game - Struts. Struts ar...

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Pegs - Blueprint new feature #1

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Fri, 27 Jan 2012

The new update to Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint (v2.0) is almost complete, so we thought we'd blog about some of the new features that we've added to the game. One of the new features we've added to the Classic Game is Pegs. Some of the new tables will...

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Serious comic!

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Tue, 24 Jan 2012

BAM! Another hard-hitting comic strip, daring to tackle the hardest problems of the modern age. Or, worst 'I've got a Kindle' post evah.

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Zub news #3

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Sat, 24 Dec 2011

We got an email out of the blue from our old boss at Binary Design earlier this year. Binary Design was the studio that John and I worked for in the late 1980s, where we designed and developed a few hit games for Mastertronic, like Zub and Feud and Amauro...

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Zub news #2

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Fri, 23 Dec 2011

Another nice Zub surprise popped into my inbox this week, a lovely Zub Christmas card / fan artwork, courtesy of Dave Bulmer. The email came with a brilliant story about Dave playing Zub as a kid: "I finally get to say thanks for Zub. It was one of t...

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Zub news #1

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Thu, 22 Dec 2011

For some reason our 1986 Mastertronic ZX Spectrum game Zub keeps on popping up in various different ways lately. Maybe the gods are trying to tell us something? First of all here's a completely faithful remake of Zub, playable in a browser. This litt...

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