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The Pickford Bros Blog

Posts from John and Ste

Are App Store ratings trustworthy?

Blog posted by Ste Pickford on Wed, 3 Aug 2011

Earlier this week we put out a press release announcing that we'd received 100 5-star ratings, and nearly 70 glowing reviews, for Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint on the UK App Store. John and have been absolutely blown away by this response - both the uni...

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Making Another Trailer

Blog posted by JPickford

Mon, 21 Mar 2011

Making Another Trailer

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...

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.

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...

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.

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...

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 ...

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.

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...

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.

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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Who are The Pickford Bros? »
Who is John Pickford? »

 

Top of the world (a small bit of it...

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Sun, 31 Jul 2011

I woke up early this Sunday morning and stumbled into my office room to check for overnight emails before putting the coffee on. I complained in the previous two blog posts about the difficulty and stress of wating for our Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint ...

Waiting, part 2...

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Sun, 17 Jul 2011

Wow, yesterday was a bit of an emotional roller-coaster. John came round Friday afternoon, and after a bit of a high level strategy meeting about updates and new products, we retired to the local pub for what was originally planned to be a little celebr...

Waiting...

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Wed, 13 Jul 2011

This blog has been quiet lately as all my attention has been focused on getting Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint for iOS finished. We've spat out regular updates on Twitter and Facebook, but every time I considered taking some time out to write a blog post, ...

Beta power!

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Fri, 6 May 2011

Over the last few week's we've recruited some volunteer beta testers, via the Magnetic Billiards Facebook and Twitter pages, to play our almost-finished game and provide feedback, and it's been a really, really useful experience for us (one which I waffled...

Game Over screen

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Mon, 2 May 2011

Game Over screen

We're right at the end of development Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint for iOS now, but amazingly we've only just added a Game Over screen! Most of the work over the last few weeks has been changes and improvements to the UI, controls, and other forms of i...

Tweaking

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Wed, 6 Apr 2011

I've been asked quite a few times recently when Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint for iOS will be out, by people who are looking forward to playing the game. My honest answer is that I reckon we're a couple of weeks away from submitting to the App Store. ...

Light saber battle!

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Thu, 24 Feb 2011

I received an unusual and surprising email a couple of weeks ago, inviting my brother and I down to London to be filmed being interviewed for a new BBC comedy show, being made by Hat Trick Productions, as "renowned names in the online and technological wor...

Feud Screen Saver!

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Mon, 21 Feb 2011

I got a lovely email this morning, from Jan Jakubovic, telling me that he admired the graphics in our old 8-bit computer game Feud, and that he's been inspired to make a screensaver called Mad Wizards based around them. It's really nice getting 'fan' ma...

Right fourth time?

Blog posted by Ste Pickford

Tue, 8 Feb 2011

Right fourth time?

We're still putting the finishing touches to our first iOS game - Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint - with most of the work we're doing at the moment being changes and UI tweaks made in response to watching people actually play the game in the flesh. The ma...

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Who are The Pickford Bros? »
Who is Ste Pickford? »

 

We are The Pickford Bros, veteran independent video game designers based in the UK.

Our latest game is Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint for iOS. It's dead good, and it's free to play!

» Available now on the App Store.

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Magnetic Billiards - Seriously Casual

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