Gigalomania Blog

Version 1.0 of Gigalomania is available!

• Shields couldn't be deployed if clicking on turrets.
• In "All Islands" game mode, the player is now prevented from using all their people leaving none for other islands in that sector - you now have to keep at least one person per uncompleted island spare.
• Buildings are now only damaged if no defending army or turret defenders present; turret defenders only killed if no defending army present.
• Minor graphical improvements.
• Improvements for Windows touchscreens (mouse pointer or popups no longer show).
• Intel x86 devices are now supported on Android. Now targetting Android 8.0; minimum Android version is now 4.0. Now using Android Studio instead of Eclipse for Android.
• Compiling on OS X fixed.
• Linux now supports DATADIR #define to specify an alternative data location.
• Replaced some third party assets to better satisfy Debian Free licence requirements.
• Windows version now compiled with Visual Studio Community Edition 2017. Windows XP no longer supported.
• Now compiled with SDL 2.0.5, SDL_image 2.0.1, SDL_mixer 2.0.1 on Windows and Android.
• Online help now moved to http://gigalomania.sourceforge.net/ .

Due to my ISP ending their webspace from 28 April 2016, the Gigalomania homepage has moved to http://gigalomania.sourceforge.net/ .

A few developer-oriented comments on the 0.28 release:

Improved graphics: Gigalomania has evolved quite a bit over the years. It started off as a pure Open Source game engine, requiring the user to have an installation of Mega Lo Mania. Then I switched to terrible placeholder graphics. I always had this idea that at some point someone might provide a decent set of complete graphics in one go - in practice, it's evolved in several stages, partly various people helping out improve various aspects, as well as making increasing use of third party Free graphics.... read more

Version 0.28 of Gigalomania is available! This is quite a significant update, with improvements in several areas:

• Improved graphics: Thanks to Macrofeet who added improved biplanes, jets and new player avatars, I've also used Free third-party sources (thanks Open Game Art) to improve a range of other graphics. It's still far from winning any awards, but v0.28 no longer has any "placeholder" graphics remaining. I think the remaining issues are more to do with consistency (which is a harder thing to achieve when using Free sources); the buildings could also do with more variation rather than different textures applied to the same models. Also thanks to Sindre Froyn who provided additional music for this version.
  
• Save state at any time: This was mainly required for Android, where the apps should really save their state at any time because the OS can kill an app in background. More generally, users have an expectation that an app should save its state, even after a reboot. This is now done. Also the bug where locking/unlocking the screen on Nexus 5 and 6 caused the game to freeze is fixed. Saving state is also available for other platforms - after selecting quit, choose the "Save game and quit to desktop" option.... read more

After a break, v0.27 of Gigalomania is available! Improvements include:

• Speech samples! Thanks to Rob Hunter, who recorded these wonderful speech samples to go along with the game. There's also now some in-game music (from http://ccmixter.org/files/_ghost/37481 , "Warm Ink" by _ghost).

• I've upgraded to using SDL 2, which gives various improvements: full screen mode now runs at the current resolution rather than having to change resolution; in windowed mode, the window can be resized; performance should be better due to better use of GPUs; startup is faster.... read more

I stumbled across this YouTube video recently - I was impressed, it's a walkthrough video for Gigalomania, over 4 hours of playing though the entire set of islands :)

Work continues on the next version 0.27, which will be out real soon now. Improvements include a switch to SDL 2 (which improves behaviour and performance), including a switch from Qt to SDL 2 for Android (which removes the dependency on the Ministro app); full support for Windows 8 touchscreens/tablets; new music and sound samples; and some improvements to the graphics.

Gigalomania 0.25 is now released!

This version has some improvements to the graphics, including all of the attacker and defender sprites being redone, making use of Free 3rd party graphics mostly sourced from the very useful site Open Game Art (as always, see the documentation for full list of licences).

Various UI improvements and bug fixes have been made. The Android version now supports sound, and uses the same higher resolution graphics of other platforms.... read more

As with my other app Wifi Remote Play, I thought it was interesting to look at the downloads by platform:

... read more

Gigalomania 0.24 is now released! This version adds a port to Android devices, bringing the total number of supported platforms to 7. Improvements have been made to the touchscreen UI since 0.22.

This version fixes an occasional crash when loading save games. I've also tweaked some of the gameplay mechanics to hopefully make things a bit more playable, and added on-screen always-visible health bars for all buildings (including enemies, so you're no longer left wondering how much damage is being done). Your people and armies now automatically evacuate when buildings are destroyed - whilst theoretically it was a challenge to quickly evacuate your men, in my experience this just ended up being frustrating, especially when you could end up losing despite having a massive army, just because the computer player quickly attacked - this should be a game of strategy, not how-quick-can-you-press-a-button ;).... read more

Gigalomania is now available on smartphones!

For Nokia Symbian smartphones, it's now available from the Nokia store. For Maemo, see the Maemo packages page. There is also an installer for Meego. I admit the user interface could do with some more work to improve it for small screen sizes - hopefully this will improve in the coming versions.... read more

I've finally got round to making the source code online in the form of a Git repository! It's available at https://sourceforge.net/p/gigalomania/code/ .

If you fancy doing something with the code or porting to a new platform, it's probably better to start from this than the latest official release.

Gigalomania 0.23 is released. This fixes an urgent bug on desktop versions where designs couldn't be trashed.

Windows installer: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.23/+download/gigalomania.msi

OS X archive: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.23/+download/gigalomania_osx.zip

Ubuntu packages: https://launchpad.net/~mark-harman/+archive/gigalomania/+packages

Source code: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.23/+download/gigalomaniasrc.zip

Gigalomania is 0.22 is released, adds support for touchscreen devices, and various other improvements.

Windows installer: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.22/+download/gigalomania.msi

Ubuntu packages: https://launchpad.net/~mark-harman/+archive/gigalomania/+packages

OS X archive: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.22/+download/gigalomania_osx.zip... read more

Gigalomania is 0.21 is released, includes a significant bug fix for crashes when starting a new island, and a fix for the Linux makefile for recent GCC / Ubuntu versions.

Windows installer: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.21/+download/gigalomania.msi

Ubuntu packages: https://launchpad.net/~mark-harman/+archive/gigalomania/+packages

Source code: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.21/+download/gigalomaniasrc.zip

Gigalomania is 0.20 is released, includes some minor improvements for graphics, and a fix for low resolutions.

Windows installer: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.20/+download/gigalomania.msi

Ubuntu packages: https://launchpad.net/~mark-harman/+archive/gigalomania/+packages

Source code: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.20/+download/gigalomaniasrc.zip

The latest version of Gigalomania is 0.19, released 30 July 2011. The gameplay is mostly complete now, just needs improvements to the graphics :)

Windows installer: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.19/+download/gigalomania.msi

Ubuntu packages: https://launchpad.net/~mark-harman/+archive/gigalomania/+packages

Source code: http://launchpad.net/gigalomania/trunk/0.19/+download/gigalomaniasrc.zip... read more