The Pickford Bros Blog
Posts from John and Ste
Struts - Blueprint new feature #2
Blog posted by Ste Pickford on 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...
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...
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.
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...
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.
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...
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 ...
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.
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...
Blog posted by JPickford
Wed, 29 Sep 2010
Just a rough video of the new touch controls for Magnetic Billiards on iPad.
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.
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...
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.
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...
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...
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...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Wed, 14 Dec 2011
This is either the best graphic I've ever drawn, or the worst. I've no idea any more! It's an idea for a new icon for Blueprint on iOS, for version 2.0 which we're just finishing up at the moment. It makes me laugh when I look at it, so maybe it's a...
Comic strip (first one for a while)
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Wed, 7 Dec 2011
Another daft comic strip, although this is only the first one this year. I was doing these once a week for a while but I don't think I've finished any comic strips since about July last year, which is a bit rubbish. This one made Deborah laugh, so I...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Fri, 25 Nov 2011
There was lively internet response to the opinion piece I wrote for SPONG, published earlier this week then picked up by several other news outlets, criticising the structure of the video game BAFTA awards. Whilst most of the comments were positive and ...
Blog posted by Ste Pickford
Tue, 22 Nov 2011
I was invited to write an opinion piece for the SPONG video game news website a few weeks ago, so decided to expand what was going to be a little blog post criticising the video game game BAFTA awards (sort of a British version of the Academy awards, but w...
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!
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