Kitsune Software

Challenge of the Runestones released

2009-12-18T16:56:12Z

Challenge of the Runestones is puzzle game. You click on matching pairs of runes to remove them from the board, but the runes must be connected by a leyline — a mystical pathway that connects them, but has no more than two bends and does not go over any other rune.

Challenge of the Runestones has thirty six levels divided into nine different worlds, each with it's own magical theme - teleportation, weight, and respawning to name just three. Challenge of the Runestones also keeps you on your toes with a time limit for each level.

To aid you in your quest, Challenge of the Runestones gives you a limited number of bonus powers: Zap will remove a random pair of matching runes; Superconnect will remove any matching pair of runes that you select, even if they are not connected by a leyline; and Hint will find a pair of runes that you can select (if any remain).

Naturally, Challenge of the Runestones automatically saves your game when you stop playing, letting you continue where you left off without the frustration of losing your progress*. If that wasn't enough, Challenge of the Runestones also has over forty achievements to challenge you!

Addictive, non-violent fun makes it suitable for all ages
Three difficulty settings to challenge masters and novices alike
Thirty six levels spread over nine worlds gives you many hours of fun*
Over forty achievements to show your skill
Free to try, $15.99 to buy

* Trial version nags between every few games, will not let you continue saved games, and can only access the first four worlds</span>

Ace Mahjong Solitaire released

2009-11-20T19:01:08Z

Mahjong Solitaire is a modern classic, based on a centuries-old Chinese game called "Demolish the Tile Turtle". Ace Mahjong Solitaire for Mac OS X tastefully combines high-quality graphics, sound and music together into the perfect way to relax for young and old alike. Ace Mahjong Solitaire is easy to learn, but with thirty achievements to collect and more than twenty different layouts (not to mention a layout editor for those that like to be creative), it remains a challenge to master.

The rules of the game are simple: you have a collection of tiles to remove, but you can only remove matching pairs of tiles, and both those tiles must be free to move sideways without disturbing any other tiles. These simple rules have entranced people the world over. To avoid frustration when no more moves are possible, Ace Mahjong Solitaire also gives you some super powers to use when you are stuck: Shuffle will shuffle the positions of all the tiles without changing their layout (handy if all your moves are blocked!); while Hint will find a pair of tiles that you can remove (if any remain).

If that wasn't enough, Ace Mahjong Solitaire has thirty achievements to challenge you, and also comes with a built-in layout editor to let you explore your creativity and share the results with your friends.

Naturally, Ace Mahjong Solitaire automatically saves your game when you stop playing, letting you continue where you left off without the frustration of losing your progress.

Addictive, non-violent fun makes it suitable for all ages
More than twenty layouts increase the fun and the challenge! *
Built-in layout editor lets you make your own levels and share the fun *
Thirty achievements to show your skill
Free to try, $15.99 to buy

* Trial version nags between every few games, will not let you continue saved games, and can only access one layout

Yay, freedom!

2009-10-03T14:21:53Z

Yay! I can publish stuff of my own again!

My no-compete clause with my previous employer has now expired, so I am free to publish games. And publish them I have:

Absolute Shisen-Sho has been re-written from scratch; new graphics, new gameplay, and plenty of achievements to keep you entertained.
Awesome Hangman is an awesome hangman game. It comes with two completely free wordlists, so you can play it for free, forever, if you want to, but there are more than twenty other specialist wordlists available to those that buy the full version.
Fox Minesweeper 3 is my third incarnation of minesweeper. The basic game is free, but there are extra modes of gameplay for those that fancy a change: "Against The Clock", "Three Lives", and "Open Edges" (where all edge squares start revealed so that you can concentrate on puzzle-solving instead of the luck we all need in the first few clicks).

In other news, it seems that Mac OS X 10.5 screen-savers do not work on 10.6 and vice-versa. I will investigate this before making any more.

Scripting

2009-09-17T11:24:17Z

To save time later, I am trying to automate as much of my workload as possible. To that end, I've found several useful command line tools for making disk images (the files ending in ".dmg" that you may have seen).

hdiutil is very handy for the actual creation of the disk images, but the directory it produces has a default appearance. Unfortunately, there are no command-line tools to change this directly... but wait! There are other scripting utilities besides the command line — in the case of Mac OS, there is AppleScript, which can be executed from the command line with some caveats (cannot interact with a GUI unless you're logged in via the GUI, or possibly locally — the documentation I saw was not clear). Keeping those caveats in mind, this script can be run from the command line. It takes one argument (a folder), and changes that folder's appearance in the Finder to be icon view, with large icons, no toolbar, and with the label on the bottom. You can change other things (such as a background image), but I'm not planning on scripting that any time soon.

on run argv
	tell the application "Finder"
		set f to item 1 of argv
		set w to make Finder window to folder f
		set p to icon view options of w
		set the current view of w to icon view
		set toolbar visible of w to false
		set the icon size of p to 128
		set the label position of p to bottom
	end tell
end run

Stochastic music

2009-08-01T17:40:17Z

I am currently experimenting with Stochastic music (music that is created by a computer program and a random process), hopefully I will be able to use this in some of the games I intend to make over the next few years.

Music

2009-07-29T18:39:14Z

I've been experimenting with Markov-chain generated music. As I am not a musical composer, my standards for "success" are rather limited.

http://kitsunesoftware.com/Misc/test.mid

Intuitive dice

2009-07-06T20:27:29Z

OK, after a bit of work, I think I have something cool, geeky, and handy for board gaming. I have created a set of dice whose behaviour is consistent with the Gambler's fallacy: The dice remember what has been rolled, so that previously-rolled numbers are less likely. (It also supports normal dice if you prefer them).

And here it is.

For those that want to know the geeky innards:

If you roll n-dice at once, the frequency difference between the most and least rolled numbers so far cannot exceed n (i.e. if you roll one dice at a time and your first roll is a 6, you will roll all other numbers exactly once or twice before rolling a 6 again; if you roll pairs of dice you may get double sixes but you won't get that twice in a row).
Dice syntax is in the form n[dy] with an optional i anywhere (e.g. 1d6, 4d20i). n is the number of dice to roll, y is how many sides they have, i indicates that the roll is intuitive instead of normal.
Changing between intuitive and normal dice rolls resets the dice-rolled-to-date count.
Graphics only exist for numbers up to 20, any number without a graphic will be rendered as text.

Needless to say, a downloadable Widget version will be coming soon.

LorenzScreenSaver

2009-06-22T15:34:01Z

Hello all,

To help get back into the swing of MacOS X development, I have just written a screensaver. If you want to experience the joy of fractals with the Lorenz Attractor, you can download LorenzScreenSaver now — it's free!

Tested on Intel and PowerPC based macs, though I suspect most people no longer care about PPC...

Life

2009-06-16T13:25:28Z

As one part of your life is concluded, so another begins. As I didn't get the start-up grant I was after back in 2006, I had to put Kitsune Software on hold for two and a half years, working a normal job at a games company. It started off fun... but now I'm coming back to self employment.

Let's just say that the games' industry has a well-deserved reputation, and when I expand enough to hire people, I hope to permanently change that for the better.

Moving house

2006-11-14T16:17:11Z

Advanced warning for anyone who needs to contact me; I'm moving house on the 22nd of November. Broadband internet takes 10-15 days to transfer, so I may be a little slow to respond between the 22nd and the 29th.

Absolute Shisen-Sho Released

2006-11-05T14:30:34Z

Shisen-Sho is a traditional Chinese game whose origins have been lost in the mists of time, but is said to have been inspired by Mahjong. Absolute Shisen-Sho for Mac OS X tastefully combines high-quality graphics, sound and music together into the perfect way to relax after a long day. Absolute Shisen-Sho is easy to learn, but with three difficulty settings it remains a challenge to master.

The principle of the game is simple enough: you have a grid of tiles arranged on a wooden board; your goal is to match pairs of tiles and remove them all... the catch, is that you can only remove a pair of tiles if they can be connected by a vertical or horizontal line with no more than two 90-degree bends.

These simple rules have entranced people the world over. To avoid frustration when no more moves are possible, Absolute Shisen-Sho also gives you some super powers to use when you are stuck: Zap will remove a random pair of tiles; Magic wand will remove any pair you select, even if you couldn't normally remove it; and Hint will find a pair (if any remain).

Absolute Shisen-Sho also has two modes of gameplay: Against-the-clock lets you pit your wits in arcade-style race against time, while the Traditional mode gives you all the time in the world to mull over your next move.

Until now, Mac OS X users have had a hard time finding this addictive puzzle game — but Absolute Shisen-Sho brings the search to an end! This challenging and fun game is available now as a universal binary, making it a perfect companion for your new Intel-based Mac. Download the free trial now; the full version is only $14.99!

Traditional graphics for an authentic experience
Addictive, non-violent fun makes it suitable for all ages
Free trial version*

* Trial version nags between every few games, and only allows against-the-clock games.

Download it today!

Mislaid plans

2006-10-13T18:31:23Z

My big plan, indeed entire reason, for being in Aberystwyth after finishing my degree was to start a business with aid from a fund called KEF (Knowledge Exploitation Fund, I think). Originally, my intent had been to work on the business in my spare time while keeping down a normal full time or part time job, but KEF was supposed to give me the freedom to work full time on the business for 9 months. A few days ago, I was told their answer: "No". If the criticisms they had given had been sensible, that would have been fair enough — you can't go round throwing money at poor plans, after all. Given what they said, however, I just can't believe they even read my business plan.

On the plus side, I've convinced the university to let me do a presentation to the students for which I will get £150, and a few people already seem interested in me making websites for them.

New software

2006-10-07T20:11:38Z

Here's a new thing I've been working on, called Fast Morse.

For only $4.99, Fast Morse will convert any text you enter into the original Morse code equivalent, and play it on your speakers. The speed can be adjusted to anything from 1 to 35 words per minute if your computer can keep up, allowing you to send Morse signals at a rate your friends and fellow Morse enthusiasts can follow!

For the next day or so, it's available exclusively from macupdate.com

Backups and power supplies

2006-10-07T12:47:18Z

On Thursday, two 2GB memory sticks arrived in the post, which I am now using for backups. Brilliant timing, because my file-server's power supply died some time between midday Friday and early morning Saturday.

Even if this business doesn't end up making enough money to live on, I'm getting loads of valuable experience in many different areas of IT and business...

Minesweeper revamped!

2006-10-05T09:02:48Z

OK, my minesweeper-inspired game has been updated with all new graphics:

You can download it from macupdate: http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/21295

I'm in the process of getting the shop ready for some newly finished products; I'll update again when it's all sorted.

Head, meet wall

2006-09-19T18:09:10Z

I had forgotten how bad BT were until today, when my internet connection died. It's not so much the problem itself, as how they (fail) to deal with it.

I hope Kitsune Software never ends up like that.

Screenshot time

2006-09-09T12:41:49Z

As promised, here is a screenshot of the game I'm working on:

While I wait...

2006-09-06T11:07:12Z

Though I'm still waiting for the new hardware to arrive, I've gotten bored and have started work on yet another mini-project. This one is a game in the vein of Bejeweled. Screenshots soon...

Hardware

2006-08-30T09:00:58Z

While waiting for the hardware for the RAID-to-be, I've decided to see if I can progress a little further with a pet hardware project of mine: a 3D printer. I've been working on this for nearly a year and a half now, on and off, but I've not put many hours in over that time.

If it works, I think it will be the cheapest 3D printer ever made, at about £400 (UK) instead of the more usual £40,000... but on the other hand, I'm basing it on a CNC machine with a linear speed of only 1cm/second, so at it's maximum resolution of 0.1mm, and without a parallel printing head, it will only print at 0.36 cubic centimeters (about 0.02 cubic inches) per hour.

To simplify things, the first version will only print in chocolate (nice low melting point), and use either sugar (yum!) or sand (yuck!) to fill any gaps. Sand will be easier, as it has a much higher melting temperature, but given how low the melting point of chocolate is, either should work OK.

Moving in

2006-08-28T12:28:30Z

New domain name... check
New web host... check
New blog... check

Now I just have to wait for the tower to arrive so I can set up a RAID array, then I'm good to go!