Anyway, tonight it’s my turn to press a button and BAM!:
Blocks That Matter is (still) available on Xbox Live Indie Games channel, but it is now priced 1$/80MSP (instead of 3$/240MSP) until the end of May, something like that.

In a year, 38.530 players downloaded the Xbox Trial of BTM and 8.748 lovers of puzzle games bought it. We hope this temporary price drop will help more players discover the game and possibly enjoy it. Now if you prefer the PC/MAC/Linux version, feel free to visit Steam, Desura, Indievania,…

“Ok guys, that’s great but where’s the cake?” you say.
Well, we already ordered it but it seems that it will be delivered later, in few weeks or months, along with some news about the future of Blocks That Matter and about our current/next project(s).
So until then, please keep the champagne in the fridge.

We also had the great pleasure to play their new game: Fly’n.

Fly’n is a platform game created by a small team of 10 people that evolves like “a studio inside the studio”. We spent few hours playing with Fly’n and its friends, small creatures also called “the Buds” that can run, jump, glide, “sing” and… well we can’t say too much about the game mechanics but we really had fun. The game is cute, colorful, and charming, just like its team.

We also had a great time talking with the team and sharing our thoughts about videogames and videogames development. Yes, it’s always a pleasure to talk with other devs and it will be today’s advice: if you are an indie dev, or a not-so-indie dev, talk with other devs and don’t be afraid to share ideas!

The game is still in development so it needs to have some adjustments and polish, but french players will be able to play it for the very first time at the Ankama Fan Fest in Lyon on May 19-20.

Seems like Tetrobot and our fox have found new friends.

Thanks to Ankama, the Fly’n team and Sylvain, aka Crou, the art director who made this nice illustration!

When we are under the water, it’s hard to find a proper Wi-fi connection. That’s why we are silent those last days. Oh, and also because we are working hard.

We spent the last three months on prototyping game ideas, we even changed our mind twice, but we think we may be on something interesting now, interesting for us to create and for you to play.

We can’t wait to share details with you.

Blocks That Matter is “Today’s Game” deal on Steam with a 66% discount.
It means the game can be purchased at 1,69$ / 1,69€ during the next 24h.

More than 200 Community Levels have been published by players/creators since last Christmas so it has been quite difficult to choose only 5 levels to feature this time. But it’s our duty! Here they are :

Click here to view the embedded video.

Short Fuse – by Krypton
High Jump – by FRiZ
Shoot The Big Mama – by OrcShaman2000
Chipping Away – by Krypton
Falling 3 Really Bad – by Chacham

Thanks to all players/creators who submitted tons of levels since August 2011! We’ll feature new levels in the next weeks, so keep being awesome.

Since then, many things happened :
- we’ve released BTM on Steam in August
- BTM won the Dream.Build.Play 2011 Challenge few weeks after
- and the game has been part of the Humble Voxatron Debut in November

In the same time, more and more people heard about it and what was a small game lost between WhateverCraft and WhateverZombie on XBLIG became a nice indie game (according to players and journalists) on PC.
But how well, exactly, did Blocks That Matter sell?

Let’s unveil the great BTM infographic!
(some data are not detailed due to contracts restrictions)

Click to enlarge "it" !

Click here to view the embedded video.

2011 has been the year of Blocks That Matter, and a pretty good one. We will write about how Blocks That Matter has been received by both players and journalists, later, but you have to know that thanks to everyone who bougth, played and wrote about BTM we will be able to keep making games in 2012.

Have you noticed the fox in the intro of Blocks That Matter?

And for the very first time since the creation of Swing Swing Submarine, two years ago, we will be able to pay us a little something at the end of January. Not a real salary like we had when we worked for a big company, of course, but decent enough to live and this is already a huge step.

Does it mean we have all we need now in order to bring brack Seasons after Fall’s development? Unfortunately, no. We made only half of the road but we are on the right way, and we have more hope than ever. Now that we are (almost) financially independant, we need to work even harder to find a way to build appropriate tools and to hire an artist and animator fulltime.

In order to do that, we estimate that we need to create and release at least one more game of the size of Blocks That Matter, hoping it will have a similar (or better) reception. Then we can bring back Seasons after Fall and finish it.

So, it means Seasons after Fall will probably not be released in 2012. But we hope you’ll keep supporting us like you did last year and that you’ll enjoy our next project.

Don’t listen to people that want to sell you the end of the world.
We wish you a real happy new year, sailors.

To learn more about the featured BTM community levels and how to enter everyday’s contest, simply click the picture below and get ready to make your social networks burn.

See you next year!

- – - – - – -

INVENTORY
“24 Days That Matter”

DEC. 1 (details)
- Community Level: Distress (by Krypton)
- Gift of the day: Sequence offered by Iridium Studios

DEC. 2 (details)
- Community Level: AAAAAAAAAHH (by Jack5)
- Gift of the day: AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome offered by Dejobaan Games

DEC. 3 (details)
- Community Level: Gravity Insanity (by Raszlo)
- Gift of the day: Rotastic offered by Dancing Dots

DEC. 4 (details)
- Community Level: Riddle of the Lost Ark (by FRiZ)
- Gift of the day: Saira offered by Nifflas

DEC. 5 (details)
- Community Level: 4 ways about this (by Bordex)
- Gift of the day: OIO offered by Uncanny Games

DEC. 6 (details)
- Community Level: Slime Teamwork (by Daveyx0)
- Gift of the day: Trine offered by Frozenbyte

DEC. 7 (details)
- Community Level: A Small Feat (by Krypton)
- Gift of the day: Vizati offered by Different Pixel

DEC. 8 (details)
- Community Level: Tecs Playground 4 (by Tector)
- Gift of the day: NightSky offered by Nifflas

DEC. 9 (details)
- Community Level: Sudokube (by FRiZ)
- Gift of the day: Shellblast offered by Vertigo Games

DEC. 10 (details)
- Community Level: High Speed Chase (by Spore)
- Gift of the day: Really Big Sky offered by Boss Baddie

DEC. 11 (details)
- Community Level: The Fall (by Dave)
- Gift of the day: Escape Goat offered by MagicalTimeBean

DEC. 12 (details)
- Community Level: Have Mercy (by Raszlo)
- Gift of the day: Wizorb offered by Tribute Games

DEC. 13 (details)
- Community Level: Alliance (by Krypton)
- Gift of the day: Trine 2 offered by Frozenbyte

DEC. 14 (details)
- Community Level: Low Gravity Game (by Daveyx0)
- Gift of the day: VVVVVV offered by Terry Cavanagh

DEC. 15 (details)
- Community Level: Tecs Playground 5 (by Tector)
- Gift of the day: A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda offered by Extend Interactive

DEC. 16 (details)
- Community Level: Trick or Treat! (by FRiZ)
- Gift of the day: Voxatron offered by Lexaloffle Games

DEC. 17 (details)
- Community Level: Heartburn (by Krypton)
- Gift of the day: The Oil Blue offered by Vertigo Games

DEC. 18 (details)
- Community Level: Deeplab (by Deep Lab 01)
- Gift of the day: Squids offered by The Game Bakers

DEC. 19 (details)
- Community Level: Scrolling Maze (by Chacham)
- Gift of the day: Orbitron Revolution offered by Firebase Industries

DEC. 20 (details)
- Community Level: Transplant (by Krypton)
- Gift of the day: Capsized offered by Alientrap Games

DEC. 21 (details)
- Community Level: Chain Reaction (by Orcshaman2000)
- Gift of the day: Cthulhu Saves the World + Breath of Death VII offered by Zeboyd Games

DEC. 22 (details)
- Community Level: A box of chocolates (by Dave Phenomus)
- Gift of the day: Blueberry Garden offered by Erik Svedäng

DEC. 23 (details)
- Community Level: Transient Path (by Krypton)
- Gift of the day: Pix’n Love Rush DX offered by Pastagames

DEC. 24 (details)
- Community Level: Sounds That Matter (by Raszlo)
- Gift of the day: the Humble Indie Bundle 4 offered by Humble Bundle

Some of you wrote us messages in bottles asking if they can translate Blocks That Matter in german, russian and some other very popular languages we know nothing about. But it was impossible to do it properly until…now !

Click here to view the embedded video.

Guillaume created a nice tool that will allow you to naviguate the game dialogs simply and make translation easier. The only thing you need to do is to download the tool and follow the instructions contained in README_DialogViewer.txt.

If you want, you can send us your completed translation files and we will add them to the full game so everyone can enjoy your work. Don’t forget to mention your name or pseudonym so we can add it in the credits!

For your information, we already know some people are working on spanish, german and italian translation. Feel free to share your work and info in the comments below or in other community places (steam forums, neogaf,…).
Of course, we’ll update this article with links if you provide some.

>>> DOWNLOAD LINK <<<

Thank you again for your support!

Hi all,

With this little “IT Crowd” gimmick, I wanted to talk about technical support for “Blocks That Matter”.

As you may know, we are still in the “Humble Voxatron Debut” bundle!

We already received a lot of emails from players who finished the game and wanted to share their experiences with us!

That’s pretty cool, but we also received some emails about players encountering bugs, or unable to launch the game on given configurations.
I try to answer all the emails I’ve received, but it’s possible that I’m missing some. Don’t hesitate to email me here:

guillaume(at)swingswingsubmarine(dot)com

I’ll try to keep a Q&A section here, to help people find out what’s going wrong.

Blocks That Matter Q&A

//- – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Q: My Linux version says ‘Failed to load library: no jinput-linux in java.library.path”
A: This is certainly due to some issue in the launching script. While waiting for an update, you can try to:
- go there: http://www.swingswingsubmarine.com/BTM_Linux_Launcher/
- download and follow the readme

//- – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Q: My Linux version says “liblwjgl.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32″
A: It’s certainly due to the fact that you are using a Java 7 machine. It’s apparently a known bug from the LWJGL we are using.

To temporary fix this, you can use a command such as:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=”/opt/java/jre/lib/amd64″
(you’ll have to custom the path depending your configuration)

You can also add this to your bashrc
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}: /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0_01/jre/lib/amd64
(that’s another example of a path to your jre)

Note that downgrading to (or embedding) a JRE 6 can also fix the issue :/

//- – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Q: When I restarted the game after playing some ‘Chocolate Update’ level, my upgrades were gone in Adventure mode?!
A:
That’s a bug that occurs if:
- you have a save with some progression in the Main Adventure
- you played a Chocolate Update level,
- then returned to the level selection in Chocolate Update
- then played another level (always in the Chocolate Update)
- finally, you exited the game without playing a Main Adventure level
- on the next start, your Tetrobot upgrades in the Main Adventure mode will be same as the Chocolate Update levels (drill lvl 1, puzzle mode, no line destroy thing)

What you can do to temporally fix this is to the hotfix:
- go to http://www.swingswingsubmarine.com/BTM_hotfix/
- read the readme to know what to do with the “BTM.jar” file
- start the game and it will auto patch your save file!

//- – - – - – - – - – - – - -

(update 01)!

Q: My Linux version doesn’t display any text!?
A:
That’s probably because you’re running a Debian with its OpenJDK jre.
I’m searching for a fix. In the meantime, you can try the following:

- download the btm_launcher_embeded_nonfree_jre.zip archive
- extract it (sorry for the type in embeded, instead of embedded)
- then open a terminal and go to the place where you extracted it and then enter the commands:
su root (or sudo and the following line)
cp -r btm_launcher_embeded_nonfree_jre/* /opt/BlocksThatMatter/
(assuming your game is stored in /opt/BlocksThatMatter/)

Run the game as you used to.
The game now runs with an embedded nonfree jre. The text bug seems to not occur with the Oracle 1.6 JRE.

//- – - – - – - – - – - – - -

NEW (update 02)!

Q: The game won’t launch on my Windows (showing up on task manager, then exiting)
A:

Well, that can be many things.
To help clarify things, you can go to the game folder (“C:\Program Files\Blocks That Matter”, or “C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\blocks that matter” and run the “BTM_DBG_embedded_jvm_win.bat” file by double clicking it!

It will display a command window that will stay opened even after the game quits.

You will may obtain such a thing:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C:\Program Files\Blocks That Matter>”.\\bin\\java.exe” -jar BTM.jar -Xmx1024M -X
ms512M -Djava.library.path=.
Exception in thread “main” java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: org.lwjgl.DefaultSysI
mplementation.getPointerSize()I
at org.lwjgl.DefaultSysImplementation.getPointerSize(Native Method)
at org.lwjgl.Sys.(Sys.java:100)
at org.lwjgl.util.Timer.(Timer.java:50)
at Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.(Game.java:19)
at org.flixel.FlxFactory.(FlxFactory.java:74)
at SSS.BTM.Main.BlocksThatMatter.main(BlocksThatMatter.java:13)

C:\Program Files\Blocks That Matter>pause
Press any key to continue . . .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, this certainly means that you have a conflict with the “lwjgl.dll” that may exists in some default system path (in a different version that the one wanted by the game).

You can launch a search for “lwjgl.dll” in your computer, or directly check some folders like “C:\WINDOWS\system32″.

If you find some “lwjgl.dll” in systems folder (i.e. their path is beginning with “C:\WINDOWS”), you should REMOVE them, since every games that need such dll should embed it!
Putting this dll in such a folder can only leads to conflict!

Remove the dll (or rename it) and then relaunch the game! This time the game will use the lwjgl.dll that is located in is game folder, preventing the game for crashing/exiting.

If the game still not launch, please send us a screenshot or copy/paste the content of the command line window obtained thanks to the “BTM_DBG_embedded_jvm_win.bat”!

//- – - – - – - – - – - – - -

Q: The game display a message box saying “The requested fullscreen resolution configuration could not be achieved!\nPlease configure a new one (in config/DisplayOptions.xml)”
A:
This message is partially incomplete, since it means that the game is not capable of creating the OpenGL window with the parameters contained in this file…

Most of the time, it’s not due to a wrong tweaking in that file, but due to outdated OpenGL graphics driver.

To address this issue, please check that you got the latest OpenGL graphics driver available for your graphics card:

- nVidia card drivers:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/drivers.html

- ATI/AMD card drivers:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

- Intel card drivers:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/

- Other?
Please check your computer manufacturer website to know what to download.

To check your OpenGL version, you can try to use some tools like “OpenGL Extensions Viewer” (http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/download.html).

Running the tool will display some info about your hardware, for example:
- Under “System Info” section: “Renderer: GeForce 9400/PCI/SSE2″ (that’s my crappy Mac Mini graphics card!)
- Under “OpenGL” section: “Version: 2.1″. The game will require at least OpenGL 1.2 to be installed in order to run!

If run “BTM_DBG_embedded_jvm_win.bat” file by double clicking it (located in “C:\Program Files\Blocks That Matter”, or “C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\blocks that matter”) with a OpenGL lower than 1.2, you will probably obtain such a text displayed in the command window that will remains open when the game will exit:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
C:\Games\Blocks That Matter>”.\\bin\\java.exe” -jar BTM.jar -Xmx1024M -Xms512M -
Djava.library.path=.
Game will save your datas in: C:\Users\shteev\Documents\BlocksThatMatterUserData
s/
Pixel format not accelerated
org.lwjgl.LWJGLException: Pixel format not accelerated
at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsPeerInfo.nChoosePixelFormat(Native Method)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsPeerInfo.choosePixelFormat(WindowsPeerInfo.java:52)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsDisplay.createWindow(WindowsDisplay.java:185)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.createWindow(Display.java:317)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:857)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:785)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:766)
[...]
at org.flixel.FlxFactory.changeResolution(FlxFactory.java:191)
at org.flixel.FlxFactory.(FlxFactory.java:152)
at SSS.BTM.Main.BlocksThatMatter.main(BlocksThatMatter.java:13)
C:\Games\Blocks That Matter>pause
Press any key to continue . . .
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So keep your drivers updated, and contact us if it’s still not solving the issue!

//- – - – - – - – - – - – - -

(MORE Q&A soon here!)

Also remember that you can find tone of info on the official Steam forum of the game!

Thanks for your time, patience, and awesomeness!