Greedy Caterpillar - a snake game for touchscreen and TV

Little by little, TheInvaderOne is growing up. She is now three and a half years old 😮

Her little sister, TheInvaderOneX 👶, is eight months old, and is now very interested in the Sensory app. She's also interested in whatever her sister happens to be up to at the time, crawling at light speed, making valiant attempts at walking, and trying her damnedest to "eat all the things".

Big sister has smashed it on the numeracy front, and has left the Count 1 to 10 app for dust. We're in the big leagues now - she has 1 to 100 cracked, addition and subtraction of small numbers sorted, and is starting to get to grips with simple multiplication and division. Of course, we're not drilling numbers, letters, languages, etc 24/7. She loves absorbing knowledge - she's like a sponge, but we don't want her to burn out before she even hits school - being bored at school from day one due to them not teaching her anything new would likely be a disaster! No, there needs to be plenty of downtime... Sure there's loads of toys to play with, and imaginative play, and creative crafts, and baking, and stories, and a bit of tv (if you have kids around this age and want to combine cartoon time with learning, check out Go Jetters and Numberblocks, both big hits in our home at the moment), and seemingly endless unrelenting viewings of Frozen, but she's also seen what Daddy does to unwind - play and make games, and she wants in!

Ok, so making games may be a way off yet, but playing them was definitely on the cards. My other half bought me a Raspberry Pi 3 starter kit as a birthday surprise, it's now a dedicated emulation machine, with a lovingly curated list of games on there. It's pretty much a NES Mini, and a SNES Mini and a "Many Other Platforms Mini", all rolled into one. My eldest has particularly enjoyed playing Centipede and Barney's Hide & Seek. She loves the arcade action aspect of Centipede, but the move from touchscreen puzzle games to a joypad controlled action game was a pretty big step, and before she truly "got it", it was game over. Over and over again. The Barney game is actually a fantastic game for first getting to grips with the concept of pressing buttons or moving a joystick to control an onscreen character (since you can't really lose), but it seems the controller we were using (a truly excellent bluetooth one by Moga) was a bit overwhelming, and the game itself requires no real skill or engagement (drop the controller and it will complete itself on autoplay - once you realise that, what's the point in playing anymore?).

I got to thinking about what would make a good game for three year old, one who so far has only been exposed to touchscreen "jigsaw puzzles" and "smash bugs at a picnic" type games.

Here's what I came up with:

• The control scheme should be simple and intuitive
• Rules governing gameplay should be fairly straightforward and logical
• Threat should be absent, or extremely mild
• It should look and sound reasonably appealing
• You shouldn't be able to lose too quickly i.e. before you get a handle on what you're actually meant to do

I realised that we already owned the perfect game controller for a small child. It's not really a game controller at all. It's an Amazon Fire TV Remote. I mean, just look at this thing:

It's a wonderfully simple controller, and that circle up top covers all the basic actions that should be required in a simple child friendly game: up, down, left, right, and a single fire/action/select button.

I started out with an Atari 2600 myself, nearly 30 years ago. All the games I had were controlled by one of these bad boys:

Let's all take a moment to bask in the glory of its simplicity... Up, down, left, right, and a fire/action/select button. Yes, using the Fire TV Remote looked like a winner. If it was good enough for Atari in the 80's, it's good enough for me today.

Ok, control scheme and physical controller sorted, on to the next item, a relatively simple game idea. A lot of the best simple game ideas have already been done, but I'm cool with rehashing a tried and tested mechanic, not everything has to be innovative or ground breaking ☺ Thinking about simple games, I realised very few are actually forgiving enough to meet my requirements. Pong and breakout are actually quite tough games, especially if you've never played them or handled a game controller before. Miss the ball a few times and it's game over. A game of breakout could easily be over within seconds, and before any blocks were broken. No good, frustration is not fun. What about Pac Man? Space Invaders? Centipede? Same deal. Those old simple games were actually quite challenging, I guess that's what made them so addictive, and why world records exist for acing them! Then it struck me: Snake!

• Simple control scheme: up/down/left/right, press the relevant button to move in that direction
• Simple rules: eat as many apples as possible and don't bite yourself - seems like reasonable advice for anyone to lead their life by
• Minimal threat: bite yourself and you have to start again (no big deal, right?)
• Aesthetically appealing: Ok, nokia snake wasn't the nicest looking or sounding game, back in those days we didn't have much to work with, the 3310 had a 84x48 monochrome 1.5 inch screen, midi sounds, and a processor and memory to match. Luckily we have HDTVs and even HD mobile devices these days, so we can do something about that... And thanks to awesome people like Kenney and Kevin MacLeod you don't have to be an accomplished artist or composer to pull it off!
• Impossible to lose too quickly: This is where snake comes into it's own - all the other simple old games I considered were challenging, and you could lose them all immediately. The snake game is challenging, but with certain rules in place (no static obstacles, wrap around scenes, starting length of 4 segments or less) it is actually impossible to lose until you have at least managed a score of 1, and in most cases you're unlikely to lose before the "snake" reaches a length greater than the world height.

I put together a small prototype, and soon had a very simple snake game up and running on our living room TV via the Fire TV Stick. A "snake" comprised of green squares on a black background, a single red square representing the "mouse" or "apple", no score, no sound, nothing other than a very rudimentary snake that could be controlled via the Fire TV Remote that grew each time it "ate" a red square. My daughter loved it. I think she was excited to see that what I had been working on on my laptop had somehow appeared on the TV, and that she could press buttons to make it do stuff ☺

She referred to the snake as a caterpillar, probably due to us having played Atari's centipede on the RPi earlier in the day, and she called that a caterpillar too (I guess she has never actually seen a centipede, but has seen plenty of caterpillars). Maybe the fact we had recently borrowed The Very Hungry Caterpillar from the library had something to do with it too. Anyway, the Hungry Caterpillar name stuck, and that in turn helped me come up with a nice, bold, simple, child friendly, cartoonish skin:

I could have stopped right there, as at that point I had achieved what I set out to do - I had made a little game for my three year old to play on the TV using a simple controller. However, I found the whole process of developing for a TV and remote controller quite interesting. If the game had more than a single screen, maybe a game over screen announcing when a high score had been achieved, a menu screen, a help screen, an options screen, how would all that work using the remote as a controller? More interestingly, could I get the app to work well not only on TV's using a remote/game controller, but also on the more traditional touchscreen phones and tablets? If yes, why not release it on Amazon for both Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices? Could I go one step further and release it on Google Play too? I found the answer to all that stuff and managed to build a single apk that works equally well on TV and touchscreen, and that can be uploaded to both the Amazon and Google marketplaces.

I learned a few nifty tricks that I plan to write about in future (this post is already way too long...):

• How to suppress ads when running on an unsuitable platform (it infuriates me when ads appear in a Fire TV app with no way to avoid them or click through)
• How to link to the appropriate app store depending on what platform you are running on without resorting to separate builds for each marketplace
• How to handle a simple menu in LibGdx using either touchscreen or remote/game controllers
• How to make a game/app that works well and looks good in terms of the 10-foot user interface, and that works equally well and looks equally nice on hand held devices

I also ended up with a game to play with my daughter, something to publish on the Amazon and Google marketplaces (yeah, I've been slacking again), and a reason to post on my blog again :)

Oh, and the game is totally helping TheInvaderOne get to grips with controlling an onscreen character by pressing buttons on a remote controller. She is already hitting double digit scores, which is a huge improvement over what she could manage when she first tried a couple of weeks ago. I expect she will be destroying my own high scores very soon! And if her interest in the Sensory app is anything to go by, TheInvaderOneX will be bringing more competition to the table in two or three years time! ☺

Anyway, the game is free, as always. There are some ads when you play on a mobile device (a small unobtrusive banner, and a single short interstitial plays on game over). There are no ads on Fire TV. No in app purchases or subscriptions or any kind of hidden nasties on any platforms. Just a simple fun game for you to play for free ☺

Don't be afraid to be overly generous with your ratings and reviews, I'm cool with praise, don't worry, you won't make me blush 😙

Until next time, I hope you have fun 😀

TappyRun - infinite runner with cute voxel graphics!

I decided to spend November revisiting Unity3D, and this time I wanted to give it a proper shot. The aim was to publish a game in the first week of December... and I made it! TappyRun was released on the 4th December :)

TappyRun is a simple but fun infinite scrolling endless runner. Super simple gameplay with one tap controls, tap the left side of the screen to move left, tap the right side of the screen to move right. Avoid crashing head on into stuff or you land in the drink, at which point it's game over man, game over! It's fun to play, infuriating when you make a mistake and splash into the river, and awesome when you beat your friends highscores and share the screenshot on social media to rub their noses in it :) The closest comparisons that come to mind are subway surfers style gameplay - running in lanes collecting coins and avoiding obstacles, with a minecraft or crossy road graphical style - blocky voxel graphics, and flappy bird esque replayability and social friend baiting - quite short game sessions with the constant temptation to have "one more game" to try beating a highscore.

I intend to keep coming back to this game for the purposes of mini tutorials in the future. One month was barely enough time to scratch the surface of what Unity3D has to offer, but on the other hand it was enough to get a complete game published, so there's bound to be a handy tip or trick or two lodged in my brain worth sharing with the wider world. Interesting tutorial worthy features of this game include unlockable characters, in game currency (not purchased using real money, totally free to play), rewarded video ads, achievements, global social leaderboards, cloud saving and loading, tiles that link to my other apps formed from json retrieved from the internet, social screenshot sharing, level styling seasonal cycles, and so on. Plenty to talk about. I reckon a youtube video or two on creating cute voxel characters could be fun too! If you install TappyRun and find there's a particular feature you'd like to learn about, give me a shout in the comments and I'll see what I can do :)

Alongside creating this game I spent some time in November making a small web app with a public API that serves up useful information relating to my games and apps. Currently it just offers up information on my apps (http://www.theinvader360.com/api/v1/apps) and web presences (http://www.theinvader360.com/api/v1/presences). The plan is for all my games and applications to retrieve this information over the intertubes rather than have it hardcoded in each app, meaning all my apps should always be up to date. I like the idea of extending this further to help cross promote new apps to existing players, but am taking care not to rush this as it must not be annoying. I guess this isn't particularly exciting if you're just interested in playing games, but quite interesting if you're into making your own! Also, while I was at it, I couldn't resist giving the webapp a slightly prettier face than application/json text, so if you visit http://www.theinvader360.com you should now see my fully responsive self promotional website :)

As for Unity3D vs LibGDX, well, that's a whole blog post of it's own just waiting to happen... Suffice to say they both have their pros and cons, and I will most likely be using both in future, it seems it's all about using the right tool for the job at hand.

In the meantime, what are you waiting for? Go and grab TappyRun for free from Google Play, and let me know what you think in the comments (or on facebook or twitter)!

Jewel Match Blitz - Match 3 Remix!

Apologies for such a long absence, I've been neglecting my indie Android games recently. Time to put that right with a new release - Jewel Match Blitz :)

Jewel Match Blitz sees me dipping my toe in a new genre, the strategic action puzzler. From the screenshots you'd be forgiven for thinking it's yet another Bejeweled or Candy Crush Saga copycat game... But you would be wrong! :p

I grew up in a time where action puzzlers like Tetris, Columns, and Dr Mario were all the rage. Jewel Match Blitz plays more like one of those old classics than a "swap the jewel/candy/whatever positions to match 3 or more" that has seemingly been done to death in recent years. If I were to liken Jewel Match Blitz to any existing game I think Columns would be the closest match, but it's still quite a different game mechanic. In Columns the jewels fall from the top of the screen (similar to both Dr Mario and Tetris), and it's up to you to arrange them such that groups of three or more are formed and then disappear. In Jewel Match Blitz the jewels push up from the bottom of the screen, and you need to identify and tap groups of three or more adjacent matching jewels to make them explode (Match 3). You can also tap the occasional flashing blitz jewels for a blitz bonus. Your aim is to stop the jewels from reaching the top of the screen, or it is game over.

The game is available for free on the google play android market (as are all my other games) and has a global google play game services leaderboard. Download it now, sign in, get a highscore, then challenge your friends to try and beat you! It gets real addictive, real fast :D

As always, I hope you have fun!

LibGDX Google Play Game Services Tutorial

Google Play Game Services offers cross platform social leaderboards, achievements, and much more (realtime multiplayer, cloud saves, anti-piracy...). I've started implementing google play game services leaderboards and achievements in my LibGDX Android Games, and the purpose of this blog article is to walk through the process so you can do the same!

• I've published an example project on Google Play check it out!
• The example project is freely available on GitHub check that out too!
• You can also get the complete (free) version of Super Jump a Doodle here!

Continue reading after the jump to find out how to add these features to your own games!

Fruit Run FREE Slot Machine - featuring google play game services!

One million installs!

1,066,345+ users have installed my LibGDX Android games :)

Due to reporting lag that number is a few days out of date, and it doesn't include installs from third party scraper style stores, so the real number will be a little higher, but I can safely say I have over a million installs in total. Awesome :)

So, how do the various markets stack up?

Street Race Swipe LibGDX Scene2D Tutorial

I have been meaning to write a LibGDX Scene2D tutorial for some time now (ever since my Quack Attack FREE Duck Hunt Game got ridiculously popular). The problem has been finding the time, instead of writing blog entries I've been making games!

I had a great idea for a multitasking game, play four independent games at one time to train your brain and test your ability to multitask. The result was my 4 Games 1 Screen FREE Brain Training Game. I built this game as four separate games from the outset, with the intention of possibly building further on each minigame and releasing as standalone apps. The first of these standalone apps is Street Race Swipe Racing Game, which brings us neatly to the point of this article...

Street Race Swipe Racing Game is such a simple game at its heart that it seems like an excellent candidate for a tutorial article :) I remember being massively impressed by the example SimpleApp on the LibGDX wiki when first starting out, there was so little to it but it touched on all the basics of what is needed to make a game. I'm hoping this mini project will be almost as simple and just as helpful to others!

4 Games 1 Screen - Musings on mobile game control

So often I hear that players hate onscreen controls on touch devices. No physical button means no tactile feedback to let you know you are 'touching but not pressing' a button. This fundamentally different interface means the traditional joystick / d-pad control scheme can no longer be the de facto standard for gaming controls across all platforms - replicating "up down left right a b start" on a phone or tablet is far from ideal (but an ouya or gamestick is another matter entirely ;)).

In my latest game, 4 Games 1 Screen, I try to make the most of a tricky situation. I've embraced the android mobile platform and the control options it offers. Our phones and tablets have accelerometers and touchscreens, the old nintendo and sega machines did not, it's time to think outside the box and make the most of these features.

4 Games 1 Screen is a challenging brain training game, the aim is to multitask by playing four games at one time, and avoid making too many mistakes. Make too many mistakes and it's game over. Each game is kept relatively simple for two reasons - first the game has to have a single objective and control method, second you have to be able to play four of these things at once so too much complexity would be too distracting for the player.

The mini games are:

• Asteroid Attack - Tilt to steer your ship, asteroid collisions damage the shields, and when the shields are gone - gameover man, gameover!
• Tap Jump Cowboy - Classic infinite scroll platform game (like canabalt, and gemserk's excellent vampire runner) tap the screen to jump, save the cowboy from running into the campfires!
• Speedy Sums Math Master - Fully engage the left side of the brain, evaluate the math problem and mark it as correct or incorrect... You not only lose a life when you get it wrong, but also when you run out of time - so think fast!
• Street Race Swipe - Swipe up or down to change lanes in this fast and furious racing game, avoid crashing into the other sports cars, too many bumps and your car will explode!

Each game can be played independently (full screen) in practice mode, but the real aim of the game is to play them all at once - the game is called "4 Games 1 Screen" afterall :) I find it fun, addictive, frustrating and challenging. The frustration is what makes it so addictive haha, I see gameover and immediately try again to "do it right this time" :)

No onscreen controls, and a game that would not really be possible on traditional gaming platforms, this is truly a mobile game designed for mobile devices. I hope you go on to check it out (it's FREE, so why not!) and if you also like making your own mobile games that you might consider some of the thought behind the concept - don't lament the lack of physical controls, instead make the most of what is available!



Finally, does this mean that I won't ever release a mobile game with onscreen controls? No. Definitely not. A future project will be a traditional platformer, with android enabled consoles like the ouya and gamestick firmly in mind. I will no doubt make a mobile version of this game with onscreen controls (it would be silly not to). I'm not against onscreen controls, I'm against not thinking up interesting ways to make the most of what the mobile platform offers. I believe a platformer will only work well with traditional controls, but we don't always have to make traditional games :)

Happy gaming boys and girls!

Try before you buy (or in this case, try before you download for free!)

How awesome is this!? You can now try playing Quack Attack in your browser :)

The game plays a lot faster and smoother on a real android device (I think the slower your internet connection, the worse the appsurfer gadget performs), but I still thought this cool idea was worth sharing here.

Something tells me I'll be using AppSurfer to help promote my next game, the fact that tilt is simulated is especially cool :)

Scene2D Investigation... Result: Quack Attack Free Duck Hunt Game!

I started looking into LibGDX Scene2D recently. No real reason, other than it looked like it could be something interesting to learn, so why not! :) Best way for me to learn is to just get stuck in, so I got to work on a Duck Hunt tribute, and learned as I went along...

It's clear that Scene2D UI is the way to go for menus and the like, so much cleaner than my past approach. Scene2D UI combined with table-layout makes setting up menus and HUDs a breeze. Even better, tweaking layouts becomes pain free, a real bonus! I'll certainly be using it again in future games.

As for making use of Scene2D in the game itself (over and above the HUD), it was tricky to start with... All the tutorials I've read so far have advocated the MVC approach, and it seems that MVC is not really possible when using Scene2D (the model and view are tightly coupled). Still, I've not been doing this long enough to be stuck in my ways, so I figured I could just ignore some of what I'd learned in my earlier projects and just go with the Scene2D flow.

I was surprised that there aren't more tutorials available on the subject to be honest, but I muddled through with various bits and pieces I could find. The most valuable resource when getting started was the LibGDX suite of tests, they are always a good starting point when looking at something new. The official wiki was helpful too. It's a bit presumptuous to think that I'm in a position to write tutorials on the subject (due to me being a newbie myself), but I think I'll post a few code snippets in the coming weeks to share some getting started tips, maybe even an open source step-by-step mini game "how to" if I have the time.

I like how Scene2D lets you encapsulate Actor behaviour in its own act() method, it's pretty cool just instantiating an Actor and then just leaving it to its own devices. My first Scene2D game (Quack Attack) has the game logic class spawn a Duck object at various intervals, the Duck class itself keeps track of how it should behave (overridden act() method sets various actions for the duck to perform dependent on its current state), and it also takes care of drawing itself via the overridden draw() method. It's really nice to be able to look at that single Duck class and immediately "get" exactly what a duck will do in the game, without having to look at various other classes. I guess this is one of the main Scene2D strengths, but on the flipside it's what makes MVC impossible...

I'm sure the coupled view and controller will make things difficult on larger more complex games, but for simpler games I don't think it's a big problem. I guess if I were ever to try porting a Scene2D heavy game to a different platform it'd be a problem too, I am pretty sure porting Racing Game or Evil Monkey Touch Defense or Zombie Game to XNA would be pretty straightforward (if we ignore the tilt/touch control issue), but porting Quack Attack to a library without a similar scene graph implementation would not be so straightforward (would probably have to port the whole of Scene2D too!). Again I don't really care about that right now as I'm focusing on Android only, so I think it's quite likely that I'll be using in-game Scene2D in the future.

I've just published my first Scene2D game on Google Play, it's totally free (ad supported), so feel free to install and check it out. If you like it, I always appreciate a nice rating/review :) Check it out here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.theinvader360.duckhunt.quackattackfree

I think it turned out quite well, and am pleased with what was achieved in a relatively short amount of time. Keep an eye out for future blog posts featuring mini Scene2D tutorials if you're interested in that kind of thing :)

Until next time - happy gaming, and happy game developing!

Monkey Magic!

UPDATE - As a result of a request from Fox, this game has been removed from the Google Play market. I may create a new version at some point using all original graphics (i.e. not the Family Guy monkey), but in the meantime why not check out one of my other games?

I released a new free game recently - Evil Monkey Touch Defence. You control a "good" Evil Monkey / King Kong type character, his job is to try and protect the tower from incoming missiles!

This was an experiment in creating the simplest possible control scheme for a casual game, while still making a game that's good fun to play. When you touch the screen the monkey starts dropping his aim, when you release the screen he fires. No buttons, no tilt, no nothing, just touch and release anywhere on the screen to control the game - it couldn't get any simpler! The longer you survive the faster the missiles get, and the more missiles you destroy the higher your score, simple and addictive fun...

You can check out Evil Monkey Touch Defence here. I'd love it if you would leave a nice rating or review if you like the game :)


On the subject of free monkey based casual games for android... A friend of mine recently released his first game, you can check out his Monkey Game here - it's a fun casual physics game that uses Box2D behind the scenes. There's nothing in the least bit evil about this monkey, he just wants to eat his fruit (and not get eaten by a croc!)

Tower Defence - Slacker's Diary

I've been slacking recently. Between work, Christmas preparations, and home improvements, there's not been a whole lot of time left over to work on Android games. Anyway, that's enough of the excuses, question is - what am I going to do about it?

I've made a little progress on Tower Defence, but the plan is to put it on the back burner for now, keep working on it whenever I have a nice block of time to dedicate to it, but if I only have an hour or so available at a time to work on more trivial projects instead. I love the momentum that builds up when working on really small simple games, and I'm hoping to get a few of these little games started and finished in the next few months, and just keep chipping away at TD as a longer term project.

Here's a video of the tower defence game as it stands:

Most of the basics are there really, but getting the game finished involves quite a few tasks, not all of them trivial - adding enemy waves, turret upgrades, multiple enemy types, multiple turret types, lots of level maps, level unlocking, graphical improvements, game balancing, etc. I might put an early unfinished version of the game up on the market at some point, maybe with rough graphics, just a handful of levels, and not the best balancing, but I worry that if I do that I might never finish the game properly!

On a positive note, keep your eyes peeled for a new project starting soon! :)

Tower Defence - First Progress Report

My last post was very wordy. This one should make up for that...

Here's what I've got so far:

It's starting to look a little like a TD game :)

Next up - I think it's time to get them turrets a'shootin!

Kicking off a new project - Tower Defence!

I've started working on a new game... Yayness!

Enabling the "Move to SD card" option on your android apps

Here's a quick and easy tip that your android app users will love, especially those with older/cheaper devices that don't have a huge amount of internal memory!

Take your existing android application, and add android:installLocation="auto" to the manifest tag in AndroidManifest.xml.

Example:
<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
   package="com.mrdt.zombiesurvivalgame"
   android:versionCode="2"
   android:versionName="1.0.1"
   android:installLocation="auto">

• Setting installLocation to "auto" means the user can choose where to install the application.
• Setting installLocation to "internalOnly" means the app will install on internal memory only (not ideal in most cases, especially if your app is quite big).
• Setting installLocation to "preferExternal" means the app will automatically try to install itself of the SD card if it is present and is not full.

You'll also need to ensure that your build target (targetSdkVersion in uses-sdk tag in AndroidManifest.xml) is set to API Level 8 or greater.

Example:
<uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="5" android:targetSdkVersion="15" />

Save your updated AndroidManifest.xml file, rebuild your app, and deploy to a device or virtual device running Android 2.2 or above. Now if you open Settings > Applications, and select your app, you should be offered the option to "Move to SD card" :)

I've just updated my android games to offer users this option, and it'll be something I'll be doing as standard in all my future apps. If you're an app developer you should consider doing the same... As a user I appreciate being given the option to choose where to install my apps - and I'm sure others do too!

Zombie Survival - now available free on google play!

The question was - Can I make a game in a weekend? The answer was no. Or yes. Or, well... maybe. Kinda. I don't know...

Last Friday I started work on a totally new game - Zombie Survival. By the end of the day Saturday, I did have a playable "game". Or more accurately I had a working game mechanic. There was a good guy, zombies, an objective, and it was fun to play, it even looked pretty good. I guess that could be called a game. Except, it can't. Not really.

A game is more than just the mechanic and the graphics. The mechanic is what really matters at the end of the day, but there's a lot of additional stuff that you have to pack into your game no matter how simple/casual the market - this stuff isn't really optional anymore.

It took an additional four evenings and nearly a whole Saturday morning and early afternoon of effort before Zombie Game was ready for the marketplace. In that time I added screens for highscores, help, gameover, paused, etc, saved/read settings and highscores to/from persistent memory, improved the look and feel throughout, implemented sound and music, did some refactoring (I'm learning as I go, so tend to clean up / rework as and when I have a lightbulb moment), playtested and tweaked difficulty to get things just right (the fine line between challenging and frustrating is where the fun is found!), carried out lots of testing on multiple devices, and did a little bug fixing.

All in I reckon it took about 45-50 hours effort spread over 8 days to go from nothing to published, and I'm really pleased with that. But 48-ish hours effort is not the same as 48 hours elapsed time (lots of problems solved themselves in my head overnight, the subconscious mind is a wonderful thing!), I guess Ludum Dare will have to wait.

I'm sure my girlfriend will be glad to know that I'll be giving it a rest for at least a week or two now... A full time job plus putting in full time hours on an android game resulted in this being quite the antisocial week! Anyway, the game is up on google play, and it's a free download, so why not give it a go? Cute zombie fun just in time for halloween :)

          

First 3D project

As expected, I ended up starting a new project... It's quite a leap up from what was achieved in Race Game.

Laptop video (shows 2D and 3D rendering plus raw map files):

Android video (shows smooth 3D rendering on android device):

Next steps will include:

• Control scheme to suit android devices
• Nice 3D models for keys, treasures, etc
• Animated opening doors (quite how is a mystery!)
• Cartoony / cutesy graphics and sound
• Level select screen
• Level complete screen
• Game complete screen
• Efficiency improvements
• Lots more level maps

I think I'm going to drop the 'score' aspect, instead an achievement based level rating sounds good... Finish level for one star and ability to progress to next level, finish level having collected all treasure awards additional star, finish level in under X seconds awards additional star. Quite easy to progress through the levels, but replays required to get 100% perfect three star level rating.

Interestingly, Race Game has a fair number of android 1.6 users. Considering how few 1.6 devices exist, it's clear that there are people out there with low spec devices that want to play casual fun games. With this in mind, I'm going to keep striving for as near global compatibility as possible.

This game will be an arcade/maze/puzzler/adventure mashup. I'm going to leave out enemies, make it more about getting to the exit quickly, exploring, etc. This simplifies things for me, and should result in a game that appeals to quite a wide market.

A separate game that introduces first person shooter elements (zombies, weapons, and a darker art style) could be built on top of this base later on.

The code is freely available here, and there's a demo up on google play - check it out!


          

Racing Game - Powering on ahead!

I've neglected the blog for a few days, spent my time working on the app rather than writing about it. As a result, quite a lot of progress has been made in the past few days :)

Here's a video of the app as it currently stands:

Racing Game - limiting scope, wishlist culling, and task prioritisation (or, The battle against hobbyist A.D.D.)

I have a horrible habit of starting a project, having great fun with it, then either losing interest, or heading off in a different direction to what was originally planned, unnecessarily complicating things, and giving up. End result is an unfinished project kicked to the kerb and a new one started. Repeat ad infinitum. It's like hobby ADD. I have so many started but unfinished projects it's not even funny. I know I'm not the only one!

This time it'll be different I said. This time I'll see it through til the end... But I so want to start a new project. I want to make a start on a platform game, Super Mario 3 on the NES is still one of the best games ever in my opinion, I want to make something similar. I want to create an arcade blaster, I loved Spy Hunter as a kid, I want to remake it for android, maybe 2D gameplay with 3D graphics. I want to create a basic 3D engine, maybe start with a first person perspective maze game, and extend to create a first person shooter, or a first/third person driving sim. I have lots of ideas, and I want to start on them all at once. So much ambition, so little attention span...

I'm pleased that I got further than usual this time - I've actually published an early alpha of Race Game on Google Play. I think it's in no small part due to me publishing this worklog and publicly sharing the code on github, there may not be that many visitors (yet?), but I still have a funny feeling of responsibility to get something finished. What's currently on Google Play is very much unfinished, so I'm definitely not off the hook yet (I won't be until I hit v1.0 at least), but it still feels like a mini victory over my hobby ADD :)

I've been reviewing the ideas/todo list and have decided to be pretty ruthless in terms of what stays and what goes. What's staying has been split into 'must haves' and 'would likes', and each list has then been prioritised.

I think it's fair to say that until all the 'musts' have been tackled the game is essentially broken, pretty good definition of must have really... Once all the 'musts' have been taken care of, I can package the app up as v1.0, update on Google Play, and go on to start a new project with a clear conscience.

The 'would like' items can be deferred to a later update. None are crucial to the functioning of the game. Only reason facebook bragging is at the top of the list is because it interests me personally, I think it would be a cool feature to re-use in future games (players post achievements to their wall, friends download the app to compete... a kind of viral promotional platform). Variable difficulty should be easy enough to implement, good bang for buck ratio (players could choose a quick course to kill 30 seconds, or a longer course when they're feeling a bit more hardcore etc, tailor game to the player for relatively small effort on my part), might as well get it done. The rest of the list are items that simply add a little polish to the game. I like to keep reminding myself that atari/spectrum games were ugly as sin but good fun, so I'm not too worried about this stuff really (just as well, I'm no artist!). Learning a little about animation and intro/outro scenes would help me when working on future projects, so I might have a little poke around in those areas, but we'll see.

The 'dropped' items won't be implemented in this project. I would like this project to remain simple and easy to read when finished. I know it'll help me if I ever need to quickly check back to see how I solved a particular problem in the past, maybe it'll help others too. The simpler and clearer the better, so I don't want to pollute it with too many extra features and it ending up a confused mess. There's nothing to stop me (or someone else) coming back and making Race Game Deluxe in the future, but it will be a seperate project, this particular project won't live forever, it will serve its purpose and then development will stop.

So, it looks like I have a plan. Great. As an added bonus, that 'must' list looks quite small and manageable, which is nice. I'm quite confident that I'll be able to get a modest v1.0 published on Google Play soon, and only then start tinkering with 3D mazes and tiled maps and other cool stuff... I guess the question of if/when v1.1 will see the light of day depends on how interesting the next project is, but I'm determined to get v1.0 out there pre-September (I got this far in 10 days of spare time so that should be a very achievable goal)!


          

Racing Game - Too early to go alpha?

I've still not taken care of my housekeeping tasks, but I do have a fully functional HUD now - this makes me feel a little guilty but a lot happy :)