Here's my 2D idea. How do I...?

Unity Engine
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1

Hello all!

I am new to developing for the Iphone but not to game development, from the design side perspective at least.

I have a specific small project in mind that I’d like to make but I don’t have programmers around (like usual) to beg for advice. :slight_smile: And just so you know a bit more relevant knowledge about me, I have reasonable scripting and 3d modeling skills and access to SFX and 2D animations. I have the unity indy iphone package.

As I butt my head against things I’m going to write up the basics of what I’d like to do on this post with the specific questions I have and hope that one (or many) of the guru’s here will take pity on me and point me in the right direction(s). This is a pretty big mouthful so answering any of the questions is great; thanks in advance!

IDEA:
The app I have in mind seems to me like a simple 2D flash kind of thing, I’ll call him “Black Lung”. Shaking the screen plays a new animation with corresponding VO on an upper body and face of a cartoon character. Imagine it like the more you shake the phone the more a funny looking guy with a big nose coughs, with more and more intense animation and SFX/VO being keyed up as the user shakes harder and the intensity increases. There is also, say, a pixie flying around the screen sprinkling black dust, whose wings flap in conjunction with the shaking of the phone but can be directed where to fly on-screen by a users touch. Black Lung watches it fly around and winces when it moves or gets near.

SPECIFICS:
Start Screen
Q: with 1.5 do we still have to keep the powered by unity loading screen?

Q: I can have my own splash screen after the Unity one, right?

Q: Any examples of nifty animated splash screens via unity?

Q: Does anyone worry about legal text for iphone? Most apps don’t but I’m curious if anyone thinks they are needed.

Input Shake
I’d like the players shaking of the phone to be somewhat regulated so they don’t just go nuts shaking the hell out of the thing. To do that I’m going to have penalty states if there is too much accelerometer input but I’d also like to have a “sweet spot” kind of shake that I encourage by positive feedback.

Q: what is the best way to define what an appropriate shake is? I can hold the iphone and shake it in the way I think it should be shook but I don’t know of a way to capture the motion so I can filter against it later. There are tools for the Wii that can do this and I was wondering if there is anything similar for iphone?

Input Touch
I found this nice tut for moving things around the screen http://www.bleepng.com/blog/2009/05/moving-an-object-with-touch/

Thank you meanstreak!

What I’d like is for the fairy to choose the touch spot as a destination and then shake the phone to get it to flap to propel itself there.

Q: ideas?

2D Animations
I’m thinking that it’ll be about 20 different main character facial animations that are played one right into another (with corresponding SFX) so that it looks like a person is coughing more and more intensely.

Q: Is this possible?

Q: What size and format should the animations be?

Q: Should the animations be paired with a SFX or should I keep them separate from the animations and trigger SFX some other way?

Q: Should I use the SpriteManager? Or should I map them directly onto a plane or box in the scene and swap between them somehow?

SFX/VO
Q: With 20 desired states that Black Lung can go through, and a couple of interesting things the Cancer Fairy can do, what size, and format should the SFX/VO be and how many can I have?

Thanks for reading this far!

I’ll have more question that I’ll append onto this post and it’s replies.

2

StartScreen

  • Yes, with iPhone advanced
  • Yes
  • The start screen cannot be animated, Unity doesn’t exist while this is showing, this is just the default.png that is loaded - So no anims on boot
  • If you’re investing any sort of reasonable cash into a project, dealing with peoples privacy, you should always put in the minimum required to protect yourself

Input Shake

  • there are plenty of threads on the forum that cover using the accelerometer, and the example code is quite useful aswell

Input Touch

  • Set a waypoint, start the object moving once the shake is detected.

Animations

  • All of the above is possible, no doubt with texture atlasing… Sprite manager sounds like a good way to go

SFX

  • If you require fast timing-based triggering, you would have to go for Wav. Voice overs can be mp3 because they’re not as timing dependant.

  • A lot of these questions are answered just by reading the forum.

3

Thanks for the answers Bently!
Q: Does anyone worry about legal text for iphone? Most apps don’t but I’m curious if anyone thinks they are needed.
A - If you’re investing any sort of reasonable cash into a project, dealing with peoples privacy, you should always put in the minimum required to protect yourself

Yeah, I agree, the idea of putting out a product without some legal attached to it seems really naive but most of the apps I’ve downloaded don’t have any. Sometimes there is a little legal blurb on the download page on app store but really only the games with a license or made by a big games publisher have legal on the front.

–Goody!

4

What type of ‘legal’ stuff are you going to specify? There’s quite a bit already established as a part of purchasing apps through the appstore.

I’m not quite sure that Apple would want you to have your app pop up with a EULA prior to allowing the game to be played.

5

If you don’t like their default, vanilla EULA, you can supply your own EULA when you submit your app. I’ve seen a couple apps that have them, they just appear on the store at the bottom of the app description. (star defense from ngmoco had one for whatever reason)

I think little else beyond a copyright statement, and/or any applicable trademark boilerplate is really necessary for most of us. I think you only tend to see a big paragraph of legal when several entities have a stake in an app, you have licensed material of some sort, etc, which most of us indies aren’t dealing with.

6

I just had an app approved (its holding until the PR company say to release it) from apple on its first run, and its filled with net ‘stuff’… Sharing content, ratings, scores, all that sort of hoohaa.

I had skimmed over horror stories on here of people getting apps rejected.

So, I made and kept a simple rule.

A) When the app starts, they have to hit ‘yes’ to allow net access.

B) If the user did not approve net access, all the in-app features are greyed.

C) If the user hit ‘yes’ but there was in fact no net connection detected (prior to the 1.1rc / beta i had a tricky way of doing this) it would also grey.

D) If a user allows net access, that is saved into a plist and they are not asked again, but they can still opt out with an options button.

E) If the user had said No, they are always nagged. A part of the app is we want people to utilize the online features, so we wanted to push it. Enjoy your nags :stuck_out_tongue:

It was a tedious few additions on the very last 2% of a product, but ultimately made it a lot more solid. Its one of the few apps I’ve had go through without at least one rejection :stuck_out_tongue:

This satisfied informing the user, and not having the app totally break if there’s no net connection present.

I look forward to telling you all of this app :slight_smile:

7

I’m sure that I agreed to it :slight_smile: but I don’t remember what was covered by the Apple EULA. Does it cover the individual developers rights (as mentioned) like “a copyright statement, and/or any applicable trademark boilerplate.”?

And I wonder if the first person to make a “gun app” could have claimed that category as their own somehow if they had covered themselves legally. Or is the app store such a wild west that traditional legal boilerplate can’t protect a property?