I’d like to show a preview video of the upcoming coin-collecting-stunt-racer game I’m developing for the iPhone called “Big Fun Racing”. I just made a little YouTube video (still learning, a bit blurry) but it gives an idea of the game.
The game is about collecting coins on stunt tracks within a given time with one of 4 selectable cars. The cars have different attributes like engine power and handling so you can select the right car for each track. Entertainment-wise there are 5 unique mp3 tracks built-in in the style of the 70’s series “Streets of San Francisco”. Right now I’m about to produce tracks for the game to get to a track count of around 50 or so built-in tracks. The game features also downloadable tracks via the Internet so that people can connect in the game to my webserver and download every week or so a brand new track. Those tracks are downloaded directly into the PlayerPrefs so that also offline-devices can play without an active internet connection. Something I learned from my first iPhone game Bubble Bang. For BB only 30-35% of the people ever used the online highscore system - means that 65% always play offline! Hence I came up with the idea of having a local track cache for the Internet tracks so that those “offline” people can download tracks to their device from time to time when they are online.
I started the project around december 2008 and the last 2 weeks I spent with trying to get the maximum performance out by tweaking every little bit in the game. The framerate is still not super soft and sometimes jerks a bit, but at least playable now with something around 25 fps in most cases. During optimization I unfortunately had to cut some features as they were so framerate intensive so that it just wouldn’t work out anymore. For example something simple like having the coins in the game spinning is right now - even with all optimizations - too expensive to have that in there. Bah…
The most performance issues I encountered is just with the GUI graphics displayed while racing. Without them the game runs way smoother, but I need to display at least the amount of coins and the remaining time as well as the 2 arrows where to tap n on the display for driving forward/backward and the other 2 buttons for resetting the car and calling the in-game menu. I tried to use GUITextures first and then the 2.0 GUI system which I finally use now, but it is really noticeable at least in my configuration what these gui draw calls cost performance-wise. Maybe someone has a different idea/approach how to solve that. All gui textures are PVRTC compressed with 4 bits.
But overall a great learning experience for me having to focus on a specific hardware and having to live with the limitations. I guess I learned a lot that helps also for future webplayer projects with Unity.
Anyways, just wanted to post this to get some feedback from you guys! Especially I’m interested what you think would be the right price for it. I have an idea for that, but to get an un-biased feedback I’d kindly like to ask to post what you think would be right for the game. Anyway, I’m open to any hints critics. Shoot away!
Hey Martin - wow, looks like a lot of fun, when can we play?
The only thing I didn’t like was the “default GUI-skin”. Are you planning to still change that further down the road? That would probably be a thing to consider.
Aside from that: Kudos to concept and implementation. Also having levels available for download and being able to play them offline sounds like a very good idea!
/me wonders whether that might be also a nice thing to do for highscores (storing them until the user is online the next time for an upload)
Basically what Jashan said. There’s some extra GUI skins available in the unity GUI forum and on the resources page - you you don’t have the time to create your own skin. At least it won’t be the same dark semi-transparent GUI as everyone else’s.
Regarding GUI. I suggest you use purely GUITextures and GUI Text and don’t use OnGUI calls during game play when you need maximum framerate. Using PVRTC textures for GUI doesn’t make a lot of sense in my experience because the compression artificats are usually not acceptable on GUI. PVRTC is optimized for noisy textures like you usually have on texture mapped objects. I dont think using PVRTC gives you an actual noticable performance improvement.
Thanks for the nice comments! Yes, replacing the default skin is something I’m looking into today. Thought about taking the white/orange one maybe.
Hey, why does none of the talented artists here offer ready-to-use skins for Unity? I’d buy such a package immediately!
@Joachim: Thanks for the information. Yes, the artefacts look ugly actually. Will give it a try replacing them by RGB uncompressed ones and GUITexture instead of onGui.
Over at toucharcade it seems people like the 1.99 US$ price tag btw.
I love the 70’s funky music, it would be great if you could put some of that theme into the environment, too. Instead of a closed room, you could try a more open ‘city’ atmosphere… just lower the side walls and add a skybox with some buildings (preferably something a bit industrial/grungy from NY or San Francisco). I think that would go a long way.
Can you use the collected money to bling out your cars? Need to add some gold rims upgrades
Pricing is a tricky one. There is obviously a lot in this game with multiple cars and levels, plus unlimited track updates. Definitely worth more than US$0.99, but without in-store promotion it will be very hard to crack the top 50 with an indy title that is more than a buck (especially in a crowded genre like car racing games). And the best way to maintain sales after the typical peak at launch is to get in the top 50 (or better yet top 10).
I would be tempted to launch at US$0.99 and say ‘Special 24 hour limited introductory offer - 75% off!’, or something to that effect. Then hope for lots of downloads to get it in the charts and then change to the normal price of US$3.99, or whatever.
I have a feeling that once you make the price over US$0.99 there may not be a big difference between the 1.99, 2.99, 3.99, etc price point. I should play around with the pricing of Crazy Snowboard to see what effect it has…
Please see here the latest YouTube promo video showing a bit more of the game. Was an aweful lot of optimization work, but was worth it at the end of the day. I’m back at around 28 fps and I started before optimizations at around 14 fps. And hey, it’s still a phone there running a racing game with full physics… still can’t belive it works that good…
The game will be in stores for the first 24 hours for 0.99 US$ and then raising to 1.99 US$.
Best
Martin
P.S. Credits go to Targos from the forum here for the great car graphics!
Grats on your release, Martin. Out of curiosity, how long did you approval from apple take? I noticed your posts from when you submitted it and when it was actually released were 2 weeks apart and it made me curious if I should expect a similar delay (I intend to submit a game this weekend).
It took a total of 2 weeks because after a week Apple rejected the app as they found an issue. I re-submitted the app and after another few days without notice I sent a mail to the developer support asking about the status. Next night the game was live.
Uhm, not sure what you mean, Minevr. You asked if it got pulled because of the cars?
Apple found actually that in some cases the internet tracks couldn’t get downloaded to the device and that was against the marketing description and hence against their design guidelines. I corrected that and then they approved it.
