Squashem - currently in apple review

grant-adam · April 2, 2009, 4:19pm

In review, hopefully it will make it through.

Ball rolling game, where you chase down little running dudes and get to squash them.

the HD link on that looks a heap better.

cheers,
grant

anon_97670276 · April 3, 2009, 3:28am

Haha, cool little game. Will get it once it’s available.

seon · April 3, 2009, 4:07am

Looks great, definitely a buy for me!

Vern_Shurtz · April 3, 2009, 1:36pm

Very nice. A definite buy here. The youtube video is well done. Quick, to the point, and presented well. I take it you used a 3D app to render the iPhone and captured game play video from Unity. I wish more iPhone games would take this approach.

If you don’t mind I have a couple questions about the ball and camera movement. I’m currently experimenting with a similar ball movement setup that I have working quite well and would like to see if your approach was similar.

Were you able to code a smooth follow cam script that uses the ball as it’s target or did you create a hidden object that locks onto the balls position and used that for camera turning reference?
When applying motion to the ball did you use torque, force or a combination of both?

Again, looks really cool. Can’t wait.

grant-adam · April 3, 2009, 2:29pm

1: It took a fair bit of tweaking until I was happy with the camera motion. I use a null as camera parent following the ball pos with lerp, in addition to using the balls relative position to control the camera: my overall camera motion has very little to do with the reference smooth follow script I started with.

2: I just use AddForce, friction with the collider gives me the ball rotation. I also limit adding force to times it is in contact with the ground collider, so you don’t ‘get air’ and keep moving which looks like a slide. I played with torque briefly but I don’t think it gave me the response/feel I wanted.

cheers,
grant

Vern_Shurtz · April 4, 2009, 1:37am

Thank you for the insight… I am also using a null object to track the balls position but was using a simple “transform.position=TargetObject.position” for tracking. Works pretty good but tends to slip when turning at high speeds. I took a look at Lerp and what do ya know, there was my answer. Crank smooth to 100 and no slip at all.

I have also given up on Torque and stick just to AddForce. Torque seems to give way to much spin and control issues even at low rates.

Thanks again for your response.

You might want to make the rounds at all to major sites to promote your game. Here is a list.

http://toucharcade.com/

http://www.appleiphoneapps.com/

http://wireless.ign.com/

http://everydaygamers.com/

http://www.mobiriot.com/

Good luck and Great Success…

Vern

anon_29120664 · April 4, 2009, 1:55am

very cool game. I’m a noob to games so this question has probably been discussed, but here it goes.

How will your game generate revenue besides selling it on Itunes? And how do you protect your game from pirating?

Vern_Shurtz · April 4, 2009, 2:01am

All iTunes applications including games are only sold on iTunes. Pirating still exits to some degree but not like on PC games.

anon_27281480 · April 4, 2009, 2:53am

If you have some good luck, it could be the next #1 hit.

Doug-Wolanick · April 4, 2009, 3:31am

If you want to link to the HQ youtube video, you can add &fmt=18 to the end of the link like this:

The game looks pretty cool (sound effect when they get squished a little repetitive though).

minevr_1 · April 4, 2009, 5:35am

Youtube is HEXIE

twitchfactor · April 4, 2009, 6:02am

Very nice, simple, to the point. Should do well, if you can get some buzz about it.

Let us know when it goes up and how it does.

grant-adam · April 4, 2009, 6:20am

Thanks for the info. I’m undecided between doing a full round of posting when it isn’t available yet as a ‘coming soon’, or waiting until it is available when people can buy straight away. I’ve been building a list of sites to post to, I’ll make sure those are on there.

thanks,
grant

anon_44207354 · April 4, 2009, 4:17pm

nice game i would totally buy that if i had an itouch or iphone. i’ll recommend the app to my friends who has a itouch. looks like a lot of fun.

grant-adam · April 4, 2009, 4:48pm

Thanks for the tip, that will come in handy when I post the release promo video.

The squish is a little more varied than the samples I dropped into the vid - the wilhelm scream portion of it is the same (with more pitch variation) but there are different backing ‘squishes’.

FWIW For anyone interested in not getting their app rejected, if you are using the extension pack and have a ‘vibrate on/off’ button in the UI - make sure it is not visible on an ipod touch. I’ve resubmitted, I guess I get to find out if the review cycle starts again when you fix a rejection…

cheers,
grant

anon_29120664 · April 4, 2009, 9:55pm

keep discussing your game even if it is not finished. Keep everyone up to date and involved - may get word of mouth going. When your game is finished and polished, you will have built some brand equity.

psychicparrot_1 · April 6, 2009, 5:15pm

Looks fantastic! How you managed to get all those dudes to stick to the ball is a mystery to me

Nice.

amirebrahimi_1 · April 6, 2009, 5:24pm

How did you make that video for YouTube? It looks like the iPhone Simulator, however, I didn’t think you could rotate it. I’ve always built straight to the device.

grant-adam · April 6, 2009, 11:34pm

I’m dumping screengrabs from unity using the built in function, and at the same time I’m dumping out the accelerometer data.

I modelled and textured up a phone in max (intentionally emulating the sample artwork chrome look), using the screen grabs as the screen texture - then wrote a script to import the accel data as rotation, so the phone rotation is the same motion used to generate the images, which is why it looks ‘right’ in terms of the balls motion.

cheers,
grant

anon_88299696 · April 7, 2009, 1:25am

coolio 8)

I wish I could try it out but I don’t have an iPhone/iTouch sadness