I’ve been working on this on and off for a while, and finally feel as though it’s ready to show off. Hopefully the full release will be in the next few weeks - though there is still a lot to do. Sound is all temporary, and I’m still in the process of building levels. However, I think I’ve got the mechanics down. The actual game has a level editor built in, with the ability to save as many user created maps as you’d like. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight to write it with PC support so the level creator is iPhone only. Screens are from the iPhone, and the web build is a rough tutorial level. Green goo particles note end of level.
I love such stuff too, retro style. What I have total trouble with is the actual gfx quality. It’s blurry and that’s a huuge noooo for my taste. Somehow it should be possible to have supercrips pixels on the screen. But having the retro style blurred is kinda destroying the entire point, imo. There’s many ways of achieving a super crisp look, so I hope you can figure it out in the end !
Should be worth the graphical boost, definitely !
The blur is due actually a mistake on my part, I forgot to change the compression on my textures for the web build. On the iPhone it looks nice and crisp. I’ll see if I can’t get that remedied and re-upped tonight. And yes, it is indeed accelerometer controlled with touch to jump.
On an unrelated note, does anyone know of a good way to capture video from a device?
Ps - If anyone would be interested in helping me test it out (I only have access to a second generation iPod touch 1st gen iPad) I’d really appreciate it!
I am not sure if you can capture video from an iOS device, but you could always capture video from a desktop version of your game. I know there is something called FRAPS, but I am sure you know/can find other, better pieces of software that can do the same thing.
I would be happy to help the game. I have access to an iPhone 3GS, and an iPad 1st gen (I am assuming you will not need me to test on the latter).
Pretty nice. THe mechanic for jumping is cool but might get a little hairy. How’s it work on iOS?
I’m curious what your texture atlas looks like. Are the textures huge or small w/no anti-aliasing? Are you using the built-in trail component? How’s the performance on iPhone? What’s your drawcalls like?
Also, I got to the green mist in the the level in the webplayer and nothing happen.
The controls are pretty natural on the iPhone, probably better than the PC really. The jump direction mechanic really lends itself to a touch screen. My textures are a bit scattered at this point - as I switched up my methods about halfway through production. At first I UVed my platforms separately and assigned them tiny little 128x128’s with point filtering on, but later on I built modular pieces in Maya in sets and clumped UVs into a single 512x512. Generally there are 3 - 4 pieces per texture sheet, but it really depends on how lazy I was feeling on any given day. As a pre-postmortem note, I would definitely have spent more time working on the pipeline from art to game. However, with the small amount of items on screen at any moment I’ve not noticed any real performance issues, even using a physics based controller.
And yup, using the built in trail renderer. (Oh, and the green goo next level apparatus isn’t worked in yet. Sorry)
I’d been planning on an App Store release, but I’m having a bit of trouble finding time to build levels. I’m not sure what the rules are regarding uploading to both stores are, but if it is possible to do both I would probably go that route.
