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AppGameKit/AppGameKit Studio Showcase / [Released][Android] Birney\'s Run

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TDavid
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 12:12 Edited at: 18th Sep 2014 12:00
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Hello guys !

I've just released my first game ! It's a little arcade game, nothing to talk home about. I did the programming, the art, the sound and the music on my own so if you don't like it, please say it nicely : you're going to hurt all my feelings at the same time ! If it helps, know that I have a degree in litterature, which means I have actually zero training in any of this.

Huge thanks to Naphier for his help. I would be totally worried-bald by now if it were not for him.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dtaveau.bunbunsrun

The spanish translation is a carnage, if you value this langage I suggest you don't try it.


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Naphier
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Posted: 4th Sep 2014 23:45
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Can I blame you for my baldness then?

It was a pleasure to help! This game is a lot of fun and sort of like Pac-Man but much more interesting.

Put up some screenshots, man! I think the game graphics are very nice and remind me of NES games like Kirby.

If you need help with the Spanish translation let me know, I paid $5 on Fiverr for it for SiS and had a friend review it, it was good!

Also, if you want some help making a video of the gameplay I'd help you out. You can just send me the raw footage and I can splice it all together nicely in just an hour or so. Check out some of our gameplay videos, I do all of them except Wordspionage myself.

This is definitely a fun game and should be given some attention!

Napland Games - Shape Time - Wordspionage - dFenz Facebook
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TDavid
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Posted: 5th Sep 2014 11:10 Edited at: 5th Sep 2014 11:42
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Thanks for your encouragement !

Someone is currently translating my game in spanish for free. I think it's going to be ok. But if it ever goes wrong I'll come back to you.

A while ago I gathered every software I needed to make a promotional video of my game but I sort of gave up the idea. I think I would need to make one for each langage and just thinking about the additional workload gives me grey hair.

I realise the game description is lacking. It's indeed a Pac-man clone with several modifications : levels are randomly generated every week. Monsters have much more varied artificial intelligence. There are different kinds of "coin" and you must gather a specific number of each of them to go to the next level. There are level modifiers, bonus items... Well, I thought I had enough content to justify publishing this clone. And... you know, when you had the worst grade in mathematics in high school and still manage to understand and make an A* algorythm, it kinda makes you want to make use of it.

Please, try it while I post some screenshots for the non-believers. I need your developer feedback. I'll try to be brave and not cry, I promise.

edit: ok, went overboard with the screenshots size, tell me if you want me to reduce them or remove them.
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Naphier
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Posted: 5th Sep 2014 19:27
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Don't sell yourself short, man! I'd not call this a clone. To me clones are lifeless near-direct thefts of other's creative works. This is as much a clone of Pac-Man as Sonic is a clone of SMB. Ultimately, just the same genre.
I think the description is just fine and now that Google Play has put an extreme focus on the short description I think that is a strong indicator that very few are interested in the full descriptions.
Also, when we began translating our game we started researching other games with translations and I didn't find a single one that had an alternate video. I did it for Sudoku In Space anyway because we wanted to do as full of a job as possible. For SiS it was fairly easy because I coded in the script to record the video with and put the descriptive text off to the right, off of the gameplay screen. But I understand thinking about the extra workload. We're adding a story to SiS right now and I'm finding myself exhausted just thinking about the art I need to make.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Napland Games - Shape Time - Wordspionage - dFenz Facebook
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ThrOtherJoJo
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 02:20 Edited at: 6th Sep 2014 02:31
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Great Game! Love the concept! When I see other people's work, it is definitely inspiring.

It gives life for me to keep going with my ideas.

I do see that your game suffers from the Edit box glitch that I came across.
You might want to integrate Naphier's sprite base keyboard.

I had to create a little work-a-round to pop up text telling the player to click 'here' to close the keyboard. Hopefully players will do that until I get Naphier's keyboard code converted to Tier 2.

You can read about the editbox problem here:
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=211978&b=41

Prove Your Worthiness
KG2Entertainment.com
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Digital Awakening
AGK Developer
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 10:24 Edited at: 6th Sep 2014 10:39
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Most of the graphics are very good and the look of the game is what made me download it. The game looks very well put together from the images alone.

For me personally, I find the levels to be a bit too big.

Sometimes when I swiped I got the wrong direction. Like I swiped down and got up instead. I had to make very clear, pronounced swipes to ensure it got the correct direction. I tried turning on the pad thing, took a while to understand where to press but it felt clunkier than the swipes. I prefer to play these kinds of games with physical controls. Would be great if you made a landscape version for PC and Ouya.

Overall the game both looks and plays very well.

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TDavid
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 12:36 Edited at: 6th Sep 2014 12:38
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Thanks for your feedback.

A friend reported issues with the editbox a couple times during development. It was after an update and clearing the cache did the trick but I don't think he was even using a custom keyboard, so I'll probably run into similar reports. I'll look into Naphier's solution but I wish it worked out of the box. I don't like using other people's code blindly, and if I don't manage to understand it I end up writing my own. That's what happened with the A* algorythm and it took me ages to understand the concept and write my own. Don't get me wrong, I know Naphier's work is better than mine but it's just the way I am.

The levels do feel a bit too long to me too and I'm not sure how to fix it.

If I speed up the game, I think casual gamers won't be able to handle the pressure. I'm not even sure good players could handle it, because the touch controls are less responsive than a real gamepad.

Cropping the playfield might be a good solution, but I think it's too late to implement it. The map coordinates and AI adapt themselves dynamically, but the map generator is a real pain to tinker with. Furthermore, it would require to stretch the tiles to fit the screen and that would look really bad. (doing them all over again is NOT an option). The difficulty would increase faster but that's not something unmanageable.

I'm studying two options to solve this :
_ Increasing the difficulty of level 1. Levels feel much shorter when you are pushed to the exit. That's the cheap solution though and I'm not sure how the new players would react.
_ Adding a fifth slime who would roam the map randomly and cover the ground with slowing goo. It would force the player to exit the level faster. I could make it, however I would have to make a new set of ground tiles so that it doesn't hurt the game's performance. The programming should not be much of an issue.

I'm not sure what would work best. If you have any idea, please share them with me. I think I'm in a dead end with this issue.

As for the slide controls, they are dead simple : it takes the coordinates of the point of origin and of the ending point of the player's slide and moves the bunny in the axis in which the difference was the largest. So either your slides are not long enough for your phone/agk to register it correctly, or your screen is dirty. Or you have to big fingers for your screen size. Or I didn't code what I meant to. That's definitely another possibility.

The pad option is not documented. It was in fact the way the game was designed to work originally. It creates a virtual pad covering the whole screen. It works great with phones and it is very responsive. However, everyone around me pushed me to implement the slide controls as default so I yielded, but if you want to make the best score, take a phone and use the virtual pad.
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 17:16 Edited at: 6th Sep 2014 17:21
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I would personally add something to the top of the screen to decrease the area of the level. You can easily split up what you got in the bottom box to ad content to the top box. Having such a large map feels like it's too much work for me. Maybe it's just me?

BTW, your current highscrore implementation have worked the best with Swiftkey, that I have on my phone. Granted I did not try the backbutton. I was able to input a capital M for my name and everything went smoothly. Getting the small AppGameKit field at the same time as entering into the editbox was weird, can't you do it without? The editbox itself is too low to not be covered by the keyboard.

BTW, have you tried to make those green hedges look like they are connected? Right now the vertical and the horizontal pieces looks a bit weird when they meet. The stones are also like that but not as easy to spot.

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TDavid
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 17:48 Edited at: 6th Sep 2014 17:50
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Thanks a lot for your feedback, it is much appreciated.

I'm currently trying to shrink the playfield. It might be just what the game needs.

I use Tier 1 so I don't know if there's any other way to manage the editbox. Right now it works so I don't feel like fixing something that's not broken. If I get crash reports I'll think about it;

The green hedges you see is the result of a long war against framerate issues. See, there are around 1200 sprite per arena. The differents walls (hedges, stones... etc) are transparent because they are part of a dynamic depth system. If I add connectors (which I tried), the frame rate drops below 20 fps, which does not look good. If I put those walls out of the dynamic depth system, the frame rate is great but the game doesn't look good. You don't notice the depth system when it works but when it doesn't work, it punches you in the face.

If I manage to shrink the arena I might give connectors a second chance.
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 18:56 Edited at: 6th Sep 2014 19:04
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Quote: "I use Tier 1 so I don't know if there's any other way to manage the editbox. Right now it works so I don't feel like fixing something that's not broken. If I get crash reports I'll think about it;"


I have not spent much time with it myself so I can't help you improve it. As you say it works well, in fact better then in other AppGameKit apps I have tried.

Quote: "The green hedges you see is the result of a long war against framerate issues. See, there are around 1200 sprite per arena. The differents walls (hedges, stones... etc) are transparent because they are part of a dynamic depth system. If I add connectors (which I tried), the frame rate drops below 20 fps, which does not look good. If I put those walls out of the dynamic depth system, the frame rate is great but the game doesn't look good. You don't notice the depth system when it works but when it doesn't work, it punches you in the face."


That seems odd. First off, have you turned off transparency for all sprites that doesn't need it? Like the background. You do not need proper intersections. Just widen the horizontal walls and make the vertical walls the same hight and width.

A tip is to avoid multiple layers of transparent sprites. This eats up fillrate. If you can make your art to not require overlapping sprites then your game will run faster. And if you can avoid sprites with transparency then you will get it to run even faster. Minimizing the total area the sprites cover is the key here, not the number of sprites.

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fog
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 19:16
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Yeah I think smaller levels will help the gameplay a lot.

With such a big level it's difficult to quickly scan everything and work out a path or enemy avoidance strategy on the fly, instead you tend to wander somewhat randomly.

Also the graphics are lovely, but look way too small to be able to fully appreciate them.

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TDavid
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 21:31
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Thanks

The shinkring is progressing quicker than I expected thanks to proactive coding (:p) and scaling up doesn't look too bad at the moment. The level generator is broken though, but I should get it to work before the next world challenge

Most of my sprites have their transparency set to 0. Only the sprites which are part of the depth system are transparent. But the wall sprites are over the ground tiles. And I can assure you that the number of sprite DOES have an impact on performance. A giant 720*480 sprite performs way better than 150 48*48 sprites. Last thing that will explain the performance issue : in later levels there's a fog of war (basically, a giant transparent sprite covering the whole arena). And the fill rate skyrockets !
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 22:30
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Quote: "And I can assure you that the number of sprite DOES have an impact on performance."

Yes, more sprites are slower. Depending on the hardware the effect differs.

Quote: "Last thing that will explain the performance issue : in later levels there's a fog of war (basically, a giant transparent sprite covering the whole arena). And the fill rate skyrockets !"

Yeah, that's going to eat a lot of fillrate. I can see why you have a problem. Shrinking the level area will help you a lot in this case.

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fog
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Posted: 6th Sep 2014 23:55
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Quote: "See, there are around 1200 sprite per arena."

A quick bit of mental arithmetic tells me you shouldn't be using even half of that number really. Are you sure that's right?

Quote: "But the wall sprites are over the ground tiles."

Does this mean you are drawing 2 tiles/sprites on top of each other? Looking at your screenshots I don't see where that is necessary for your walls, hedges or fences.

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Hockeykid
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Posted: 7th Sep 2014 02:47
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Well, I just played this and personally I think it is really well done.

Quote: " Furthermore, it would require to stretch the tiles to fit the screen and that would look really bad."


If you want to quickly test and see what it would be like if you scaled everything up, changing your virtual resolution to a smaller resolution should make everything appear bigger. Some of the map might go off screen, but for testing it should work fine.

Quote: "I use Tier 1 so I don't know if there's any other way to manage the editbox. "


Unfortunately not, the AppGameKit editboxes have always had lots of issues. Not to mention they don't support things like highlighting, moving the cursor, copy, paste, etc.

Quote: "a long war against framerate issues."


Just an idea, maybe after the level is generated you can store the coordinates of blocking objects (like hedges) in an array. Use GetImage to create one big image of the static geometry, delete all of the sprites and just use the new big image for the environment.


Sean

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TDavid
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Posted: 7th Sep 2014 11:00 Edited at: 7th Sep 2014 12:33
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I'm sorry, wrong number. 1200 was when I didn't know about fill rate (my mind tends to cling to that bad memories). I had to rework the whole tile system to lower that number. I checked quickly today and the sprite number was 793, vegetables and bonus items included.

Thanks for the getimage function. I didn't know it and I'm going to use it for the ground tiles of the levels. Unfortunately I can't use it for the walls, since they all have to be individual to work with the depth system.

I shrinked the arena from 19x29 to 15x21 and the result is quite different. The levels are much faster but not easier since every monster is in threatening range. My wife hates it with great passion. I don't dislike it but I don't know if I like it. I'll probably push it to the test group and see what kind of feedback I get.
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RickV
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Posted: 10th Sep 2014 00:07
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Hi TDavid,

Please submit this game to the AppGameKit Gallery! It's a great looking app (downloading now!!!)

Well done.

Rick

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TDavid
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Posted: 10th Sep 2014 13:08
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Thanks ! Right now I'm working on a new version with a smaller maze. I'll submit it to the agk gallery as soon as it's ready.
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xGEKKOx
AGK Master
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Posted: 12th Sep 2014 14:57
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This is a nice game!!!
This is the way to design graphic!!!


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unlikely
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Posted: 12th Sep 2014 16:36
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Agreed! This looks very polished. I haven't tried it, but it does look very nice. Good work!
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TDavid
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Posted: 13th Sep 2014 11:02
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Thanks guys, your approval means a lot to me. If you really enjoy the game, stay tuned for the next version. I'm struggling to upscale the graphics at the moment but it should be ready by thursday.
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TDavid
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Posted: 18th Sep 2014 02:02 Edited at: 18th Sep 2014 02:03
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New version with smaller mazes is up. Feedback is welcome, as usual.

Now in great need of a nap. I'm tired to stare at undisciplined pixels.
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 26th Sep 2014 19:09
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I liked the smaller maps. Not my type of game but gave it 5 stars

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TDavid
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Posted: 29th Sep 2014 12:44 Edited at: 29th Sep 2014 12:48
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Thanks a lot DA! That's very nice of you.

I couldn't help but notice my app ended up on Android Pit as well. Pit is definitely the right word, since my game got downvoted 14 times before I even noticed it was there.

Would that be the kind of place where people can vote without playing the game once ? Would that be the kind of place where sharks spend their days downvoting others instead of relying on the quality of their game ?
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