Applications

The Partial Monty

by George on Jul.30, 2010, under Applications, Game Design

Today is the day when I tell all and bare all.

At least it’s the day when I said I’d tell all and bare all about the game I’m currently working on.

And I will, mostly. You see it’s complicated, and that’s what this article is about.

A Commitment

Let’s start at the beginning. There was an interesting chat this week on Twitter, where we were discussing how much you should reveal of the project you’re working on. There’s a school of thought that says revealing your plans just gives other people the chance to rip off your ideas. Which is true. The other side says that there’s a huge potential win by getting something in front of people early, so you have a chance to ship a superior product. Also a valid viewpoint, and this is why we have public betas.

So here’s my take on it:

Tetris was revolutionary. It’s hard to remember that now. I remember reading the pre-release buzz about Tetris, and I just plain didn’t get it. Until I saw the blocks falling, and played with rotating and dropping them, it was hard to see where the fun was. If Jonathon Blow had started talking to you about his time-shifting platformer, any game you made from the idea would undoubtedly be far removed from the wonderful game that Braid turned into.

Note that when I say derivative, I’m not necessarily being negative. If you’re working on a Diablo-clone, or a Bejewelled-a-like title, there’s still plenty of scope for it to be brilliant, and well worth playing. Execution is everything. Just don’t hide it away in a dark dungeon, believing that no one else has had the same idea.

Don’t take my word for it, read this.

I’m not naive, but I do prefer to believe that most people are honest, and the world is a better place for sharing. That’s why I love the iDev community so much.

So this fairly quickly lead to:

If you’re not familiar with the dog food reference, read this.

Which brings us to today…

The problem with eating dog food is that sometimes, once you start to eat it, you realise why most people don’t. In this case it’s scary, a leap of faith. What guarantee do I have that someone else won’t rip off the idea and hit the App Store before I do? Let’s face it, with full time employment and a hectic family life, I’ll be lucky to get this out before Christmas.

The closer I got to today, the more nervous I became about sharing details of my current game project.

Here’s the crux of the problem. As with many iOS game ideas, my central game mecahanic is incredibly simple. If I describe the core mechanic – which is not revolutionary, but I think is quite novel – then I’ve lost any chance of hitting the App Store with something a bit different. This is especially true Think about Fruit Ninja (App Store link) for example. It’s a great game that managed to be fresh and fun. But if the devs had openly described the core mechanic and the theme (ninjas don’t like fruit) too early, they’ve literally given the game away. Instead, when it was released, complete with a crazy, viral video on YouTube, the novelty factor was high and helped ensure their success.

Faerie

So, let me introduce Faerie (a working title). It’s still in the very early stages of development, but it’s had encouraging feedback so far from people who have seen it.

Goals

I wanted to make a game that my kids could play that would still be challenging to an adult. I think that too often we don’t give kids enough credit for the innate intelligence they have. So Faerie is to be a kid-friendly game with some genuine challenge for all ages.

Theme

Faeries are on the front line of the battle between mediocrity and excitement. Every day, in every way they fight to brighten people’s lives. They do this by gathering up and combining the little pieces of magic that are all around us but we never see. As the player collects magic and scores points, this is reflected by the game’s environment becoming a brighter, happier place. Don’t score fast enough and dreariness wins.

Art Style

Let’s show off some programmer art. I owe a huge debt to Mike for his Photoshop tutorials which have helped me increase my Photoshop skill level. The player collects magic to make the sunrise more wonderful, and help people get a good start to their day. The idea is that there would be multiple levels, each with their own backgrounds and stories.

Mechanics

Faerie began as a desire to make a game that my kids could play that still felt challenging to play as an adult. Combining Bejewelled style scoring with geoSpark (App Store link) style action was the plan, although I’m happy to say the resulting mechanic is quite different now – including elements from Tetris, Whack-a-mole and Bejewelled. This is perhaps the most sensitive area for me, so I’ll leave it at that.

So when’s it ready?

Today on #iDevBlogADay we’ve already seen Retro Dreamer’s upcoming Linkoidz which should be due out soon. Faerie isn’t anywhere near that ready, so you’ll have to wait, I’m afraid. I’m hoping to get a first playable together some time this month, and if I’m really brave I’ll send it out to a few
people for initial feedback (let me know if you’re interested in providing feedback on something that’s very rough still).

So, not quite the ‘Full’ Monty, but now you know what I’m working on, please bug me to get it done before my kids grow up!

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Update from the trenches

by Sam on Mar.11, 2010, under Applications

Well how about this. It’s not George posting! What is the world coming to, riff-raff posting on blogs and what have you.

Anyway, it’s time to announce that we got Goo! version 1.1 through approval yesterday, and its now on sale! The new version has:

A much larger play area
Much more intuitive controls
A bunch more predefined shapes to choose from when double-tapping.

Also, we’ve moved into phase two of our plan to take over the world by beginning prototyping on our second game idea. Here’s a screenshot of an extremely early prototype of our lighting tech…

Goo! A little perspective

by George on Jan.21, 2010, under Applications, Project Management

Now that the initial excitement of getting an App on the store is starting to fade, it seems like a good time to look back over Goo!‘s development history and figure out what worked and what didn’t.

The Good

Sales:

It may seem odd to put this under the ‘good’ category, as our sales figures are still in double digits (although we’re hoping for a roll over into three digits before long). However the purpose of Goo! was to be a test case, dipping our toes in the AppStore’s waters. As such, it’s a success. There’s a wonderful buzz from selling your own software that I had never experienced before. Despite developing software for over ten years now, it’s always been for someone else. The thought that other people, around the world have seen my software and wanted to buy it is thrilling. And the feeling you get when one of your friends greets you by waving their iPhone in your face with your App on it is pretty special – thanks Chris, you’re an awesome friend.

Cocos 2d:

After faffing about with raw OpenGL for a while, we eventually switched to using Cocos2d as a platform. Although both Sam and I are familiar with writing OpenGL engines, it just soaked up our time – something we have little enough of. Cocos2d worked a treat and the change over took only an afternoon’s effort.

Twitter:

Twitter has proved to be a real find for me. The iPhone developers I follow are a friendly, helpful bunch. I’ve learnt plenty from these guys, found lots of great articles on the Internet and when we released Goo!, lots of people re-tweeted the announcement or promptly bought it on the spot. Thanks guys, it means a lot!

Working together:

Sam and I have been working together on and off for over ten years now. Ideas pass back and forward freely, and there’s enough mutual respect that we can quickly throw away bad ideas, or modify them to become good ideas with no ego or resentment getting in the way.

Submission process:

We hit a lucky patch with the App Store – just before Christmas people started reporting quick turn around with App submission. Sure enough, Goo! went through the approval process smoothly in three days – a very pleasant surprise. In fact, after hearing horror stories from developers over the last year, it is nice to see that Apple is improving things (or were we just lucky?).

The Bad

Too long:

Yeah, this is the biggie. Nine months is a ridiculous length of time. No excuses here. Too often real life got in the way. It’s just a fact of the lives we live with full time jobs and families. Also…

Lack of a core concept:

In it’s day, Goo! has been a time tracker, the beginnings of a series of articles, a set of particle system toys and finally an implementation of the Game of Life. Perhaps now you understand why it took so long. Sam and I wanted a simple project to get started and we exercised some poor judgement along the way. A lack of a clear vision for Goo! hampered us a lot.

Lack of a forward delete key:

Seriously, this is the single biggest pain I have working on a laptop. And yes, I know about fn-delete, but it’s just not the same.

So, in summary it’s been an enjoyable process. Goo!, while simple, is an App that we’re happy to have on the store. The idea of selling our work on the App Store now feels much more achievable and we’e both brimming with new ideas, at least one of which is showing a lot of promise – and as far as I know is a completely new idea. Of course the challenge is in turning a good idea into a successful project – watch this space.

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Unleash the Goo!

by George on Jan.13, 2010, under Applications, Uncategorized

After a delightfully short period of three days, our maiden iPhone app is available through iTunes (App Store link). Goo! is a fun version of the Game of Life, by John Conway. You create patterns of cells, and then watch as generations pass. If a cell is too lonely, or is overcrowded, it will die out. If conditions are just right, new cells are born.

Although it’s a simple app, there’s plenty of depth in the Game of Life. Some patterns will oscillate forever, or become stable. Others will travel across the screen in a stately procession. Yet other patterns will ‘fire’ out new patterns.

So, give it a try today, and help us take one more step towards living our dream! To Infinity, and Beyond!

At last, some real progress

by George on Jan.11, 2010, under About Us, Applications

Back in March of last year, Sam and I began working on developing apps for the iPhone. Now, nine months later, our first app has been submitted for review. It’s a reasonably simple app, a pleasing on the eye version of the Game of Life, by John Conway. It was originally our ‘proof of concept’, or ‘one day app‘, a chance to dip our toes in the waters of the App Store. So what happened? Below are a few thoughts (not excuses)…

We’re both very busy people. Having full time work and multiple children just takes up time.
Tied in to the first point, at times when our lives have got busier than normal, one of us drops off the grid for a bit. This can stall the other team member and when you come back to the code again there’s the problem of getting back up to speed again.
We lost our way a few times. The final app we’ve submitted is very different for the original plan. Several times we’ve reduced the scope of the app to keep it more focused and manageable. But each of these changes has meant re-examining and amending the existing code base.
We started working at the OpenGL level. Both of us are completely at home writing OpenGL code, and so we made the initial decision to write our own ‘engine’. Eventually we switched to Cocos 2d and life became significantly easier.

Still, that’s in the past (with the exception of Apple’s review process). What we have now is a stick in the sand – we can produce an app in nine months. My personal goal is to reduce that to six months, and get a couple of apps out this year. Will we get there? Time will tell, but I have a good feeling about this year.

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What is it, my precious?

by George on Oct.08, 2009, under Applications

Mysterious goo!

What is it? It’s a public outing of our first application – code name: CocosTest for now (One day I’ll rename the project file ). Sam and I are getting close to alpha / feature complete stage, and despite being a relatively simple application its taking up what little spare time we have.

Initially we were working with our own code base, but for one reason or another we weren’t happy with it – over a couple of evenings we were able to port the code to run on top of Cocos2d, which is a lovely framework to use – expect an article or two about it in the future.

As for what CocosTest actually is, we’ll leave that up in the air for now. It’s not a game, but it’s called a game, just to be confusing.

So now it’s a time to polish the rough edges. Take care of all the details and then dip our toes in the ocean that is the App Store. Exciting times!

Acorn Heroes