This weekend (Feb 25 .. Feb 26), I worked on a game for the "Techority 48-hour Challenge".  This challenge involved making a game within 48-hours using the Ansca, Inc. SDK Corona (for making 2D games on iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android, Nook, and Fire).  Additionally, the game had to use at least two of the following themes:

• Bucket
• Shoes
• Water Balloon
• Love

At first I was a bit stymied by the theme choices.  However, after about an hour or two (yeah I'm slow) of cogitating, I decided to make a "Legend of Zelda" like game with mini-games using all of the themes.

The Plan

The game would have all of these attributes/features (crossed items did not make it into the):

• Top-down viewpoint
• Up/Down/Left/Right movement
• Interaction via bumping (i.e. walk into an object to interact with it)
• Alternate interaction via tapping (i.e. allow player to tap objects to interact with them)
• Locked rooms/doors (requiring specific keys).  These keys are acquired by winning mini-games.
• Gems.  These are the goal of the game and collecting them allows you to leave the island.
• Semi-interactive NPCs
• Mini-games
• Music Game - Listen to a snippet of a song and determine if the song is about shoes or love.
• Match-3 Bubble Popper - Typical gem/bubble popper involving images of the theme items.
• Dice Game or Card Game - Play dice/cards and beat a score or the dealer.
• Words Game - Using letters from the themes (B, U, C, ..., L, O, ... etc) make valid words and submit them to a built-in database to determine if they are valid.
• Interactive non-game world objects (not fulfilling game play, just for fill and ambiance).  I imagined adding fountains, animals, non-game related NPCs, etc.
• Last action and interactions text log.  If you look at the screenshots, you will see that there is a black box in the lower left corner of the play gui screenshot.  This was supposed to be a dynamic log of moves, interactions, etc..
• GUIs/Interfaces
• Splash
• Main Menu
• Credits Screen
• Play GUI
• Mini-Game Help Dialogs (x 3)
• Mini-Game Play Dialogs (x 3)
• Intro dialogs (x2)
• Outro win dialog
• Outro fail dialog
• Sounds
• Button clicks (main menu and credits screen only)
• Music Snippets (may be skirting edge of fair use here )
• Feedback sounds for success and failure in mini-game choices/actions
• Graphics
• Angband TK tiles
• Hand drawn GUIs/Interfaces
• Genetica textures for Play GUI Frame
• Genetica textures for Word Tiles
• Genetica textures for Dialogs
• Code
• Database handler
• Buttons and Labels Class (based loosely on ui.lua)
• Interfaces Implementation using Storyboard
• Sprite Code
• Font Size adjusting code (for various target devices)
• Game Play Code
• ... more (you get the idea)
• Database file (generated from word list)
• ...
• More stuff I'm sure I'll remember after I post this.

The Good

The best 'good thing' is that I managed to implement the entire game with all of the major features, and I did it in tie to submit the game (just barely).  Also good, I learned that I really can make a game in under 48-hours (maybe not a good game), but a game nonetheless.

The Bad

It's funny, although the good (above) was really good and very exciting, it is always easier to find bad things to talk about.  Oh well, let's talk about them:

• Missing items - I ended up not having time to implement some features I really wanted.
• I really wanted to non-game interactive items.
• I also liked the idea of the movement/interactions log (with snide comments for bad moves/choices).
• Lastly, I thought having tap interaction for all of the major characters and objects would be more intuitive than bumping.
• Image Banding - I noticed right away (well as soon as sprites were working) that I was getting image banding on the simulator and my Kindle Fire.  I'm 99% sure this is because the textures are getting upscaled by a factor of 1.8+.  I could have solved this by pre-enlarging the base images and allowing the SDK to down-scale as necessary, but I never had the time to test this theory and by the time I was done, the code was too messy to fix this.
• Poor Play GUI Design - To be fair there was no time to make many choices.  However, the placement of the quit (to menu) button on the Play GUI is horrid.
• No Docs  and Poor In-game Help - To be honest, I did a little to explain the mechanics of the game and I didn't have any help showing where things are on the GUI.  I wanted to do some docs, but there just wasn't time so I had to rely on player-experience and tester-tenacity.
• Messy Code - This is really no big deal since I won't be doing anything with the game after this, but if this were a real project, the technical deficit created by fast and ugly coding would be quite large and costly.
• Dice Game Has a Bug - After I submitted the game, my wife took it for a spin and noticed that the dice game has a bug.  The dice don't show the correct rolled values. i.e You can win or lose a roll with the wrong dice showing.  Confusing I know...Sorry!
• Success/Fail Feedback sounds too repetitive.  - There are three success and three fail sounds, which are randomly selected for each use, but for some reason some sounds seem to be used over and over...
• Song Snippets too repetitive.  - There are four shoe songs and four love songs to choose from, but for some reason the love songs come up more often (lower in the list).  I'm not sure why as this is randomly selected.

 

Obligatory Screenshots & Android/Nook/Fire Game Links

Here are a bunch of screenshots showing the final game:

And here are some links for downloads:

- Fire/Nook: T48nk.apk

- Generic Android Device: T48a.apk

 

Closing

In closing, I had a good time and am glad that I decided to enter.  Now, let's hope I get lucky and win something!

 

Specifically, you play a character stuck on an island.  You play by moving left, right, up, and down.  The player i

My first iPhone/iPod game has been accepted and is now for sale on the iTunes store.  As you might expect, I'm happy and a little excited about this.  If I sell at least one copy of this game, then I can finally label myself a 'professional' game developer.  This is yet another goal I can check off my list:

• Working For Self [i.e. quit the day job]  - Not yet, ... sigh
• Professional Game Developer - (Update: It's official, I've made a sale and I'm in the club...)
• Professional Non-Fiction Writer - Check!
• Professional Fiction Writer - Not yet, but this is on the list...
• ... sure there are more, but that's not what this post is about.

If you read my prior posts (1,2) about this game, then you may wonder why I'm selling it instead of giving it away for free.  Well, I thought long and hard about this and I realized that, yes, the core mechanic is borrowed, but I have elaborated on this mechanic by adding new block types with various interesting behaviors.  So, I went with the lowest priced tier ($0.99) and left it at that.

Of course, I am giving away a few free copies to my readers.  If you have a iPhone or iPod and want to give my game a try, please use one of these codes:

• L943F6YEATLM
• MMJLW7H7PHEY
• LMJH69RPKMRN
• W4NJ7JJYRELM
• J7L3ATN4HL9T

Thanks for reading and to those who supported me and gave feedback in during this effort I give a special "Thank You!"

-edo

Its getting to be time to hit the sack, but I figured I'd post another screencast of my progress.  This time I'm using Jing (as the less ugly watermark shows) which ain't bad for a free tool.  Oh, and before anyone says so, I know the current TD is very geoDefense like.  I blame the fact that I've been playing a lot of geoDefense and GD Swarm (both very good games which you should get if you have an iPhone/iPod/iPad, and if you like TD games).  Alright, nuff said for now.

-ed out