Monster Mashing

It's Halloween, and for the last couple days, the Monster from King of the Kaiju has been in the spirit of the season. He's all dressed up for some Trick-or-treating thanks to the cosmetic items Eric came up with. These will be in the game for the next few days and then they will go away until next year, but Thanksgiving is right around the corner and the Monster is already preparing.

The Monster is Unleashed

It's been over a month since we released King of the Kaiju on Google Play, and it is doing pretty well, by my typical standards. It is getting a nice number of downloads and ratings and it is also our best game to date as far as average AdMob earnings.

Eric and I are continuing to work on it a little. Nothing that really changes functionality or game play, but some cool additions. I made the title bar on the menu a tiny bit animated and I better optimized how the buildings in the background spawn. I added a couple achievements and cleaned up the awarding of a couple existing ones. Additionally, Eric has been making some little "flair" items that will show up in game around holidays. I added a new class to the code that checks the current date against that of holidays that I've set up in the class, so, for example, around the 27th of October (tomorrow) some Halloween cosmetic items should start showing up for anybody who has the current version of the game. Its a purely aesthetic addition, but its kind of cool and every month or so a new one will show up within 5 days trailing or leading a holiday.

On another note, Eric and I are thinking about moving forward with the Icarus game that I've already started. This is yet another very simple, one-click type game, but like King of the Kaiju it is a simple little time sink for when you are on the bus or waiting in a line or what have you. The Icarus project is something we'll be looking at as we think about our next new game.

A Monster Approaches

Well, the time is almost here. Andrew has finished up the sounds, my brother has polished up the graphics, and everything is running like I want it to. We're all ready, and while it is significantly past the time I was hoping to release the game, it's a case of "better late than never". Eric also pointed out to me that in just a over a week now, the new Godzilla movie is going to be released on DVD and that it might make a good time to release our game as well. So, as most new DVD releases occur on Tuesdays (and this one is no different) I'm planning on releasing the game on the Friday or Saturday prior to the movie hitting the shelves. So that's what we have planned. We'll get this game out there and then see what else we might start working on. We've talked about continuing with the Icarus themed game I made a while back. It is super simple, but it's also frustratingly addictive and I think it could be pretty cool to send it out there as well. I think it is the most likely next step.

I also need to go back and refactor bits of all my games prior to Fishy Dive. In Color Coder, Deep Sea Trapper, Androidian Summer Games, and Curse of Anubis, the leaderboards were done with a service called Scoreloop. Well, it seems that Scoreloop is having too much trouble competing with the relatively new Google Play Game Services (which I greatly prefer) and they are no longer going to be supporting their services come the new year. As a result, I need to go back and get all my older games set up with Google Play Game Services before then. It's been on my TODO list for a while, but I've yet to get myself to jump into it as its fairly tedious and involved, but it needs to be done, so that might be up next before working on any new projects.

Finishing Up the Monster Game

The monster game has really come together lately. Eric and I have been putting some final tweaks on the graphics and some of the more cosmetic aspects of the coding. Andrew has been working on the sounds so we are getting those in there. Initially I was just thinking there would only need a sound for a fireball being shot, a sound for an enemy exploding, and a sound for when the player takes damage. However, Andrew made some excellent sounds that I wasn't expecting and I just had to add those in now. So now the game also has sounds for when buildings crumble down and some stomping noises as the monster is walking. At this point we just need to some roaring sounds in place and I think we'll be ready to release it on Google Play soon, but we'll see how the last few cleanup items go.

Evolution of a Monster

Eric and I have been finishing up the monster game lately and we're almost done. Quite a bit late for our intended release date for close to the same day the latest Godzilla movie came out (almost 2 months ago), but it is really looking good and I'm really happy with the way it plays.

So, as a bit of a preview (I guess) here is a lineup of the monster in our game as it has come from my initial froggish looking creature into Eric's finished, scaly reptilian:

So, from left to right we have:
1) My initial programmer art
2) Eric's first try at a monster head and the blank body that I colored in poorly
3) Eric's second head version with the previous body
4) Eric's finished monster with scale textures, open mouth, animated stepping, and glowing back plates

It looks fantastic in the game with the crumbling buildings, attacking military units, and explosions when you shoot stuff down with your atomic fire blasts.

I just need to get some sounds going with the help of Andrew and then we are going to be publishing it to Google Play.

Military Defense

We've been trying to get the Monster game going recently and it's almost there. Eric is just finishing up some of the graphics and then we'll be good to go. Here are a couple of the military ground vehicles that we have in the game right now:

The monster is also looking really good and we have a helicopter and a jet going as well. The buildings have also seen a major overhaul. They started off as just static background scrolling images, then we upgraded so that they switched to a destroyed frame as the monster trampled them. Now, I've upgraded again so that the buildings crumble down into a dust cloud and leave behind a pile of rubble. We clearly weren't even close to hitting our initial goal of a pre-May 16th release, bu things are coming together well at this point and we are hoping to release soon.

Fishy Dive!

The Flappy Bird clone my brother Eric and I have been working on is finally released! Eric did all the art work on this game and I think it looks really good. As always, I'm very excited to be releasing something out on to Google Play. If you want to try it, you can pick it up here:

With the Flappy Bird clones I've seen (though I haven't spent much time sifting through or playing all those games) have kept to the same format. Your character is falling down, you have to tap to fly higher. I told myself that if I was going to do a Flappy Bird clone, I was at least going to try to make it a little different. Now, that is kind of hard in such a simple game. There's not much you can change up and still retain the same fun feel of game play. So, my simple change was to make the character float up to the top of the screen, and you have to tap to dive down a little. Its a very small change, obviously, but its a fun one and I think it makes the game just different enough to be worth at least checking out.

I also wanted to make the pillars you are avoiding something that actually made a little sense.  In Flappy Bird, the pillars you are trying to avoid hitting are just Super Mario style pipes. How does that make sense? The few other Flappy Clones (as I've come to call them) seem to stick with similarly out of place pillars. They are still things like stone pillars or sometimes just slightly different looking Mario pipes. Eric and I went with making our pillars be swarms of grinning jellyfish. Was this partially inspired by the jellyfish scene in Finding Nemo? Maybe, but it definitely makes sense to be avoiding them. When you end up hitting the jellyfish, a zap sound is played, a shock bubble appears around you, and your poor little fish floats to the top of the screen, upside down with an X over his eye (don't worry, he's just stunned. He'll be back).

Overall, I think the game is pretty fun for the coding time investment. It really didn't take that long. Maybe two days of on and off coding during one weekend to get the game play to a solid point, then it was just occasional aesthetic changes leading up to release. Most of all, it got me thinking of my simple "Flappy" style games to make, a few of which I have started working on and mentioned in previous blog posts.

Given the huge number of clones out there, in addition to the normal flooded market place of Google Play, my hopes aren't particularly high that this game gets a lot of visibility, but I'm happy to have worked with my brother on it, and I'm excited to be getting it out there.

Flappy Clones and the King of the Monsters

I've been continuing with my little "flappy clone" games. Our near ripoff of Flappy Bird (the fish one) is almost done. Eric just needs to finish one more image and Andrew is making us a few sounds. The Icarus game is pretty much done as well, and I'm really happy with it. I need to work in some animations, but gameplay-wise it is solid. I made one other game where you are a lizard running through the desert, dodging rocks and cacti, but I'm not a huge fan. It's for down in our queue for games to work on, so maybe I can think of an interesting tweak before we really get to it.

I've also started working on a new game, one that we will really start going on after the fish flappy bird clone, but before the Icarus game. It is a game based on Godzilla, so we want to get it out before May 16th, which is the release date of the new Godzilla movie (the trailers look awesome). Like the last two tappy style games I've made (Icarus and the lizard one), this game isn't a Flappy Bird clone, but is in the same spirit of the super simple single touch timing type gameplay. I've barely even gotten into it, and I'm already pretty excited about the potential with this one. I'm going to keep working on this one for the next week or so and push to get it out in early May. I'm hoping that the Fish game will be out sometime soon. Hopefully by this weekend so we can switch our focus entirely to the monster game. Here is a very early screenshot:

Simple Games

I've been continuing my work on Flappy Bird clone lately. It's actually done functionally and working pretty well. As fun and frustrating as the game it is based on. Eric is finishing up some graphics for it and we're going to be trying to get it up on Google Play soon.

We've also wanted to get some more original games out that are in the same type of demographic as Flappy Bird, that being the simple, fast, time-waster type games that are basically controlled with a single tap and are mostly about timing. I've started working on another little game in this area with a Greek Icarus theme.

I have an idea for yet another game after that. I like having some tiny side projects to be working on in addition to my larger, more time and effort intensive games. It's always a bit of a thrill for me to get a new game or app out on the market. Even when its something dumb and pointless like my Lucky Roulette Picker app.

Here are a couple screenshots from our Flappy Bird clone so far. Most of the art is Eric's original stuff, but the Jellyfish swarms that make up the obstacles in the game are recycled from our Deep Sea Trapper game until Eric finishes up his own Jellyfish. There are only a few art assets left and then we are good.

Artists and Clones

I've started looking for artists for my scrolling shooter. I've got a couple people who are interested and their art seems very good. I'm putting together a short gameplay video to let them see what kind of stuff they will be getting into. I feel like graphically this is a pretty big project and I want to make sure any artist working on it has a feel for what they're getting themselves into.

Additionally, with the whole Flappy Birds craze going on right now, my brother Eric convinced me to make a clone. It's a very simple game so it only takes a couple days to get going, but it was a fun little exercise and I could put my own little twist on the game. Now Eric is playing around with some graphic tools and he's going to try and make some graphics for the game. Its pretty fun, but the concept of the original and all the numerous clones are simple in general and it's hard to screw up. I like it, it was fun to play around with, and when my brother gets some graphics finished up we'll put it on Google Play and we'll see if anybody wants to take a look.

Helpful Tips and Flawless Victories

Continuing with my scrolling shooter changes, I've made several level changes and hopefully fixed a bug or two. The in-app billing seems to be working well and it has been tested on several devices, so I'm pretty excited.

A couple of the minor, but interesting, changes I have made are the tips and the flawless victory bonus. The tips are just general hints for the player such as suggesting that they pick up powerups even if they don't need them (i.e. health powerup when at full health) because they are still worth points. My brother and I have around 6 hints we've thought of so far. They show up on the level select page just under the high score listings for each level.

I also wanted to put in a bonus the player gets if they complete the level without taking damage, which is fairly standard. My brother suggested the bonus be called a "Flawless Victory" bonus, and being a huge Mortal Kombat fan, that's what I've named it as a bit of an homage. It is pretty straight forward: if you complete the level without taking any damage, you are awarded an additional 500 points. It doesn't count if you take damage and then collect a health powerup and end the level at full health. You have to survive the whole thing without getting hit.

The only things I have left (that I can think of) with the game are little settings type things like this. I added a button to the settings page so that player can turn off device vibration when they take damage. I need to make the button for the gantlet mode look different when it is available. I need to get some basic AdMob stuff in there (this will go away once the player unlocks the full version). Otherwise, though, it is looking fairly complete. I'm going to have to start searching around for an artist willing to take on such a large project very soon.

In-App Billing and Testing

My main focus of my projects recently has been getting In-App billing working in the scrolling shooter. I've been right on the cusp of having it working properly. Several times in the past week I got into it, lost track of time, and ended up staying up far too late and was wiped out at work the next day. However, I'm about 90% confident that I now have it working. Initially, the player has free access to the first two levels. They have to beat the first level to open up the second level, of course, and then anybody can get the third level by using the in game link to like Downplay Games on facebook. So really, there are three free levels in the game. To unlock the other 10 (plus the gauntlet mode I mentioned in my previous post) they have to buy the full version. On the main menu screen there is a "Buy Full Version" button that takes you to a Google Play purchase pop up and once you fill out all that, it unlocks the full version. At that point, of course, the player can play all 10 levels, but they still need to beat all the previous levels. So to get to level 10, you need to complete levels 1-9.

I've actually had the purchasing of the full version implemented for a long time. What I've been struggling with is the functionality to actually query Google Play and confirm that the full version is in fact purchased. So users could buy the game, but the game didn't know that they had and nothing unlocked as a result. My preliminary tests are very positive.

This week I purchased two new android phones from a craigslist posting to test on. Well, I gave Tia money and she bought them for me while I was at work, so big thanks to her for that! Anyway, with two more test phones I've been able to test the in-app billing pretty well. It's very hard to do, because first of all, you can test purchasing with your developer account, so my main phone is out. Then, on top of that, once you buy the full version on a test phone that does work, you can't test it on that phone again without a huge time consuming hassle. To repeat test on a phone, you have to refund and cancel the order via google wallet, then wait about 3 days for google to actually process all these changes (during which time the test account retains the full version) until finally things are set back up. Very annoying with only a single test phone to test, wait three days, test again. Now I have 3 test phones though so less of a hassle, but still a hassle. I tested the purchasing with my first test phone before I had the purchase state querying working fully, so that didn't work. Luckily it was pretty solid by the time I got around to testing on my new phones, so things appear to be working well.

As a bonus, I've rooted one of the new test phones and bought a screen recording program that runs smoothly on it so I can finally take videos of games for youtube trailers and such. Before, we had the same program on a rooted phone of Tia's that I was borrowing, but I've had it for like a year, and now I could finally give it back to her since I have the video capture stuff covered on my own now.

Now I just need to do a little more testing of the in app billing stuff, and tweak a few gameplay things, plus add a few options to the settings page (toggle off vibration when the player takes damage). Now that in app billing is looking solid, I think I'm finally ready to start trying to find an artist since there isn't any major hurdles left in the project.

Finishing Up the Scrolling Shooter

I've been finishing up some last details with my arcade scrolling shooter. My brother has been play testing it and we've been tweaking the difficulty of things and adding some gameplay changes that were needed. Nothing major, but collectively a lot of changes. One thing I did add that is significant is a new game mode that is unlocked once the player unlocks all the normal levels. This new mode is kind of a gauntlet that pits the player against enemies from all the levels all together, one after another. I think it's pretty fun.

One thing I still want to do is to add a simple text area on the level select screen that gives the players general tips and suggestions about how to play the game. I'm going to try to thing of some tips and then throw them all in a string file, then randomly grab one from there and use it to populate the text when the level select screen is created.

Additionally, I'm excited to get working on the in app billing for the game. This will be the first game that I've done that has just a single version. My previous games and apps have had a Lite version and a Full version. I'm working on getting Google's in app billing to work where the game comes with 2 or 3 levels initially and then the user can purchase the rest. This is something I've wanted to work on for quite a while, but due to some weird restrictions with Google play, I can't test in app purchasing with my developer account and I cant change the account that's tied to my phone without doing a factory reset, which I've been unwilling to do. The reason I'm excited now is that I recently got a new phone and so my old phone has just become a test device. I haven't done the factory reset on it yet, but once I am sure that all my content there is backed up, I'm going to reset it and set it up with a test account email and then I will be able to get things finalized. I tested the purchasing with my brother's phone and it successfully allows you to buy the full version, but right now that doesn't actually do anything because I haven't actually coded in any level restrictions based on the state of the player's purchases. It's not something I'm worried about though. Shouldn't take too long to get things set up how I want them once I get around to it. Things are looking good for the game but now I need to start looking for an artist to come on board and help me out with making things look good.