Hello, I just wanted to show of my editor for Jump Birdy Jump (running on PC or MAC). Thanks to this cool software, I was able to create all the levels in Jump Birdy Jump. It is very important to create good tools so you can concentrate on what important: great content. Even if I coded all the game and physic engine, I've spend about 60% of my time using this tool. JC
Yep, I've created my own "physic engine"... Having saying that, calling it a physic engine is streching the truth a bit far. This isn't a physic based game. Don't worry, I'm not stupid and always make my life easy. For Jump Birdy Jump it was easier for me to code what I wanted than learning a new SDK. If I was going to code a real physic engine based game, I'll be definitely using box2d or else. In a previous life, I use to code full 3d engine (even some software one, yes I'm that old ), so coding a couple of spring simulation and the collision between a sphere (the bird) and rectangles, took me less than a couple of hours (and it made me happy to code something technical for once). JC
Crap, that looks like such a blast to work with ! What a great insight on the actual developing process of this game. Always wondered how levels for these kind of games were made. Thanks so much for sharing this !
Spring simulations are cool and can, as you have shown, do a pretty good simulation for certain types of game, specially in 2D but even in 3D. The track banking in Ground Effect (my driving game) is calculated by a very simple spring simulation. The track is a spline. At load time I simply create a chain of control nodes and springs (think of them as, I dunno, elastic bands and metal rings), each attached to the next. These are also attached to their starting positions on the track (imagine another band between each ring and the starting position of each node) and the spring-sim is run for 100 cycles or so, with each being pulled by the 'bands' and also being pulled upwards (the upward acceleration that is equivalent to gravity). These settle in a position slightly above the track and sort of taking short cuts round every bend. The line from the original control point to the new position of the 'ring' becomes the normal vector for the banking at each point on the track. The whole simulation is half a page of C++ and runs in well under 1/10th of a second at load time. Without the banking it was very hard to stay on the track at all...
That's good to hear! We "jump" to box2D for our last game, it's very flexible, we used it with our own dev tool to view the result in real time like your engine. (I will certainly put a video soon in the vetastudio thread) Thanks to share your technology.
I have to say, I can completely relate to this. Both my current games, BlibBlob and Glade, use physics that I coded from scratch. One uses verlet integration and the other uses euler. They didn't take much time and it was fun just to get stuck into meaty programming. The main reason for it is that I am pretty lazy and hate learning new SDKs. If I were to do something more sophisticated, for example, needing stacking like angry birds, I would certainly look into box2d or chipmunk. Great job on the game btw. And that tool looks like pure gold. Tools are my weakness
My game must be the most under rated ios game ever then... Sadly, after a week in the store, the sales don't even cover the cost I've spent in the restaurant this week-end. JC
I just buy it. The gameplay is great to play. it's relaxing and simple to use. Touch Arcade should seriously take a look.
Oh man, slowly but steadily I'm losing faith in becoming a millionaire with this :/ Such a polished game, and so sad news about bombinb sales. Sry, man !
OMG Your game looks so good but I must admit, I haven't bothered to look at it until now because, by the name, I assumed it would be just another Papi/Doodle endless vertical jumping demo.
Unless you get a front-page Apple feature or get significant media coverage you cannot expect overnight success, even with an immensely polished game. The chart positions I see from AppAnnie are FAR lower than what I would have expected though - I suspect insufficient marketing? Get a prMac press release out there if you haven't already and mail all the review sites with codes. If you haven't done either of these then I'm not surprised it's getting buried. The only thing I would say that is misleading (which reiterates what starjimstar said above) is using the word "Jump" does suggest an endless jumping game, especially as it's used twice. One thing I just realised though is the bird doesn't actually physically jump, so why 'Jump' at all? He's flung about with slingshot/trampolines like Angry Birds and floats in bubbles and collects stars like Cut The Rope, so perhaps "Fly Birdy Fly!" instead? (ie you are trying to get him to learn to fly but he just won't!) The video shows the gameplay is indeed very different from AB and CtR despite being strongly influenced by them. Until Apple adds game video support in the App Store we'll always have trouble conveying gameplay mechanics in only words and screenshots. Dammit I wish I'd remembered to suggest that in the last developer survey..
