Hey guys, I submitted Bumpoid, my first game, to AppStore last week. Please have a look, I welcome your comments. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDzllHSLEoo The goal is simple, just keep hitting the pucks of your own color. Each time you do, the score will increase by the length of your current streak, the streak length is shown in the bottom middle with a + prefix. Each time you hit a puck of different color, your puck turns that color, you lose a puck, and the streak counter resets to zero. There are 48 pucks on the board, besides the one you're driving, 12 each of 4 colors. This is a zero AI game, it's all physics, the pucks slide in a straight line without friction, and collide realistically as round pucks would. Having it run smoothly at 60fps was a focus, I'm afraid that's something you lose in a youtube video. My goal was to combine the thrill of chase and avoidance with physics simulation of many pucks bouncing around, and yes, color matching. And have it run smoothly at 60 fps. There are more than 90 levels, they differ in board geometry and textures. As you can see from the video, the controls are simple, just tilt left-right. You can pause the game at any time, or quit it, or answer the phone. The game always autosaves the complete state so you can pick it up exactly where you left off. There are virtually no loading times.
Hey, thanks! I just figured it out too Edit: guess not, aren't you supposed to enclose the youtube url in pair? Edit: got it, finally
cool but I think you missed something as your vid isn't showing for me. Also cool vid but I think descriptions on the first post about the goals and what you do would be good too.
Thanks. I've been writing this game for the past few months pretty much exclusively, and the goal is to make it as new and fun for the people as I can. One man show, for now. Or did I misunderstand your question?
I guess I misspoke it. I meant Its always good to write the description about the game, what it's supposed to be, and the goal of the game to win and such for those who don't have a long enough attention span to watch it for 9 minutes
I like the concept for the game but it does look a little tedious. It looks like one of those games that I'd find boring after a few minutes because there isn't enough variation and not enough to do. To make the game more engaging and fun you could add things like power ups, bigger and smaller pucks with different speeds, very dangerous objects, different surfaces in levels (ice, tar) and perhaps some kind of teleporting object. I also think that the games seem to last too long, I mean in the video you played for 9 minutes and still had 28 lives left. You need to decrease the amount of lives you start with and the length of the levels (down to 30 seconds to 1 minute) and hopefully with other gameplay improvements, it will make games shorter and more enjoyable. The game looks like it runs very smoothly and the controls look great but I'm not too sure about the graphics. They just seem a little dull to me. Perhaps some brighter, solid colours would work better? Also from what I've seen this is more of a highscoring game. I usually prefer games with levels that each have their own individual scores since then you can play all the levels in the game, instead of always dying at a certain point. I think you should keep this mode as a classic mode but also have a mode where you can play each level and you have to earn a certain number of points to get to the next. Also earning certain amounts of points will get you either a bronze, silver or gold medal. This is usually what makes me replay games and actually makes me come back to them. As well as local highscores I think it would be good if you could add something like OpenFeint where there are online highscores and achievements to earn. I know this would really be a complete rework of your game but I think it would definitely pay off if you went through with it. I hope you find my feedback useful because I can see this becoming a really good game if you go in the right direction.
Hey Palfince, thanks a lot for the detailed and thought out post! There are a lot of good ideas there and it's precisely these kinds of comments that I'm looking for. I deliberately held myself back regarding adding a bunch of different features before I get some feedback, there's a lot of things I can add very easily, and I like the idea of keeping this mode as classic and adding another one. You won't be surprised to hear that I don't find the game boring I went for simplicity of purpose, I like the games where there's not much distracting you from a simple purpose so you can zone out. The frequency of events - there's usually something coming at you at least every couple of seconds - and the fact that the motion is driven by physics and not scripted, keeps it interesting for me. But I perfectly understand that different people like different things and I look to this kind of great feedback to figure out what to add. Here are some powerups I was thinking about, to be activated either when you reach a certain streak count, or when you hit one of the magic pucks (to be added) floating around: - you become super massive, everybody bounces off of you like a rubber ball, but you don't budge. - they all freeze in place. - they all turn your color and it's a free for all. - some turn rainbow color and they carry extra points. - shooting. of course, that's a whole big topic by itself. and you added - different surfaces. - dangerous objects. - teleporting. I actually played with most of my features already, but always in the end decided to get rid of them and keep it simple. But adding a different mode would make both me happy and folks who like more complicated things. btw, it might take some practice to have 28 lives left after 9 minutes Also, you don't have to finish the game in one go, you can always quit and come back later to the exact same state. Anyway, thanks again for the feedback!
Why hasnt this game gotten more attention? I looked at the video and think that this would be a simple, fun, and possibly challenging at times kind of game to play. and the added powerups would be a great idea with the classic mode. Its great that it is already submitted! I hope it gets approved soon!
oh no Just got email from Apple, still in shock --quote Upon review of your application, Bumpoid cannot be posted to the App Store due to the usage of private API. Usage of such non-public API, as outlined in the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement section 3.3.1, is prohibited: "3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs." The non-public API that is included in your application comes from the following private Apple frameworks -GraphicsServices. --end quote Will post more when I figure out what exactly happened... In any case 1.5 weeks of waiting down the drain
oh no x2 WHY Apple?! because of a Private API! I dont know why Apple only wants public APIs, but apparently there is an API in the game that isnt public, At least I hope it is just one. But for this game I think you can find APIs that can replace the ones that Apple doesnt like. I hope... 1.5 Weeks gone!!!! If it is any consolation, waiting a long time and being rejected happens to a lot of devs
I just removed the offending framework and rebuilt the game, and it works fine without it. I resubmitted the binary already, and sent a pleading email to Apple to expedite the approval but I'm probably back at the end of the line now. I don't remember when or why I added the private GraphicsServices framework to the list of frameworks I was linking with, must have been a quick hack of mine at some point long ago, and when I found the right public framework I forgot to remove the private one from the list. Never in a million years would I have thought to check whether all the frameworks I'm linking with are public, but I sure will from now on. If there's a fault at Apple's side it's that they don't check for this automatically at submission, it can be easily done by a machine. Instead, the developer wastes a week and a half over a stupid mistake.
This is what I think about the proposed update ideas. - you become super massive, everybody bounces off of you like a rubber ball, but you don't budge. Maybe, It could work if you could hit any puck and add to your streak. - they all freeze in place. This would be kind of good for a limited amount of time. But hiting a puck of the wrong color should still affect you. - they all turn your color and it's a free for all. This is like the giant puck idea, but better. I like this one for a limited amount of time - some turn rainbow color and they carry extra points. Multicolored pucks would be good! but they should be few in number - shooting. of course, that's a whole big topic by itself. This is too much of a change to the core gameplay unless the idea here is to shoot all of the pucks that arent your color or only the pucks that are your color. Then maybe a shooting mode? - different surfaces. If this means different floor surfaces, then yes this would be good! - dangerous objects. The pucks that arent your color are already dangerous kind of. and there are plenty of them. More objects in the game would make it kind of overly complicated. - teleporting. This would be dangerous. But it could work if the game gave you a few seconds to look around after the teleport.
Another idea would be for all the pucks of your color to turn on you and start chasing you, taking a life away when they hit you, while the pucks of colors different from your own become immovable and turn some indifferent color and basically become something to bounce off of.
the best bumping game in the 'verse Also, I got rid of the old long video and added a much shorter, and hopefully sweeter, promo here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDzllHSLEoo
I was kindly given the opportunity to try an Ad-Hoc version of Bumpoid and there are definitely numerous aspects of the game that I really like, and a few times where playing the actual game has changed my thoughts. I've been able to easily play this game on and off for the past week, simply because of it's excellent save state feature. This means that it is a perfect pick up and play game. The controls also work very well, and while I think all games should include a couple of control methods, Bumpoid's are spot on. The gameplay itself is also surprisingly addictive and while I didn't play the game all too often, when I was playing it I was hooked. One of my main gripes with the game, after watching the video, was that the game seemed to go on for hours. Fortunately you need to be very skilled to play a game for more than 10 minutes. Most of the games I played were around 3 to 5 minutes long since I was bumping all over the place. Not once did I blame the controls because once again they are perfect, it's just that you need to practice before you're great at the game. I thought that the gameplay would get boring after a while and alas I can see that being true. I think that without a sufficient variety in the game, it will quickly become obsolete. However since the developer is looking into adding to the game, I can see this being a true winner. I also still think that the graphics could do with a bit of work but all in all it's a pretty good game. Sorry about the huge delay between getting the game and this feedback. By the way the new promo video is much better than before.
From the video it looks pretty good, reminds me of BallBlazer... But I'd have to say the best bumping game is still BADABOO! I'll be watching for this one!
