Expander - a game experiment [work in progress]

Discussion in 'Upcoming iOS Games' started by iossif, May 7, 2013.

  1. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
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    Vienna, Austria
    hello everyone!

    i am currently working on a little experiment. after the last ludum dare i decided to pause my work on my current project at all civilized planets to finish my gamejam game for real. up until now i have always been kind of uncommunicative about new projects in public, this time i want to change that. for that i will post updates on the current state of the game often and collect your feedback and thoughts.

    here is what happend so far:

    the first version of the game was created in only a few hours and can be played here: http://www.randoom.net/expander/expander.html

    the game mechanic itself is very simple: you can switch between two planes in order to dodge obstacles while you can expand your main character (block :p). the bigger the character, the bigger the multiplier gets. but be careful, touching walls will take away a life.

    if you are interested in the process of me creating this first version, watch this time lapse video on youtube:



    there are a lot of items on my todo list of course :)
    graphics are not even started yet, music needs to be made/found, levels need to be made/balanced.

    i hope you like my approach and hope for some valuable input! i will post updates as soon as there is something to report in this thread.

    in case anyone is interested in testing the game in the early states: sign up on testflight, register your device and i will send you builds! to join my testflight team, use this link: http://tflig.ht/GDbTC6

    you can also follow me on twitter - @iossif in case you want more detailed updates :)

    i will stop the wall of text now, thanks for reading everything! <3
     

    Attached Files:

  2. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
    0
    0
    Vienna, Austria
    updates!

    a few days have passed and the game is in a good shape. currently it runs on all ios devices from 3gs upwards and therefor does reasonable well on android as well.

    we did spend some time working on the overall look and so far we are quite happy with the results after only one week of polishing. it is of course not 100% complete yet, but for an experiment after a gamejam is looks very nice.

    gameplay wise there were no major changes. a few control schemes were tested but so far the original one [left side for scrolling to scale the character, right side to change planes] seems to be the best.
    we also tested more camera positions and transitions and have a nice mix of those now as the game gets harder.

    the rest of the time we spent on creating menus, implementing gamecenter and all those additional steps a game needs around its core.

    this is what the game looks like at the moment:


    the offer for testing the game still stands! sign up at http://tflig.ht/GDbTC6 to join our testers on testflight.

    if you have any questions or comments about the game... feel free to post here or ask me on twitter any time. every feedback is welcome :)

    thanks for reading, more updates will come soon!
     
  3. copaeci

    copaeci Well-Known Member

    Nov 2, 2012
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    I like the idea about camera transition in first video.. Looks good.
    Applied for beta

    Question:
    - Is this endless game?
     
  4. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
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    Vienna, Austria
    yes, the game is endless in theory. it will get harder over time though. everytime you pass a green "door", the game speeds up a little, making it harder to get timings right.
     
  5. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
    0
    0
    Vienna, Austria
    updates!

    i wanted to do music/sounds and levels today but it turned out i managed to fix another big problem instead.

    at yesterdays "user testing" (aka showing it to friends) i noticed that people had problems understanding the concept of the two planes. the colors on the level borders did not seem to be enough to tell the story.
    when i looked into the problem, i of course watched previous versions and well... shadows are great to show heights of objects. the first version of the game had shadows but it was made for pc - for mobile devices this is much more tricky.
    to put it into perspective... the game uses ~20 draw calls without shadows. that is ok to run in a 3gs device. when i enable real time shadows, suddenly i have ~170 draw calls... that even is a problem for high end mobile devices.
    at first i tried to fake shadows by putting planes that look like shadows in the level. that was "ok" but did not feel right - also it made level design much harder.

    after some thinking i remembered that unity3d has this nice feature called lightmapping. basically you calculate the shadows in the editor, store them into a texture and use this texture later instead of calculating the shadows dynamically (might be more complicated, but i think that sums it up). to save memory, i then resized the generated lightning textures since they look good enough even on half the resolution (in the end, it is just grey areas on the ground).
    viola! now the game has shadows that do not cause draw calls and run on any device. great success :)

    to show the shadows, i then built only a few new levels so the videos do not get boring for you :)

    this is what the game looks like at the moment:
     
  6. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
    0
    0
    Vienna, Austria
    updates!

    we worked hard to get as much work done as possible since the PAX submission deadline was two days ago.

    a lot of polishing and level design was done as well as sounds, music and all those nice things.

    as a result, here is our current gameplay trailer, including parts of the soundtrack! enjoy :)

     
  7. copaeci

    copaeci Well-Known Member

    Nov 2, 2012
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    Do you still open for beta?
     
  8. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
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    Vienna, Austria
    yes, we still accept testers. did you sign up at testflight already?
     
  9. copaeci

    copaeci Well-Known Member

    Nov 2, 2012
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    Yes, I thought I've sign up for the beta since few days ago..
     
  10. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
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    Vienna, Austria
    can you send me your testflight name via dm? i added all new people just yesterday. maybe something went wrong in the code signing process.
     
  11. copaeci

    copaeci Well-Known Member

    Nov 2, 2012
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    Done
     
  12. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
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    Vienna, Austria
    updates!

    we kept on polishing the game and the release is near. as a special bonus, we added icade support!

    here is what it looks like on the device:

     
  13. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
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    Vienna, Austria
    updates!

    we decided on releasing the game on ios/android as well as mac/pc/linux at the launch. therefore we are working hard to fix all the platform specific problems and are also looking into ways of selling the game (finding a good store for it).

    meanwhile our new website launched as well at www.allcivilizedplanets.com

    last but not least: here are two screenshots from the launch version. enjoy!
     

    Attached Files:

  14. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
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    good news everyone!

    we found a great way to sell our game for pc and linux as well as mac, ios and android. we are working out the details at the moment and should be able to find a release date next week.

    we are constantly testing every build on every platform and it looks great so far. i hope that with my next post i can tell you all the details :)
     
  15. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
    53
    0
    0
    Vienna, Austria
    updates!

    as promised, here are the details for the release :)

    the launch date is july 23, which is tuesday next week.

    we will sell the game via the humble store (pc/mac/linux/android bundle), the widget and all the infos will be live at http://www.allcivilizedplanets.com/games/expander/ on july 23.
    in addition, there will an ios version, a google play android version and also the mac version will be sold on the mac app store.

    i hope we see each other online next tuesday ;)
     
  16. copaeci

    copaeci Well-Known Member

    Nov 2, 2012
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    How much does it cost for the iOS platform?
     
  17. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
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    Vienna, Austria
    $0.99 / 0,89 €
     
  18. Mysticpete

    Mysticpete Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2012
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    any chance of giving out some promos here? if not its ok i will probably check out game soon enough
     
  19. iossif

    iossif Well-Known Member

    Jan 26, 2012
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    Vienna, Austria
    promo codes you say? well... look what i found in my pocket!

    WMPWFTFMXPKN
    PRJT7HTALERP
    49KWHRLALHRJ

    grab them quick ;)
     
  20. Snooptalian

    Snooptalian Well-Known Member

    Sep 12, 2009
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    Codes all lurked apparently...
     

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