Updated April 23, 2011 App Icon Rough Draft Concept Art ------------------------------- Creating iPhone games is hard and a ton of work! I thought it might be interesting to keep a diary of the process. I've always wanted to do this, but was worried about giving away company secrets. Now I've decided, screw it. Creating games is a fun and collaborative process, and I doubt we actually have any secrets worth anything! Our first game was Meteor Blitz, a dual-thumb shooter that was pretty well received. Our next game was Pocket Cafe, a casual/social/freemium restaurant game that is doing well, but wasn't as much fun as we thought it might be to create. Our new, upcoming game is Rogue Element. It's an RPG-lite dual-thumb shooter. We have a couple ideas and inspirations that we believe will change what gamers think is possible in a traditional shooter. Please ask anything you'd like, I'll try my best to keep this updated over the coming year! The office puppy, Vit. The view outside our 2nd floor balcony.
Update #1- First Base Finished a very rough prototype that focuses on our new control scheme today. All it does is move some rectangles across the screen, but it looks like the controls might actually work! T (the lead artist) is coming in tomorrow, hopefully he'll agree. This definitely feels like the funnest part of the project. We don't have to worry about memory or framerate issues, and prototyping gets us a lot of positive feedback without doing too much work. It definitely helps that this is our third title. I remember it took about 4 weeks for us to get to this point when we were on Meteor Blitz.
Nice idea to keep a developer diary! and... Care to elaborate more? C: I googled for RPG-lite and the first thing that pooped out is this. I know Urban Dictionary can't be trusted for things like this but if it's true, this surely piqued my interest. Like, does it have plot/storyline like most RPG are? And it's dual-pad shooter rather than cut-and-slash or turn-based?
We'd like to get *something* out by early June, to time it with the (likely) iPhone 5 release. If it's well received, we want to spend another few months adding content and features for an even better game. For example, multiplayer is something that we probably won't be able to finish by June, but hopefully we can finish shortly thereafter.
For the version we're planning to ship in June, there probably won't be much of a storyline outside of a couple static screens (along the lines of how Angry Birds pans a single screen explanation before the game starts). I think it's going to take everything we got to just get the core gameplay working by then. By RPG-lite, I'm thinking something similar to Battleheart or Infinity Blade. Leveling up, and perhaps collecting items, but using a relatively simple interface, especially compared to the action sequences. And we definitely want it to be a dual-pad shooter at its core. Though there are a lot of dual-pad shooters out there, I still feel there's a lot of room for improvement. Hopefully, the response to the first version will let us know if our core gameplay is fun or a dud. If it proves to be fun, we want to go big!
Thanks. He's mostly good at stealing and sleeping in people's chairs when they get up to get a drink. I'll try to post more pics, but our internet has been flaky since the earthquake in Japan.
Ok, thanks for clearing this. Something similar like Battleheart or Infinity Blade with dual-pad shooter sounds great to me. C: And, I just realized, hey, fellow South East Asian! I though you were Korean judging by your username. Xin chao~ (I only know that word, haha, I don't even use the right 'a' )
Oh my gosh, a new shooter from Alley Labs!!!??? Can't tell you how long I have wanted to hear this, and even better, it sounds like it might be set in a dungeon...this is major news!! That is a good-looking puppy by the way. Everyone should have qn office puppy. Hanoi is a very cool city too. If I lived there I would eat bun cha every day--the stuff is one of the best things I have ever had.
To echo medianotzu's enthusiasm, I am definitely looking forward to seeing what you guys can do, considering Meteor Blitz is still my favorite dual-stick shooter on iOS, even though I have a few dozen games of that type. All because of the intensity, and how well the controls work.
Please don't release in June if you can't get substantial content; rushing a product with plans of really completing it later is a poor idea in my opinion. Don't get me wrong I'm sure you guys know what you're doing, it just seems the new release hype is what seems to make or break many games. RPG-lite dual stick shooter sounds awesome, you'll also have to contend with Pocket RPG from Cresent Moon but you can never have too many dual stick shooters in my opinion (RPG is a plus too).
Something to think about at least. A lot of us here on TA are fans, and won't mind diving in early, but the last thing you want is less-than-enthusiastic press or ratings from an unfinished game.
We definitely don't want to rush an unfinished product, and if that means slipping past June, that's okay for us. But we do need to earn some money for food and rent (and beer!) at some point, so it'll be a bit of a tightrope. Ideally, we'll ship something in June that has as much content as similar indie titles. And if it does well, we'll continue filling in with our wishlist features. And Pocket RPG looks awesome. I'm definitely getting it on day one.
Update #2 - Physics Engine Jumped into bed with the physics engine today. In the past, we've tried both Box2D (of Angry Birds fame) and Chipmunk but realized that they're overkill and too heavy/slow. We don't need a true physics engine. We're not stacking blocks or anything like that. We just need a good and fast approximation, something that looks good enough but can handle hundreds of objects at 60fps. So spent most of the day rewriting the super-hacked physics code from Meteor Blitz and cleaning it up. There's still a lot to do, but the basics are working. Also met with T and showed him the prototype. It pretty much met his expectations, so we're going to continue with prototype #2. I'm on the hook for building out the complete controls, basic enemies, basic weapons, collision detection by Friday. I can just use boxes for graphics. T's on the hook for a concept screenshot by Friday. We'll find out if he's able to produce this kind of art quickly enough to get this project done by June.
Update #3 - iPhone 3GS and Higher Looks like we'll be supporting only the iPhone 3GS and higher. Also the iPad and iPad 2, and at least the 3rd generation iPod Touch and higher. We decided to cut out the lower-end devices because we need to use OpenGL ES 2.0, and we need the higher amounts of memory. We intend to push the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 (in Retina display mode) to their absolute limits. It's a tough choice because there are a lot of iPhone 2s and 3s in the field. But there's just too big of a jump in performance starting at the iPhone 3GS. Sorry in advance if you're stuck on a lower-end device.
Update #4 - Rough Week but Concept Art It's been a rough few days. I had to step away from Rogue Element in order to finish up some contractor work. I don't enjoy it, but I have to pay the bills somehow. T created some killer concept art this week: I had originally wanted to go with a fantasy/dungeon theme, but since there seems to be a lot of games in that genre, we're gonna try this theme out.
