Hey all, On the heels of our release of Hoopster Basketball: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=6251 We have started development on a FPS with a psudo-3D cartoonish style. This game pits you as the first mate on a 1700's pirate ship. The captain steers the ship and provides comic relief (along with his parrot) while you man the cannons (gatlin guns, laser guns, etc.). Your goal it to defend your island from invading martians who have taken up residence there. The game will consist of 4 unique zones with different landscapes each containing 4 levels each. Your primary objective is to blast the little suckers while collecting the rum and booty they drop along the way. At each waypoint you will have the ability to exchange rum and booty for better weapons/ammo or repairs. We are early in the dev cycle but think we have a good look and feel, story arc and alien AI... we are currently working on sight control mechanics and wanted to poll the community about their opinions on great iPhone FPS control mechanisms. Here are the options we have come up with so far: 1. Traditional "Fire" button at the bottom right of the screen and a d-pad graphic that controls a targeting sight that the cannon/weapons fire at (bottom left of screen). (seems the most straight forward, but takes the most GUI space) 2. Accelerometer control of the sight and touch the cannon to fire. (Seems difficult unless it is very sensitive, have read posts of other games where this control frustrates users) 3. Touch and drag on the cannon to move it around and touch the bottom of the screen or fire button to launch. (Seems more intuitive, but doesn't allow the player to balance their grip on the phone... cannon is in the bottom center of the screen) 4. Touch and drag the actual sight to where you want to target then touch the bottom of the screen or fire button to launch. (may work, but hard to see what is going on if your finger is in the way) 5. Just tap the enemy on the screen and the cannon will auto-target and fire. (seems too easy) We are hell bent on getting this mechanic as right as possible for the platform so the player is not fighting it throughout the game. I'm sure the ultimate solution is the option between a couple of these, but I wanted to get some early feedback so we can focus our efforts on the experience of the community. Sorry for the long post, any feedback is appreciatated. I will post a couple screen grabs on Monday and a game play vid by end of next week. Matt
Video for Arrr! : New FPS of pirates vs. aliens Here is the first game play clip. Several things (including the player spawning and movement) are placeholder. Let us know your thoughts! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlm8LiVJ__c Thanks Matt
We have gotten a pretty good feel from a thumbpad control (drag rect) for aiming which will most likely be the default mechanism. Have read many negative comments about the accelerometer, but may add it as a non-default option.
The player in the video kinda stinks It would definitely seem as though accel controls would be a good idea to implement. I couldn't imagine a game like that with touch controls. But I wouldn't choose to only put one in. Why not give players the option to choose? Put a few different control scenarios in there (don't forget calibration settings!) as well as orientation settings.
Wow, that game looks pretty good. The video was impressive and I loved the artwork. The controls sound ok, better than the current FPSs in the App Store, looking for this one to come out also... so many games released in May...
