Obliteration II - Development Thread

[jonmulcahy]

I've decided to start a development thread for my game Obliteration II. This is the sequel to the game Obliteration which I had created for the launch of the iPad.

I've been on a break from development since I released my last game A Long Way Home. And I wanted to do something fun. I always wanted to make a bigger and better sequel to the game, using everything I've learned in the past 2 years.

What will be different in the sequel? A lot of things.

• There will be a ton more levels. The first game had 35 levels set across 7 stages. I want this game to have 100 levels across 10 stages.
• A Random Level generator - This was something I wanted to add to the first game, but it would have required a complete rewrite. This will allow you to quickly generate a level and blow it up.
• Survival Mode - See how many randomly generated levels in a row you can destroy without failing.
• There will be a ton more buildings. The first game had 24 different building types. I want double that in this game.
• There will be more interactive controls. The first game had a plane that was flying in a static circle and you tapped once to drop a bomb, and again to explode it. In Obliteration II you use a joystick to fly the aircraft, and have two buttons, one to drop the bombs, another to explode them. So you have the ability to deploy a few bombs before you explode them all, or one at a time.
• Gamecenter. In Obliteration GameCenter was not integrated until a year after the game came out. Obliteration II will launch with leader boards for the each stage.
• Detailed Artwork. Obliteration was all hand drawn by me, which I think gave it a unique style. I don't have the time to do that again, especially with the size of the game I want it to be (buildings and locations). So, this game will all be vector art sourced from professional artists.
• Better music. The music in Obliteration was made possible thanks to GarageBand. Obliteration II will have real background music.

That's all I can think of for now. I've been working on the game for about 2 weeks now and it's already coming together with the test artwork I have. I'll have a preview video up this weekend.

I'm still trying to decide if I should release it for free with 10 levels with a $.99 IAP to buy the rest of the levels. Or should I just release it with all 100 levels for $.99? What are your thoughts on this?

I also plan to release this on Android, the Kindle Fire and the Nook at the same time.

Here is a review of the original game which is currently available in the iPad, iPhone, Android Market, as well as the Kindle Fire:

Youtube link | Pop Up

[master lee]

Go for $ 0.99

[LordGek]

Finally! This is the game I was hoping Obliteration I would be!

[jonmulcahy]

It's been a few weeks so it's time for an update. I've been mostly spending my time tweaking the physics, tweaking the control system and working on the buildings. I've got 7 buildings sliced and diced and in the game already, with 35 buildings sized and ready to be sliced up into explodable pieces. I'm also still sourcing more stuff to blow up. I think the game is looking really good.

When I started making this game there were rumors of the iPad3 having a retina display, so I worked with the assumption it did, which made a huge difference. This is one of the buildings from the game, non retina is on the left, retina on the right. I'm glad I put the extra work in ahead of time.



Here's a quick screenshot of the onscreen controls. On the left is the control stick which you use to fly the ship around. A drops the bombs and B explodes them.
The background and ship are just test art to give the game some personality when testing:



That's it for now!

[AnarKitty]

Wow, the Retina screen looks fantastic! Definitely looking forward to this one coming out once you've got it finished and polished up, especially with all your attention to detail and content.

[jonmulcahy]

@AnarKitty, Thanks! I think it's going to look awesome on the new iPad's screen. It's taking me about 4x as long per building to size everything, but it's worth it.

I've got 42 buildings so far, here they are. These are right out of their raw vector form, I'm going to be tweaking a lot of the colors on the green buildings to give them more personality, but it's really coming together. Thank for got vecto

[jonmulcahy]

Still plugging away at this one. It took a long time to get all the buildings sliced up into retina displace pieces with each section being divisible by 4. Right ow I have 53 buildings, and each one is split up into up to 30 pieces. Today I spent some time working on the level director that I use to construct the levels based on table entries. There are 7 possible positions a building can be in, before today each position could only support 7 buildings. Right now positions 1 and 2 can support up to 30 buildings, I'll be expanding that to 53 tonight.

So that is where it stands right now. I think I'm going to aim to have 60 total buildings across as many levels as I can think of. At least 100, but with 60 buildings, I'm sure I could come up with 200 maybe.

[AnarKitty]

It's great to see and hear how much detail and content you're working on for this title; I'm already impressed with what I've seen, and this has me looking forward to playing it even more, once you do bring it to market. The best thing about truly great games is having as much game to play as possible, and you're clearly going for quality and quantity.