Hey, I just started on a new iPhone game a couple days ago, and I decided to start an Insurgent Games development blog about it: http://www.insurgentgames.com/blog/ I'll be updating it through the entire process of developing the game, and it's a pretty ambitious fantasy game too, what with a plot and tons of maps to explore, dialogue with people and quests. Here's the first post:
I've posted a second post now: http://www.insurgentgames.com/blog/adventures-in-game-engines/ It includes scanned game design sketches, a little bit of video from what I've done of the map editor iPhone app, and my rationale for deciding to go with Objective-C and cocos2d-iphone for this game.
This is intriguing. I'll admit that I am not a big fan of the RPG genre. However, I do enjoy certain games that have RPG elements to them. Legend of Zelda (the original) is still among my favorites. Recently I've been playing the successful Arvale series by Jaybot. I mentioned this because just like 'A Princess Tale', Jaybot decided to make his storyline much more linear in his latest installment Arvale: Treasure of Memories (PC only). I think that might be a good decision on iPhone. I've read the blog- you mentioned using GameSalad. I thought GameSalad didn't have a savestate. Won't that cause problems with your RPG? Or are you going to go really oldschool and use codes? Overall, I'm glad you opted not to go full retro with the blocky graphics. If your game is funny with great pixel art like Arvale, I will definitely give it a try. One last question: How are your scripting skills- specifically for a language like Lua?
Interesting, I haven't heard of that game. I'll definitely go check it out though. You know, for research . (I love doing "research" as a game developer, by the way) Actually, I started out getting really excited about GameSalad because it looked like a good way to save lots of time, but then upon realizing you can't save, realized it just wouldn't work for this game. Instead I'm going the much more challenging and time-consuming route of programming it all myself in Objective-C with the help of cocos2d. I think this is a much better choice in the end. I have never used Lua before, but I'm a pretty good at scripting. I write bash scripts and python scripts on a regular basis, and I'm not half bad with javascript, and I've done a fair share of php as well. I just looked up Lua and it's an embeddable scripting language, huh? So, maybe I can give each actor in my game a Lua script for them to run? I can definitely see how this could make the development of my game much quicker. The way I'm planning on doing it now is marking specific actors on each map as "triggers", and giving them a number. And then, in Object-C upon loading the map, scripting all of the behavior of the actors, based on their trigger name, in Objective-C.
Yup... hence my simple game ideas thread. I'm still hoping to get my money's worth: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=35782
Yes, Lua is embedded. Flickitty required 26,000+ lines of Lua code, which I wrote personally. I mention this because Flickitty's engine core, 2Dex, might be available. 2Dex has been approved by Apple on several occasions, so they do not have a problem with our engine nor the scripting. The scripting is encrypted to prevent tampering. 2Dex is only the very basic core of an engine- everything is completely coded and accessed through Lua so it gives a huge amount of flexibility without bogging you down with features you don't need. Indeed, each object in Flickitty has its own script and behavior. I can even combine scripts to get q more complex object- gravity, draggable, breakable is what is used for the rocks. However, since you have to code the whole thing anyway, going with pure Objective-C will work as well. You might consider building a game engine and introducing extremely simple Lua for your first attempt (data tables, etc.). Then expand it for your next title to include collision events (triggers) and more complexities based on need.
http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/wiki/doku.php/tips:generic this maybe is the solution for your gaps problem
Actually, I tried each thing in that list, and I also tried positioning my sprites at half pixels (adding .5 to each x and y coordinate) because it worked for someone having a similar problem, but none of it worked. What ended up fixing it is padding all my sprites by 1 pixel on each side. The sprites are 30x32 big, so in the tilesheet I made them take up 32x34 pixels each. And then I let them bleed out 1 pixel. So what happens is, technically, there are still small gaps for just a part of the screen, but rather than the gaps being black, they're filled in with the extra 1 pixel bleed, so you can't tell. I have no idea why it does this, but as I've tried everything else, I'm fine with it.
I have posted a new post about the story so far: http://www.insurgentgames.com/blog/the-story-so-far/ It outlines the linear story I've come up with so far (so, spoiler alert!). And I'm definitely open to suggestions as well.
So… the princess goes out of her castle, through the village, into a desert, goes into radioshack and buys a cellphone battery, goes back through the village, meets the troll at the bridge, gives him the cellphone so he can text his girlfriend, so you can get past to the dragon to defeat the evil king… Hmm… Maybe you should ask radioshack if you can license their name for the game? That'll make it even more authentic.
