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[JasonPickering]

Yeah My goal was to make a tiny bite sized game. its not a coffeebreak roguelike. its the game you play while your coffeebreak roguelike loads. I am working on a junk UI at the moment. seeing where I can put buttons. one of my main problems is you click a spot next to the player which eats up a tremendous amount of screen space meaning I can only put buttons in the surrounding areas.



so I can keep controls as they are, which gives me less screen to work with. switch to a virtual Dpad in the bottom. or make the camera follow the main character around the island. it will make it so the player wont be able to see the whole island also if thats the case I will expand the island boundries to being 6x6 instead of 6x4.

[JMickle]

Dont use virtual D-Pad! they are ugly and unweildy! you have a touchscreen, utilize it!

i'm not sure what your current/planned set up is, but you could always move the ui to a different corner/side if the player goes near it, thereby meaning the player can move anywhere. moving the camera is another elegant solution.

[JasonPickering]

yeah the camera seems the most obvious solution, but I liked the idea of the player seeing the entire map all at once.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Have to say that I do like being able to see the whole island, not the biggest fan of the camera following the character for such a small game. Think the item flipping side depending on the characters position could work.

[JasonPickering]

Do you think the moving UI would be confusing to the player, because I am not moving the UI, but the Actual Buttons the player would need to use. I think moving the controls on the fly is probably not going to be the best control wise.

Edit: here is a mockup with the camera following the player. Its not the most terrible thing ever. and at most the player would only miss out on 2 tiles horizontally and none vertically unless I expanded the island bounderies.



I could also put buttons in the corners and make the player move by tapping along the edges of the screen.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Yeah you're probably right. That could get pretty confusing. And besides the moving camera could work also. Maybe do a quick test with both and see what you think.

Edit: The mockup looks good and looks like it could work and doesn't lose as much space as i'd expected.

Not a fan of the buttons on the corners idea though.

[BlueSweatshirt]

In a touchscreen game it's disorienting when the buttons you press move on you.(think about if the buttons on your xbox controller started moving around!)

I'd prefer a following camera.
Make it so if you touch and drag on one part of the screen you can pan the camera around, perhaps? I'm not sure if you have enough screen estate open to do that.

[JasonPickering]

Here's a quick test. The hearts are still in the old spot, but it gives you an idea oh how much you can see for each island. I will also keep the island rectangular as it matches the screen shape. meaning you have equal views horizontal and vertical

test

Also any buttons would probably be in the bottom corner because that's the way the player would most likely hold the device

[BlueSweatshirt]

Hmm gotta fix that HUD not following.
It worked really well and I liked that the camera followed in that way. I think it helps develop a sense of progression. All the same I think it would be better if all the levels seamlessly connected and you could just walk across the bridge without interruption.

[JasonPickering]

Yeah the hud needs some fixing, but the follow isnt that bad with such a small level. I actually thought about doing all the islands as one long level, but I don't think it will work with the current set up, Whenever I removed or added monsters into the game while an island was already started it always caused turn problems, and then that raises problems with enemies if they should follow you or not.

[PompiPompi]

I didn't read the whole thread, so maybe I am missing some stuff. But I can suggest a UI(if you didn't think of it already).
You can still tap at the screen for movement.
For picking up items, since you need to be on the item to pick it up, just tap on the character.
Using the items you can tap on where they appear on the screen(like the potions at top right). Unless you are doing something else.
And for lunge, you can tap twice on the player. Although items are a single tap on the player, this would be less of a problem since tapping once when there is no item won't do anything. On the rare case when you want to lunge and there is an item, you might accidently pick up the item instead of lunging.
Another suggestion, you can use Tap once for both picking up an item and lunging.
When there is no item it will just lunge, but when there is an item, you could just pop two circles which the players needs to tap(one of them). One for picking up and one for lunging.
Just a suggestion out of my head. Hope you find it useful.

[st33d]

100 rogues and iNethack have a decent approach to touch screen. Basically any touch around the player is a movement exept when you press the interface. I think a separate scroll around option would solve the desire to scroll around. Most iOS games have a swipe down menu where you can squirrel away non essential niceties like that, especially as you will likely need a quit or restart option.

[ignaciobalbuena]

I just played test the posted above, and it's lovely. Great cutesy pixel art, and I just love the idea of a tiny roguelike. I love the genre, but I'm not into hardcore gaming, I prefer to just kill skeletons in tiny islands, simple and fast. Looking forward for more!

[Hangedman]

Maybe just have a popdown UI. In the corners are a small bag icon, small heart icon with number, small arrows icon, and small menu icon. Having one open would hide the others and/or replace them with Xs which close the menus. The four corner UI buttons would just open little edge menus that show your health, inventory, allow you to pan the map/world (have it snap back once you're done), and get at the menu.

My recommendation: Tap adjacent spaces to move. Tap yourself when standing on an item to pick it up. Tap yourself when not standing on an item to wait (or whatever?). Tap enemies to attack, tap and hold enemies to do a special attack or etc. Select an item from your inventory to use it immediately, so you don't have to overlap tapping to pick up and tapping to use. Maybe Tap+Hold items in inventory to use, just to be sure you don't do so by accident.

Tap/Tap+Hold is a great way to do it, if you can. Double the options. Just have a timer count up when the button is pressed, and if it hits X do Y.

[rek]

Inventory management and item use could be handled by an overlay window. Stepping on a tile with an item would bring it up automatically too -- pick up, drop, use. This will also let you try holding multiple items without having to worry about taking away space from the map or worry about controls, as the item window has its own.

[JasonPickering]

well for now potions will be auto-use. until I get the Skills system situated.



so the player will have two skills each one costing 1 mana. you can click the player and it comes up and you can click the arrow to close it. eventually I might swap out that arrow for the currently held item and adding arrows into the corners to close it. I also added a Status Bar up top. that may or may not stay. its a little close to the top of the island

[BlueSweatshirt]

I love the status bar.
Keep it!
You could also use it for minimal rogue-esque log text as well.

[JasonPickering]

yeah that's the plan at the moment. Its main use will be for some skills. for example one spell is going to be Magic missle or something. it will allow you to hit any monster on the board. so when you activate it the Skill bar will lower and you need to select a target, which is like what it will say up top.

I am also going to go back and redo the freezee attack for the yeti. its way to strong now. I am going to make it an AOE spell now instead of the whole map.

[wademcgillis]

I will buy this game.

If you sell out and go hyper zynga freemium, I will buy the largest golden sword of Flogthbar that you offer.

 

[JasonPickering]

Thank you. it will probably not be freemium.

Rant Engage

I think Freemium does have a place, but I think if you are going to be building a game with that in mind you need to start with that mindset from the beginning. A lot of times freemium just seems tacked on. like they knew where you were going to need to spend the money so they put it there. I like the idea of selling convenience. I mean if I was playing an RPG and I could maybe pay a dollar and get Triple XP for the next 24 hours it might be worth it. I think one of the better examples out now is League of Legends. you slowly gain points as you play the game, or you can just outright buy more points. The points allow you to buy new characters, but when you look at it someone who pays and someone who doesn't are indistinguishable.

That being said one thing I think would be a neat experiment would be the idea of the Humble Indie bundle. give the player the game for free and then severel levels of IAP. They would not be needed, but they allow the player to pay if they like the game. You could even go as far as to mimic the tier idea used in Kickstarter. maybe give people some concept art if they pay one dollar, but a new costume if they pay five dollars.

End Rant