[Edit - Decided it was a good idea to add some simple instructions before the game starts specifically identifying the low/high jump buttons and the descend mechanic. Thanks!]

Thanks for the comment!

It's funny, the controls were revised many times throughout development.

Originally I did have left/right buttons, but as development progressed, I felt it didn't fit right the game style right and switched over to the 3 grid buttons.

As for jumping, oh boy.  Originally I had 3 levels of jump height and you had to press to "charge" the jump (a progress bar would fill) and release to jump.  I really liked this mechanic but it obviously would never have worked in such a fast-paced game.

I've debated over specifically pointing out the two different jump buttons, but I was hoping the slow-moving start as well as the icons on the buttons would be enough to give the player time to identify them. I might change this though.

Anyway, thanks again for playing!

Edit - Decided it was a good idea to add some simple instructions before the game starts specifically identifying the low/high jump buttons and the descend mechanic. Thanks!

[Plunder Peril]

Plunder Peril - Can you jump, dodge, and loot your way to the top of the leaderboard?

Links
Free on Google Play: [Link]
Trailer:


Website: [ForTheLoss.org]

About
Hey everyone, excited to announce that after years of making web-based Flash games, I've finally broken into a new market with my first Android game, Plunder Peril!

If you require a simple yet challenging time-passer, Plunder Peril is the answer.  The premise is simple - from a top-down perspective your only goal is to guide your character around and collect any and all coins you see – oh, and to survive for as long as possible.

Jump, dodge, and loot your way to the best possible score you can achieve.  Submit to the leaderboard to see how well you rank against others in the world!

If you enjoy a good challenge accompanied by fast-paced gameplay, give Plunder Peril a go!

Screenshots


Press Material:
I also compiled some screenshots, information, etc into a convinient zip file for anyone wanting to post about the game.  I appreciate any and all publicity and thank you!

[Press Material]

Thanks for any feedback / ratings / publicity / just playing the game!  Really appreciate it!

[Combat Racing]

Hey guys.

So I've been hard at work on my next game, Combat Racing.  This will be my first game on mobile devices (using Java/LibGDX and targeting the Android platform).



I've previously developed many Flash/web-based games, and this will be the spiritual sequel to some of my previous racing-based games (Weapons on Wheels and Weapons on Wheels 2 if you want to look them up).

Anyway, some images so far, some a bit dated:

• Main Menu
• Car Selection
• 2-Player Mode
• Map of Level 1
• Map of Level 2
• Map of Level 3

Some footage of what the game looks like as of now:




Timelapse of me working on level 3:




A very broad idea of what's left to do:

• Finish the first level-pack (create remaining levels)
• Design the graphics for the next three level-packs
• Build the levels for the next three level-packs
• Implement the boss-car races for each level-pack
• Implement functionality to upgrade car between levels
• Implementsave/load functionality as well as functionality to properly unlock cars/levels
• Many miscellaneous bug fixes, tweaks, sound additions, music additions, etc...

That's it for now, for more updates check out my site (http://fortheloss.org), my Twitter page (http://twitter.com/FTLRalph), or just check back here.

this subforum isn't for how to get a job. it's about running a business, selling and marking indie games. i mean, loosely, both involve "money" but, still, i think you are in the wrong place

My bad, like you said, they both involve "money" so I kinda figured this was the place, not sure where else would be good outside maybe General.

Hey guys, just looking for some input.

I'm a recent computer science graduate and have been (and still am) developing Flash/Java web/mobile games on my own for the past 5 years (portfolio for reference: http://rdamiano.com).

The past few months I've been looking for a job that would pretty much allow me to do what I do now every day, except get paid for it. (And no, I don't think I'm cut out for just working independently for myself to get by, at least not just yet.)

Anyway, like I said, past few months I've been looking and have been rarely finding new openings whose qualifications I would satisfy.  When I do it's the same song and dance of sending out my resume/portfolio and never hearing back.  (I live in the greater NYC area too so job openings in this field seem to be slightly more frequent than other parts of the country, maybe outside California.)

I was just wondering if any of you guys have any stories/advice for such a predicament.  Thanks!

Hey guys, running into an issue here.

I have a map made of tiles, each tile is either a full wall or not (for the time being).  I also have a free-moving object.

To detect if this free-moving object is hitting a wall, I simply check the center point, for example:

Code:

if (isWall(x + originX, y + originY) == true)
// is in a wall tile

Now here's my issue.  How can I figure out how to accurately "bounce" the object off of any given tile when all I have is if the current x, y position is or is not in a wall tile?

For example, if the object is going straight up and collides with a wall tile I want it to bounce and start moving down.  But if the object is moving diagonally northwest and enters a wall, how do I know whether to bounce the object off to the south or to the east?

I figure you all know what bouncing looks like, but here's an image.

I feel like I might need to mess around with detecting the collision normals and applying them to the object's velocity somehow, but I'm not sure how.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

Thanks for the advice guys.

I was playing around with how to align the tiles with the axes before making this post, event when aligned with the road was "snapped" to the edge of the axes I was still having issues.

I eventually tried something new and it seems to be just the solution.  I had always had the road at the very edge and then had the grass "highlight" in the adjacent tile.  By squishing everything into the same tile, it seems to be much, much more neater.

http://i.imgur.com/xQLP9Nd.png

@z84c00 - I also considered that, but for the sake of performance on mobile devices, I'd rather not have such blending during runtime.

So I must admit, I'm new to working with pixel art and tilesets.  I thought it'd be a simple process, but I'm starting to rethink that.

The issue I'm running into is this.  The sheer amount of tiles required to display things is getting too large and complex/messy.

Consider the following image with a quick unique tile count (I may have missed a few here and there): http://i.imgur.com/1ZeNzyi.png vs. http://i.imgur.com/08JG2ST.png

This is only for the top-left corner of a roadway, I have to (nearly) double that sum to have more tiles for the top-right corner and then double that number for the bottom two corners.  This leaves me with about 40 64x64 tiles for just the very basics of a level (no other details or terrains, etc).

That's kind of eating up a lot of texture space.

I can see my issue is stemming from my use of shadow/borders used on the roadway edges.  This results in a simple 45 degree turn taking up to 3 or 4 tiles to display.

Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is to see if anyone here has any advice on how to tackle an issue like this.  Is this just how this technique works out or am I simply going to have to limit my use of details like this?  Maybe seeing similar tilesets to what I have shown above that have a cleaner solution would help if anyone has any.

Thanks for all of the replies guys.  Using the links above I've implemented a decent fixed-timestep solution, and it seems pretty simple now that I understand the basics behind it.

The stuttering is still present though, oddly enough.  Even running at a solid 60fps, one item on the screen, and a fixed deltaTime - my object seems to move across the screen and periodically "jump" a bit, a small amount but it's noticeable and frequent enough.

I'm not sure if it's just completely normal and won't be noticeable in actual gameplay (I'm looking too much into it) or if something funky is still going on.

Hey guys, just want to say I really appreciate the replies and enjoyed reading through all of this.

I love how this thread derailed into a discussion about physics engines though

Thanks for the replies guys, I think this fixed timestep thing might be what I'm looking for.

I've always had a little bit of difficulty understanding deltaTime and it's uses, so excuse this next question as I feel it's a bit naive, but what exactly is meant by "fixed timestep"?  I've read some things here and there throughout the past few months and nothing I've seen gives a really clear example of it / contradicts other definitions.

For comparison, what I'm doing now is the following (I'm using LibGDX which seems to cap framerate on it's own at 60fps):

Code:

_currentScreen.update(Math.min(Gdx.graphics.getDeltaTime(), MAX_DELTA_TIME));

With MAX_DELTA_TIME as 1 / 30.0f.

Thanks!

Hey guys.

I've asked a similar question before, but for some reason I just can't seem to get this right and it's getting bothersome.

My issue is with using deltaTime (seconds) with multiplying.

I've been using this method (for example, applying friction - with maxFPS at 60):

Code:

_velocity.scl((float)Math.pow(0.98f, deltaTime * Game.maxFPS));

Now, while it seems to work, my object seems to stutter a bit moving across the screen.  I'm not 100% certain if this is the issue, but I'd like to try another method.

Doing it this way is another method I've seen, so I tried it:

Code:

_velocity.scl((float)Math.pow(0.02f, deltaTime));

But this doesn't seem to give a similar result (friction is applied a lot more heavily).

Just curious as to what I'm missing, I really want to understand this.

Thanks!

I really like the suggestions, good stuff.

pmprog - From what I understand, it seems you're suggesting using "pieces" of a track to hold data and putting them together to create a complete track.  I hadn't thought about this, it would probably make building tracks easier in the long-run (even open the possibility of a level-editor for users) but getting it all set up accurately seems a bit difficult (having each track piece hold correct data for entry/exit point, walls, "offroad" areas, etc).

epcc - I really liked your idea of sorting by lap/checkpoint/distance to next checkpoint, hadn't thoughout about using that last sort (distance).

All in all, good suggestions.  It seems I may have to dive in and start trying things to see what works best.  The thing that keeps making me uneasy, though, are multiple paths in a track, it adds a bit more difficulty to this than just having a single linear path.

So a current project has me working on a 2D racing game and thinking ahead, I'd like to see if any of you have some input on this (concerning other AI cars).

What are some possible methods to accomplish the following:

• Track ranking of the cars during a race (updating in real time as you pass another car, etc)
• Prevent any illegal laps being completed (going backwards, etc)
• Simple AI navigation

I've created racing games before in the past and I always got held up by these issues.  My answer always seemed to be a bit brute force, but what I did was this:

• Have many small, invisible rectangle markers along the track and register an increment of some sort when a car touched one (use the sum of these increments for each car to determine rank).  This would work, but it'd be a bit wonky if cars touched the same marker at the same time.  Not to mention if the rectangles were too far apart, the update would be a bit delayed.
• Similar to the above solution, another set of rectangle markers were used to set and unset "flags" making sure a car was going to the right direction and not going backwards or something.  This got a bit convoluted when I introduced multiple paths in a track, though.
• This solution seems okay, but I'm curious if anyone has anything better.  I just had a bunch of nodes along the track and the AI would steer to the next node in the sequence.  Sometimes, though, the AI would not get close enough to register the node as a "hit" and would end up turning around and going backwards to hit it.

I feel like there would be a less messy and more reliable method to accomplish these tasks.

Any input appreciated!

Wow, no comments?  Just wanted to thank you for this novel of yours.  As a recent computer science undergraduate with a half-dozen sponsored Flash games under my belt, this is just the type of thing I needed to read.

I'd love to post the code, and I know I should, but there's no simple breakdown of it, it was a wall of nonsense.

I've used SAT before a few times and am in the process of porting over AS3 code into Java to see what happens here.  If I feel it's not too CPU-intensive (this is for mobile devices) I may end up keeping it.

Are you currently using a pixel-perfect overlap detection system like Game Maker's, or some kind of physics engine with vector shapes?

I wasn't doing anything terribly special, no engines or real physics.  I was using a single point at the player's origin as the only point I used to detect which tile he was on.  The tile was either empty, a solid wall, or one of the four possible slopes.

I thought it was as simple as "if the player is on a slope tile, calculate the x/y/hypotenuse and move him out of it" but it never turned out smooth or reliable.

So I'm definitely having a much harder time with this than I thought. Simple diagonal walls in a tile-based top-down game.  (All sloped walls are 45-degree angles - top-left, top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left).

How exactly is this handled efficiently?  It seems no matter what I try I keep having the player moving around erratically or getting stuck in walls.  For simplicity's sake, I'm just checking the origin point of the player for collisions, not any kind of bounding shape.

Right now, I have a very long and annoying piece of code that checks 1) if the player is entered into a sloped tile and 2) what direction he's moving.

Then, depending on these values, I can determine if he's "moving into" a slope and then do some annoying math to figure out how far up the x-axis he should be moved and how far up the y-axis he should be moved to get him out of the slope accurately.

Thing is, it doesn't even work a little, with very jagged movements and whatnot.

Long story short (too late), it doesn't seem like it's worth doing sloped tiles for a top-down game like this, unless I'm over-complicated it or just outright doing things wrong.  I'm heavily considering just moving to actual polygons and something like SAT even though it seems like overkill for such a simple task.

Any help/advice is appreciated!

Thanks for the reply.  Interesting take on that first part, I've always seen people say the opposite (Java + native Android SDK is better than AIR - performance-wise at least).

I'm still in the planning stages though so I'm open to any suggestions.

Still curious about that PC thing though, if anyone wants to offer some input on that!

Thanks again.

[1) Excluding smartphones?]

Hey guys.

So I'm primarily coming from a Flash-based game development experience where the process pretty much went 1) create game, 2) get sponsorship, 3) release game. Pretty simple.

Now, I'm trying to move on to Java and a different business model (selling the actual game, not getting sponsored). I've come up with a few questions on stuff.

1) Excluding smartphones?
I'm primarily looking to develop a game I have in mind for Android devices (with LibGDX). Now, I have no prototype or artwork yet, but I'm fearing this particular game may not play well on "small" screens, even a typical 800x480 smartphone - it may just be too small of a viewport.

I could be wrong, but if I'm not, would it be very detrimental for me to exclude anything but tablets from downloading my game from the Play Store?

2) Selling on PC too?
My current plan is to release the game for free, but to offer one or two extra level packs at a set price. This will be simple with Android, since I see it all the time in games. However, I'm playing with the idea of releasing the game for PCs, too.

If I were to do such a thing, would this type of model be simple to accomplish (free download, but for more level packs, pay a set price)? As in, how do I accomplish this without something like the Play Store as the middle-man?

Thanks for any input, really appreciate it!

Really appreciate the feedback, guys.  I was almost set on just going for the pure top-down approach, but I think I've been convinced otherwise.

I think my problem is I'm thinking of things too "realistically."  For example, with the gun-holding issue, I'm figuring it's alright if it looks a bit "cartoony" (with, for example, the gun just kind of sticking out of the player, when facing forward/up, and having it rotate towards the mouse).