Hi!

I'm making a simple 2D-space shooter where everybody who is playing the game is cooperating on defeating an enemy population. For every enemy ship you shoot down, this population should decrease by 1, and it should increase according to some specified growth rate (1.01 per month/year/week/whatever).

What I need is to be able to report kills made in-game to a central system, and get the number of remaining individuals in the population to each device playing the game.

I plan on uploading the "kill count" in bursts to lessen the load on what ever server is getting these reports, and will use some prediction of population growth on each device so I don't have to poll the server too often to get the remaining population count.

If the problem is unclear, please let me know so I can go into more detail


I have access to a personal domain (but no possibility to run timed scripts / server side applications on this webserver), and a database. I know enough PhP to interact with the database, and can do simple arithmetics in PhP. Any good ideas to how I can solve this problem?

My current plan looks like this:

The devices report kill count once per day to a PhP script, which stores this in a database, and updates a "population-file" whenever this happens.
The devices can get the population count frim a PhP script which reads this file.
I have no idea how to fix population growth.

Any feedback is appreciated!

[THE INTRO!]

THE INTRO!

I figured I would try maintaining a devlog for the first time, to help motivate myself to keep working on this game.

I also need to get some of my thoughts down on paper!

For now it's in a very early, but playable state. Graphics are all placeholder for now, mostly because I'm a programmer with limited artistry skills.




THE CONCEPT!

I want to make a casual minimalist dungeon crawler where you play for a couple of minutes and then put the game down. Each session is a single "run", and dying is a natural part of playing. You gain experience and coins while you play, which are added to your grand total once you die.

The next time you enter the dungeon, you start of at the character level where you died, and there is little goal in the game besides character progression and unlocking new characters.

In short: Play -> Progress -> Die -> Play Again -> Progress further.


THE GAMEPLAY!

The dungeon is built up by hexagons, and you only have 2 options available at any time: Move to an adjacent hex, or use your characters special ability.

Enemies in the dungeon try to jump towards you, and if you land on a tile that is adjacent to an enemy, you punch each other with your favorite punching-device.




THE PROGRESS!

Done:

• Basic Input and movement
• Picking up objects, fighting enemies
• Basic game design

Next up:

• A main menu
• Special abilities - design and implementation of 3 character classes
• Graphical style
• A name for the game
• Audio

You can test the game here if you want to.

Any feedback is good feedback!

I just got to borrow an iPad 1 to test my game on. I've got a iPad retina myself and the game runs smooth there.

I load up the game on the old iPad and it runs at 10FPS when I try to disable half the objects that are being rendered.

I see no way of making this game run on the old iPad without sacrificing basically the entire graphical style.

Fuck the iPad 1.

PS: Does anyone know if you can release iPad games for only iPad 2 and 3 (retina) ? ._.

PS. I think we're going to try the $40 facebook ad thing soon. I'll try and post back here with results, if anyone is interested.

I don't own an iDevice so I can't test your game, but I would be very interested in hearing about the results of a 40$ ad on facebook

Cool thread! Want to dissect this one sentence pitch for me? =)

GOBS! - A colorful physics puzzler that will leave you smiling from ear to ear!



Would you want to try a game based on this description?

You can try it out at oyvindbyhring.net/gobsBeta for reference points.

These are really really good. Beats photorealism any day :}

wait what? Chrono Trigger had that? seriously? When I was a kid and I played Chrono Trigger I remember I never finished it out of frustration because I couldn't get past some monster.

...i guess that explains a lot. haha

Well if you couldn't get past that monster (because it killed you), then it couldn't have been the one where you were supposed to lose, could it

I hate it when the solution to a boss battle is to lose it. That is how *not* to do it.

Haha, I had a bad experience with this once. I can't remember what game it was, but I think it was some JRPG where you could basically stay alive forever in a boss fight you had to lose to continue with the story.

After 30 minutes I just gave up and started attacking my own guys out of spite, and got pretty pissed when I found out this what was I was supposed to do all along haha.

Looked at the video of the control test and noticed there are either lights or textures missing when I run the game.

Screenshot of how it looks:

Looks great!

Answered survey, just replying to get notifications on updates

New version now up for testing

Any feedback is good feedback and will be greatly valued

Hi, I had fun with the game.

...

Hope any of this helps!

Thanks for the well written reply!

I don't like the randomness either, and that's definately one of the things about the game that I'm looking for a way to change. The problem is that I'd like to keep the realistic physics, because that's one of the few things that makes this game different from others =\

I also completely agree on the tetris shapes. They are really just a remnant of an old idea, and once it's pointed out I see that it doesn't make alot of sense.

Hi!

I've been working on an action puzzler for a couple of weeks now but I feel like I'm stagnating in terms of gameplay development and I need some feedback and input.

A lot of the sound effects and the music is not in place yet, and the artwork is up for some refinement, so try to ignore those faults

Update here-o!

I'm more content with the gameplay now, but need some input on the balance. Especially from people who haven't played the game before.

Music and a lot of sound effects still not in place, and the intructions are a little old (but who reads intructions anyway, right?).



The game is a variation of the "match colored balls to remove them from the screen"-genre, and you can try it out at:

http://www.oyvindbyhring.net/gobsBeta/

If you could take some time and try it out that would be great!

Some questions to consider:

• Is the game fun to play?
• Does the game feel too random?
• Do rounds last too long?
• Is there anything you feel is missing?

Other feedback is ofcourse also great!

EDIT november 8: Removed the game for a while, it will be back up in a later stage of development.

EDIT november 14: Added a new version!

Not code, but code-related.

I'm making a game that looks like this:



Where the objects dissapear when 4 or more of the same color are touching.

I had a bug in my neighbor-checking-code, and opened up google to search for "Unity + balls touching".
Laughed a little, closed the Google window and went back to draw a figure instead.

How about changing the color of the border to green (because it's a more positive color) and animating of one of these as a quick fade-in in at the end (after the skull is max size) or something?.

Anything that makes the skull seem positive instead of negative, really.

This is cool!

I'll be there, either alone or with my brother if I can get him to come

Is there anywhere I can read more about the Oslo Mega Games Collective? A website?

(PS: There is no way for people who are not invited to join the Facebook event  )

It's hard to give feedback with no demo or videos, but it looks very well thought through and the visuals are pretty

When you tap building segments do you tap first one then the other, or both at the same time (index and middle finger at the same time)?

Played through both levels: Silver/Bronze =\

1.) Yes. Nice and short tutorial.
2.) I can't say I feel very strongly about it in either way. I'm more interested in gameplay and mechanics than story in platformer-esque games.
3.) I blame myself when I die Except when I die to the flying things on level 2. I didn't understand their behavior.

I liked the 'up in the air' part of level 2 the best. Definately got that Sonic the Hedgehog vibe in some parts (this is very good!).

I'm not so sure about the barrel-like obstacles that you have to punch your way through. They felt kinda annoying because they ruined my flow.

The visuals were nice too!

It was kinda fun :p Also cool to see someone else making games in Processing (Even though I've moved on to Unity now  )

Ill answer the questions now.

1 - Yes. Yes it is.
2 - Yeah it was pretty difficult, but that's also what made it fun. Didn't feel unfair.
3 - I'm a fan of minimalism, so thumbs up on this point.
4 - The thruster sound was a bit aggressive. If you smoothen up the beggining of the sound to make that 'thk' noise less hard it would be better I think.
5 - Only the obvious one: Being able to fly off the screen feels weird. You might want to add a small sign saying where you are and how farr off the screen you are when this happens.

Hi!

I made a small game/interactive experience over the weekend and I'd like to show it off. I think it's better if I don't say too much about it before you try it out.



http://oyvindbyhring.net/runaroundaround.html

Is this interesting? I think I want to create a series of games like this as an art project.