Alley Avenger Gets Better And Better! v1.6 Released!

More levels, another boss, and better graphics and sounds! Among the updates this time around, the following include:

Check out the latest updates here!

• Rainbow levels!! For the elite few who reach level 45, be prepared to go on something resembling an acid trip.
• Beat enough levels to fight the elusive AbsentDigit (tickle me impressed if you get the reference 😉 )
• New graphics and sound effects. Yeah baby!
• Bug fixes, per usual.

I would like to take a moment and thank everyone who has played this game. It means a lot to me, given the amount of time I’ve invested in making this game possible, that many of you play and enjoy the game, despite it’s continued unfinished state. I hope to continue making this, and any future game of mine, a game that I myself would play. Game on, everyone!

A New Game Is On The Horizon – Code Name: West Wars

After a fair bit of experience making Alley Avenger, I’ve decided to a promising fresh project with a new genre. Strategy games! Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love Civilization 5. It’s a turn-based 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) that never gets boring! Building up cities, being diplomatic with neighbors, creating an epic military in the age-old struggle to be ruler of the world…it’s such a fun experience!

On that same note, I love mobile games. As a frequenter to /r/AndroidGaming, I found there to be a huge void where good strategy games should be. Many users have requested strategy games, to which the community would respond with options that were either horribly implemented (Civ Revolution 2), had unbearable controls (FreeCiv), or were actually promising Indie games that are perpetually in alpha. Every post that requested a good strategy game looked grim…the pickings were slim! (Did I just rhyme?)

Well, with that said, my next game was clear. I needed to attempt a strategy game…Code name: West War (literally, I’ve been writing the game code with this name 🙂 ). I haven’t gotten far, but I’ve already rallied another developer and fellow Civ 5 fan in my office to join my cause. We’ve already made a cardboard cutout “simplified” version of this in board-game-form and hashed out all the rules for Phase 1.

I won’t reveal much so far, but I WILL say that we’re aiming for the following:

• Turn-based hexagons, with a focus on hexagon development. Each hex will have 6 different resource triangles which can be built upon.
• Western setting.
• Entire game playable in portrait mode with just one thumb.
• Online play-with-your-friends.
• 99 cent price tag.

A few nice-to-haves (which we are giving serious consideration since the Unity engine supports a fairly painless way to do these):

• Google Cardboard / Occulus Rift support for hands-free virtual reality!
• Cross-platform play (PC, possibly Mac, possibly Web).

Below is a screenshot from current development on the progress I’ve done in the past couple of months. More to come in the future!

Release A Game Early Or Not? That Is The Question!

Early last year I ran into the conundrum of releasing my game, Alley Avenger, early for the public to play. Should I wait for a polished product or should I go ahead, release something “kinda cool” and build from there. As it stands, I don’t seem to be the only one with this problem. Steam had, in recent years, began supporting developers by allowing them to advertise their partially-completed games as “Early Access”, and since then the practice of releasing barely playable games has gotten massively popular. Sure enough, many of these developers, after earning their money, lost all the incentive to finish their game, leaving many disappointed fans.

While the Android platform is a bit different than Steam, many of the same rules apply. I weighed the following pros and cons before deciding on whether to release my game or not:

PROS

• Get Visibility Sooner – If your game is good, people will notice and you will get a following.
• Testing Against a Wider Audience – Google Play allows for beta testing, but you have to require that every tester subscribe to your Google Group. There’s a large barrier there that many are unwilling to go through.
• Bragging Rights – As bad as it is, you have the ability to say “I have a game on Google Play”. Granted, there’s a LOT of crap out there, so it’s not hard to become published, but a half decent game will still be a cool little achievement which should, in turn, boost your enthusiasm.
• Motivation – Now that your game is out there and not in the final state you want it in (and people are playing it!), a fire is now lit under you. This can be good. It’s more than a pet project now.

CONS

• Bad Impressions – It’s important to note that a user’s initial impression of a game, if bad, can totally ruin it. Remember all those media outlets you advertised your partially finished game on? Well now advertising there won’t be as effective.
• Consumer Confidence – So now that you’ve done an early release, you will naturally be lumped into the category of “Developers Who Don’t Finish Their Games”. Many players are sour by previous experiences both on Steam’s Early Access and Google Play, and they don’t want to be your testers.
• No Turning Back – Your core game mechanic becomes locked in. Assuming you’re like me and don’t quit on projects, this is a huge milestone that is incredibly hard to turn back from. Changing a mechanic in the game that is heavily used can really annoy your existing user-base.

So in the end, as many of you know, I decided to release Alley Avenger early. Having no financial incentive in doing so, I wanted to simply release my first game for all my friends and family to see. As a first game and a small-time developer, it made sense. If I were a bit larger, or had a more highly anticipated game on the drawing board, then I may consider waiting.

Alley Avenger Update 1.5 Released!

Yeah baby! My largest release yet! A lot of fun ideas I’ve been playing with have finally made their way into Alley Avenger. Check it out!

• Clean up the alley with a brand new SHOTGUN! Shoot several bullets in a spread but with limited range (unless, of course, you upgrade!)
• Bosses now have health bars.
• Expanded levels so that there are now 5 before facing a boss (contrary to the 4 before). As such, there is now a total of 45 levels! Play-testing took me 2-3 hours to complete the game, so this added tons of new challenges and content.
• New achievements for new bosses.
• Lots of new powerups and abilities in the store. Level up your pistol and/or shotgun!
• New snazzy bird and tank graphics.
• New sound effects.
• Humorous “Advice” section on the play menu.

Alley Avenger is Live! Soft release available on the Google Play Store!

Finally! After much anticipation, Alley Avenger v1.2 is finally playable from the Google Play Store, and I’m excited! As a marketing strategy, I haven’t gone public with this yet, but it’s hard not to tell friends and family. Although it is now on the market, I’m considering this as a soft launch. The following features are available for the current release:

• 20 Playable Levels
• 2 Bosses (skull and tank)
• 5 Power-up/Abilities that can be purchased from the store
• Options to mute sound and music, as well as change the color of the current character
• Level Achievements – Finish a level without getting damage or destroy all objects
• Google Play Achievements – Unlock achievements from various accomplishments in game

Soon to come:

• Leaderboards (Google Play) – Compare number of Level Achievements with friends
• More Levels and Bosses
• More Abilities and Powerups
• Different Guns that have varying strengths and weaknesses
• Better graphics

Really looking forward to seeing how far this will go! Stay tuned!

Children – Natures Game Testers

The other day I was visiting my girlfriend’s cousins, two boys who are 3 and 5. These two kids love their iPads and play plenty of mobile games on them. It shocks me how well they do in these games too. Using touch as an interface for games has increased usability so much now, that younger generations are able to play video games more easily. It amazed me that the 5 year old, Luke, was struggling to use the mouse with my computer, yet the 3 year old (Chase) could navigate an iPhone with ease.

They were enthralled for a good 10 minutes. A new record!

Seeing Luke and Chase play demonstrates that children are people in their simplest form. Sounds stupid, right? Maybe it is…but what I’m trying to say is that, typically speaking, a 3 and 5 year old can’t read, figure out “intent”, or have preconceived notions when playing a game. They just…play. This leads me to believe that they are valuable to have as testers.

That said, every mess-up they do in the game has me second guess the functionality. Thanks to them, I’ve reworked the tutorial and added “swipe up to jump” to the game. Don’t underestimate using children as testers. They enjoy it, and I pay them back by owning them at wresting.

Battery Consumption in Corona SDK

I’ll throw my hands up and admit it! My current project is built from a couple of demos provided by Corona to get users more familiar with the product. While I assumed that Corona would have the best algorithm for the job, I recently learned I was dead wrong.

(Pretend this is an Android 🙂

Just yesterday, I started actual level design in preparation for the beta release of my game. Once I finished 12 levels, I gave the game to my girlfriend to try out. She isn’t much of a gamer, and was able to finish all the levels with only a couple health upgrades, which told me I might need to up the difficulty a bit. Bug wise, there were only a couple noticeable things of which I already knew about. All in all, I was satisfied with my girlfriend’s play-through at this point. It was when the game was closed and she handed the phone back to me when I realized…the battery had drained 30% in the 20 minutes that she played!

I quickly scrambled to find a guide to narrow down the issue. Searching the Corona SDK site, I found this article on Performance and Optimization, which I firmly believe is something every Corona developer should read before publishing a game to the market!

Regarding battery, it was noted to minimize the usage of the following:

1. Network traffic
2. GPS
3. Accelerometer
4. Disk read/writes

After some thought, it was clear the (4) was the trap I fell into. I used the demo Corona code to handle parallaxing in my environment, easily a trap that any beginner in Corona could fall into. In short, the code was fetching the image from disk, creating the object off the right side of the screen, scrolling it across the screen, and then destroying it. I had multiple background images doing this, as well as the destructible objects that flew at the player, so it was obvious that all the disk reads were taxing the phones battery life.

Lessons Learned: When developing a solution to a problem, keep in mind the inefficiencies and try to re-use objects and functionality when you can. While “brute forcing” a solution may be the easy way out, you will eventually need to redo it a more elegant algorithm. Don’t be lazy…challenge yourself a little!

Don’t forget to check out my game to see what I’ve been talking about! Alley Avenger

Kicking off my blog! – Dev Tools and Current State

Greetings readers! I’ve began this blog in an attempt to log all my thoughts and ideas down regarding the games I will be developing. Close to a year ago, I started a project (currently code-named “Hack ‘n Slash”). It’s been a work in progress, off and on with minor distractions taking me away from developing (i.e. buying a house!), but I’m now at the point where I can confidently say I will be publishing the beta of the game soon!

That said, my initial promised date to close friends and family has been March 20th, but seeing as that date is creeping up on me more quickly than anticipated, I will probably have to extend it another month. In two months prior to the go-live, I’ve acquired an invaluable asset to my team of one. His name is Jonathan Karavas and he’s assisting me with the graphic design work.

Seeing as I’m a bit late in the game, I’ll note which software I’m using to develop the game.

• Corona SDK – Powerful and easy-to-use software which utilizes LUA for development. If you’re unfamiliar with LUA, it’s essentially JavaScript where variables are dynamically typecasted and defined. Great tool with an extensive library, though it does have some shortcomings (keep reading).
• NotePad++ – Unfortunately, Corona has no IDE for development, which leaves me with this next best option. Debugging happens through a separate console view (provided by Corona when you build the game) with “print” commands. Very archaic.
• Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator – When used together, these tools can be very powerful. I picked up how to use Illustrator when I thought I would be the only graphic designer. Now that Jon has come aboard, the skills I learned help me to “speak his language” better.