Competition Feedback

[sim]

I have played almost all of the entries — Asteroyds by @HyroVitalyProtago is a such a huge piece of work that will take me some time to integrate and play. In the mean time I am posting feedback for all your other entries.

EDIT Time Winders doesn’t need to be re-sent. I just need to learn to paste it properly

Thanks to everyone who submitted. Every entry has been a great deal of fun to play with and explore. I’ve been really blown away by just how good every single entry is.

Note, this is just feedback from the time I spent with each game. We haven’t yet made the decision about which ones will initially appear in Codea Play, or in which order, and so on.

Asteroyds by @HyroVitalyProtago

• Overview: Re-creation of the Asteroyds board game by Ystari
• Extremely deep gameplay
• Integrated rules, character art
• Great opening
• Unfortunately we can not distribute this as part of the competition. It contains property owned by Ystari

Time Winders by Peter Royle

• Overview: Time-manipulating puzzle game
• Very fun idea, easy to learn.
• Drag mechanic works very well
• Game state is very obvious in the form of ticks for “solved” planets, making it easy to see what to tackle next
• Time slider is great. Dotted lines behind ships make things very clear.
• Was disappointed that there weren’t more levels — I was having fun
• Would consider locking the game to LANDSCAPE_ANY orientation — portrait doesn’t seem to fit some of the instructions
• Changing orientations mid-game causes issues, would at least set it to lock to initial orientation

BLOCKade Runners by Tony Stedt

• Overview: This is a cross-over between Breakout and Space Invaders
• Great use of sprites
• Simple idea based on breakout example, takes concepts from other projects and uses them well
• Should allow touch-anywhere to start instead of having to tap the start text
• When the level changes the ball should be reset at the player position instead of continuing along its path
• Would consider allowing a second touch to “interrupt” the first touch. That is, you should not have to release your finger on one side of the screen to move in the other direction. Always use the latest touch rather than the first.

Bomber by Dan Pollard

• Overview: Timing-based bomb dropping to level cities
• I think the opening screen looks brilliant. Great colour, font, title.
• Simple timing-based game mechanic. Easy to learn, but punishing when you make a mistake (in a good way). Rewards planning ahead.
• Really like the integration of the standard Codea buttons (bottom bar). Gives it a unified feel.
• Could be a fun project to improve the building graphics with some nice random procedural algorithm.
• Would be good to add particle effects for building explosion

Flower Generator by Ipad41001

• Overview: A flower card maker that ties into the screenshot feature
• Sweet idea. Well implemented.
• When the screen says “Take a picture” I would suggest drawing a circle behind the camera icon.
• Suggest changing the name to “Flower Maker” — “Generator” sounds a bit technical
• Suggest adding a gradient background with a nicer colour, can use a small image and stretch it out with smooth()

Help the Fish by Nat Pryce

• Overview: A physics-driven catching game that encourages exploration
• Beautiful use of music (uses ABCplayer), art and design. Emoji works great as the fish and obstacles.
• Clever reeling-in mechanic
• Very nice menu and tutorial
• Novel use of physics
• Left / right movement rapidly accelerates and often feels a bit out of control. Is there any reason the left / right movement couldn’t be proportional to finger movement? Or even directly positioned by touching the character?
• Character acceleration makes line extend. Is this intentional? What is the reason for this behaviour? I feel like it lets down and otherwise great mechanism.
• Reeling in the line (dragging up) could make a sound. Sometimes it feels as if I’m not having much effect, a sound would alleviate this and reinforce the fact that I’m doing something.
• When the line catches a fish it swims off-screen with it like crazy, is this intentional? It feels a bit strong.
• Fish sometimes swim over grass

Orb-Bits by Mark Sumner

• Overview: Lunar lander in polar coordinates
• Great name
• Simple goal
• Game is pretty hard. I think getting to a planet should re-fuel your ship.
• Level transitions are fantastic
• Not obvious that you can fly through a planet from below it. This makes things easier (though still quite difficult).
• Why does it beep when you start on a planet? It feels a bit ominous.

Plane Crazy by Mark Sumner

• Overview: Top down flight simulator
• Incredible use of the accelerometer controls. Great feeling of actually flying.
• Scrolling landscape is beautiful
• Really nice flight instruments, they look amazing and integrate well with the standard buttons.
• Nice tutorial / pilot log book. Well done.
• Cool engine sounds
• Nice attention to detail — deserts, beaches, grassy fields. Gives a feeling of exploration.
• Mini-map is hard to read — it would be nice if the plane’s direction was more clear on the mini-map. I found myself circling just to try to spot the direction of movement.

Space Puzzle 8 by juaxix

• Overview: An exploding match-3 game set in space
• Great controls, tilt to aim, touch to fire.
• Great style. Very creative use of sprites.
• Right-side menu (space ships holding up the numbers) is awesome
• Excellent level transitions
• Boss level!
• Sometimes the aim feels a bit off — shot doesn’t go in direction of arrow exactly

TouchLine by James Frost

• Overview: A very clever multi-touch avoidance game
• Unique multi-touch mechanic that works brilliantly
• Beautiful background with drifting stars
• Love the warnings at the edge of the screen before the orange spheres enter
• Arcade style high score entry really suits
• Circles render with slight shading, nice touch
• Nice looking power-ups, emoji?
• Shield feels like the weakest power-up
• Highscore 19161

[Nat]

@Simeon: thanks for the feedback.

“Left / right movement rapidly accelerates and often feels a bit out of control. Is there any reason the left / right movement couldn’t be proportional to finger movement? Or even directly positioned by touching the character?”

The controls act like an analogue joystick in the x and y direction. Starting from the touch point, the more you slide your finger to the left/right, the faster the player moves leftward/rightward (up to a maximum speed). Similarly upward & downward control reeling in and out.

I chose this control scheme, rather than proportional to finger movement, because you can play without repeatedly stroking the screen. I found it easier to use when holding the iPad and made my thumbs ache less.

I chose not to have the character move to where you tapped because the iPad screen is too large for that to be comfortable when holding it in two hands. Maybe I’ve got short fingers!

I guess the controls need a bit more explanation or maybe some visible cue.

“Character acceleration makes the line extend. Is this intentional? What is the reason for this behaviour? I feel like it lets down and otherwise great mechanism.”

It’s an unfortunate effect of the physics engine that I’ve not been able to work around. Because the engine is a rigid body simulation I implemented reeling in and out by modelling the rope as small rigid spheres separated by distance joints and then change the distance of the joints to give the line natural length. The joints have to be a springy so that the joints didn’t become permanently distorted when the distance was changed or the player moved. (Try changing the frequency and dampening of the joints in the Angler class to 0 to see what I mean).

I’d love to find a better way of simulating a line that can be made longer & shorter.

“Reeling in the line (dragging up) could make a sound. Sometimes it feels as if I’m not having much effect, a sound would alleviate this and reinforce the fact that I’m doing something.”

Good idea. I’ll see if I can generate a good reeling sound.

“When the line catches a fish it swims off-screen with it like crazy, is this intentional? It feels a bit strong.”

I’ve greatly reduced the effect and it is a big improvement.

“Fish sometimes swim over grass”

I’ve not been able to reproduce this. If you hook a fish you can pull it out of the water but you have to put it back to release it from the line. Is this what you mean? Or have you seen fish swim out the top of the water when not hooked onto a line?

I have plans for making the underwater action “wavy” by rendering to a mesh & playing with texture coords. That might make it more obvious that a fish has been pulled out of the water. Some water-splash particle effects might help too.

[Ipad41001]

Updates posted. May need help (from everyone) on a better color choice (went blue to green).

I cheesy highlight the picture button now.

As far as the name Flower Maker is fine. I happened to call it Flower Generator in my post. The code name for development was 13 flowers which by coincidence is a Chinese film being released in the states now about the Japanese occupation of China.

[Zoyt]

I’m entering the next one. I’ like feedback on my librarys and apps.

[sim]

@Nat

“I chose this control scheme, rather than proportional to finger movement, because you can play without repeatedly stroking the screen.”

I agree about the left/right control scheme now. I played it some more last night and once I got the hang of it I found I could be quite gentle with my movements.

Sorry to hear about the physics causing the rope to drag out. I’ll ask @John if he has any ideas.

“I’ve greatly reduced the effect and it is a big improvement.”

That sounds good! That was probably when I felt least in-control.

“Or have you seen fish swim out the top of the water when not hooked onto a line?”

I’ve seen them just floating over the water. It only happened twice, though.

@Ipda41001

13 Flowers is really nice. I really like the core idea. Something that gave me more “ownership” over the flower would be nice — I think your idea has a lot of room for growth.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with it as it stands. It’s one of the two entries I found most exciting in terms of room-for-growth (The other was Dan Pollard’s Bomber). Both of them have huge potential for creating fun procedural art algorithms (Dan’s for cityscapes, yours for flowers). Time Winders may fall into this category as well, for procedural planets.

By the way is your alias @Ipda41001 or @Ipad41001? I see it on Twitter as the latter, but here it is the former. Is it just a typo?

[HyroVitalyProtago]

@Simeon
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me, because some things are not explicate like “when you want disable a choice , touch on top of the column of your bad choice”, etc …

[Ipad41001]

Ipda41001 is sort of a typo (I’m assuming that autocorrect did that), it also make from cross site search more anonymous. I wouldn’t mind if it is possible for it to be changed to Ipad41001 here. I didn’t switch to a new id because I didn’t want to break the content stream.

I had plans for saving and crossbreeding the flowers but haven’t put the effort in. It’s the polished bar. I can crank out fun little concepts, the polishing process made me remember why concepts are more fun than work.

[peteroyle]

Thanks for the feedback Simeon, I’m sure you well know how valuable it is to all of us.

As you’ll probably find over time, the drag implementation can be fiddly if you drag too fast or stray too far from the center of the cells. That’s been significantly improved now.

I’ll have to look into the orientation thing a bit. I’ve got “supportedOrientations(LANDSCAPE_ANY)” in the setup method, and I can’t seem to get to portrait readily so there might be some kind of temperamental bug in there somewhere. Maybe I’m changing supportedOrientations somewhere without realising it.

Nice to hear the lack of levels was a problem :). I’ve got 8 now and working on more, plus a level select screen.

Lately I’ve replaced the concept of UFOs and planets with planets and wormholes, both of which are procedurally generated. Though I have also been experimenting with just using one of the rock sprites for the planets because the professionally-pushed pixels do lend an air of quality. Still deciding on that one.

I’ve even renamed the current version yet again!

Can’t wait to see the winning entries, looks like a pretty good list of choices!

Cheers.

[sim]

@peteroyle put your supportedOrientations(LANDSCAPE_ANY) call outside of setup() in the top level scope. Just put the call at the top of the main file, outside of any function.

Because setup() has to be called after the render view is created we can’t hard-lock the orientation after that point, if it has already started up in portrait. However if you place it in top-level scope Codea can ensure that the orientation is locked before the view is created.

[peteroyle]

Ah yep I see what you mean now Simeon. Thanks, that’s sorted it.

[Badger]

Hey Simeon,
Thanks for the feedback on Bomber. Your suggestions for future development are spot on and I intend to have a bash at doing just that once I learn how to do it !
I know the guys and gals on here will give me plenty of invaluable guidance as I hit stumbling blocks.
Once again, great app, and I’m learning all the time.
Dan

[frosty]

@Simeon Thanks for the feedback on TouchLine you’re right that the powerups are rendered with emoji

I’d agree that shield is the weakest. It’s also the least ‘fun’, as you don’t really get to do anything extra while you haven’t (and the way the game’s written at the moment, another powerup won’t appear until you’ve used it). I think on the whole the game could do with more time refining the difficulty level, and adding new gameplay mechanics. You commented on the orange spheres, and I really like them too - more variations like that could potentially be really fun

Thanks for commenting on the starfield, too - I’ll have to post the code for it on here soon. Did you try rotating your iPad on the title screen?

[juaxix]

Thanks @Simeon I enjoy coding with Codea like a child! , for @Ipad41001
check this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9WMaYLPRJI
a flower generator inside!! (at 1:00)
makes me remind of you haha!..hey, you can make this game in Codea already, mixing code from @Ipad41001 → flower , @Nat → string , from me and @Simeon → side scroller, clouds, particles, etc. , and the rest just playing around hahaha

[Ipad41001]

Nice, I do think the cute sphere is under served.