TH_AVOCADO MAYHEM

[spacefractal]

Looked on the video today, it's seen some time you got hit by first boss was impossible to avoid? That again I'm want to see 2-3 game modes to play. Property it's mightbeen only change required between easy and hard, that is as remove those stones in that mode or much fewer of them.

I'm do think the group of rain is intended :-).

[erico]

Hello Mental, the sprite rain is kind of like a shower that can fall during the heavier rain, it dosen´t flick and if it falls over you it stops your movement for the time of the splash. This one you can jump, to avoid it or get out of it. That is how I lost to the monkey boss on the video, it stopped me and I jumped only to land on the monkeys´s bike...

It is not the best environment feature, but it adds greatly to the difficulty, so I think I will keep it.

About the difficult levels...I really wanted to do an impossible to beat game without a lot of practice and work...but I smoothed out and things are quite easier now.
I´m still not sure about having difficult levels (easy/medium/hard). My attempt was to make the power ups the level selector. You get less points by collecting them but the game becomes really a lot easier with them.

I´m not sure the younger generations would come to like it, but the game is supposed to appeal to 30-40 years old people that want to buy something more hard-to-beat oldschool for their kids...and I hope they do!

Space, about the "impossible to escape the bat" situation, it just seems like that...probably couse I´m a bad player hehe.
All things are avoidable, but depending on how things are on screen and the environment, you have to really care on how you move around and how you position yourself. A slight mistake can cost a few hearts.

Now pretty much all sfx is done, saving for a couple of the ghost´s sounds.

[spacefractal]

Im was on mobile, so to avoid confuction, im rewrite this Again.

Im was just concern if some players can pull away without any difficulty (which could also add a lots of replay too). In Karma Miwa im did slow down a bit as well one live more and possible to practice the level. Here im do pretty sure power ups could help very much which could been as a option.

Also if im would do, then its could still been a easy/medium/hard version in your game, which some elements might not been happens in the easier version. That could been example the rain splash might not been happens, as well example the tree might not attack the player. There could also been fewer stone falling to been avoid. Its really just small adjustment that is really required and you would get a great replay value based on that.

Of course you should first show ending when completed all difficulty or "Levels". That one can really been done after first release.

Im did have the same issue in Greedy Mouse as well Karma Miwa.

of course you should get a simple bad ending on the easy version. Im also thinks that would also get more replay value of your game.

[erico]

uaaat! I get a 120 days warning for posting here!

hehe, project not dead.
Striving along.

What is updated:
-few bugs
-all bosses done
-changed some game elements, now each powerup appears only once, you only get 5 points for it if you let it crash or bounce hit with a rotten avocado, after the 4 powerups have appeared, each power invoque (ye bouncing a rotten avocado 4 into something but the bosses) will call a golden avocado that replenishes 1 heart of energy. There are now 8 extra golden avocados instead of 4. This change balances things quite nicely.

I´m still feeling weird about not giving score for picking up power ups, but the truth is that they are there to easy up the game, so you should be rewarded if you can complete the game without them.

What is todo:
-a few sounds left on the tree boss and the ghost.
-little tweak on the tree boss vomits and general sprite.
-touch regions for other android resolutions hardcoded
-music
-front end
-story endings

looks like a lot, but hopefully a lot gets done these next 15 days.

[spacefractal]

hehe, but dont forget we got database lost recently.

If you want, im can deal with the AE/scaling after complete finished the game (only if you want). Im gonna want to play your game!!!

You should never hardcode resolutions for contain Android resolution, which would never works correctly. Its might works on your devices, but not on others. There exists around 117 resolutions (much worse than PC's) out here and many of them even uses sidebar or taskbar, which cant been removed.

keep that in mind and checks the user resolution using GETSCREENSIZE instead and scaling for that (either drawing directly without virtual, or do the virtual buffer method. The last method is slower throught).

For controllers things, make them user resizeable (like im did) if possible. In my game, im have see some issues with the controls to been too small or too big, but luckely that could been fixed by the user.....

[erico]

The game happens on a virtual screen of 428x240 and with getscreensize, it can be nicely scaled to 6 different android resolutions, which by the time I checked was about 60% of the androids all around, it should be way more nowadays. I guess I will be fine with those.
PC/MAC/LINUX will be 1280x720, so 3x in a window, should be fine.

I did such a mess with the touch controllers I don´t think I will get back to it, so touch will be hardcoded to those 6 android resolutions too.
Depending on device physical size, it does make a difference if it is closer to the bottom or closer to the top, but testing that it too much perfectionism, I will leave them around the bottom should be fine, might have to push them a little into the center so not to call that stupid pull down menu from android and maybe try to avoid the on-screen buttons should a device have that. Are there many devices with on screen buttons nowadays?

The controls are pretty much just a reference, any part close(quite not so close) to their area responds to touch, so a player can get around any annoyance.

Thanks for offering help, I really should get this out before june as I will have to move again.

[spacefractal]

All today android Devices have a softbar, which it cant been removed and is not reported to the game. Most times its on the bottom, but im do have seen on the right too in the Landscape mode (Such on a Sony Z phone). That means you lost some resolution on your game when played on a newer Android phone.

On my device, which is a Samsung Tab2 (1024x600, but report around 1024x5xx to the game), you might see the issue. But its a simple fix. just scale the game to cover the center/middle of the screen, and then add borders to the side if required (like Snake Slider does). Alternative you could eventuelly crop few pixels, if its close to the original resolution, if its not breaks the gameplay.

For PC: 1280x720 is not a issue of course.

For the Onscreen buttons, just make sure they are resizeable and/or placeable by the user in the options, so they are definable. That mean you would cover just any screen physical size,, which differ very much  Im have seen some games with so big buttons, cause its unplayable (or the other way).

This is what im did for Karma Miwa, which you can uses that for your game too.

[erico]

Oh mine, are the on screen buttons of those phones working while in game? if so, the player is bound to hit them by mistake and screw things up.
I guess I will have to beta test that to figure out. Hopefully sometime next week.

Final sounds for the tree boss and ghost boss completed.
Killing the last boss is now worth 10 points, it is a starwars trench 1 hit without the lunete power and probably around 3 chances if you collected it.
edit:just made it 20, so it balances with the draw back of collecting the pows and make the lunete pow a worth thing to collect.

EDIT: an extra bonus to the banana power, colliding with the lost macacon boss going back to the tree, you get 1 heart per bounce, now things are balanced...

[spacefractal]

Im would not care about where the taskbar is really, if you ask me. Im diddent care about that in my game at all, throught (except resizable ingame buttons).

Yes its a general issue with Android, and its can been avoid fully. This is how Android have been designed, which is more akward against iOS, which dosent have those taskbar buttons and hence you dont see that issue at all.

But howover you do can control what Back and Search buttons should do, which is possible with AE. Search button is disabled, but Back button can been checked and eventuelly invoke pause menu, disable it or quit the game, if you are in the menu. This is what im did in my game.

[spacefractal]

Im hope its ok to write it public here, Erico (like you did for Karma Miwa).

Erico have sent me a test version of his game to me, so im did finally have a change to play this game.

This game is allready awesome, well polished and very great choicen SFX (liked it even without music).

Im have still not completed the game, but im like this kind of game, which fell right on a mobile and you did the right choice to borrow my controls .

Im did found very few issues, but was nothing with gameplay its self. Im take a screenshot later.

PS. of course im hold the test versions for my self, so no needs to pm for a version (remember Erico helped me with the graphics).

[erico]

Yep, all fine to share impressions here, it helps me tune stuff.

I´m kind of proud of the SFX, half of it comes from the likes of sfxr, some from other sources like recorded and modified on Audacity.
Part of the sounds are to reference old games with sounds I like, for example, when you get hit, that sound is similar to Dragon Fire on Atari 2600 ´s death sound.

You can now finish the game in about 8 minutes, it is suppose to be a game to pick and play and not put too much time into it.

I gave thoughts about allowing the player to set how high the control sits on screen, like the horizontal line that divides that walk from jump actions.
But I decided to find a place that fits all after a bunch of tests, here is the break down:
-At first, it feels the controls should be placed higher on phones about the size of a caanoo (notice the caanoo has its controls on the upper part) like galaxy note 2.
-smaller phones, would feel better with controls at the bottom part.

Both reasons were because holding up the phone felt more comfortable that way while playing.
But truly, after messing with it in many different positions, having the buttons on top makes room for hands getting on the way of action, it just didn´t feel got at all.

Another thing, is that I want to have as little options as possible, just a ´touch to start´ and maybe a possibility to mute the music, nothing more.

The version you have is as development is of today. The game itself is complete, it is missing a proper start and end + music.
I´m trying to look into music these days...I wonder if I should look for a musician to easy up the time it is going to take to finish these last bits of the game.

Thanks for trying it out! Nice that you enjoyed, see if you can show it to people around, check what they think of it.

[spacefractal]

on tab2, there was about 4 cm for the left/right part, which is a tad too much and its was hard to hit the jump buttom. This was also a issue on Karma Miwa, which im need to config the controller a tad smaller on this tab too. This is also why im just let the user define size of it.

For your game, user config height of the control is all you needs do is user definable the control height (example between -40 to +40, or high/normal/low). But again this is nothing that cant wait to v1.1 and can fine tune that after the internal release. Its not that important at all. Its still a fun game.

Its better to fine tune the missing thing on the game first (start, which could been some sort of a Flappy Bird "start" or something like that). Remember im did release Karma Miwa v1.0 before im got all graphics (so im diddent lost the title on iTunes Connect).

Im do like the gameover screen and that way kids crawl. Its look so cool. Im do could not restart it. Its would also been fun to see total time as well.

[spacefractal]

I'm just thinking if you want two different controls system in your game. The other could been tilt for move, and touch side for jump in direction. Here you won't have the height issue for problem devices. It's alleays nice to have more than one control system (karma Miwa have two control systems too).

This would only work on corrected orientation trought. But a v1.1 idea

[erico]

I did the g-sensor control, but it felt that turning the device to control got too much of the attention of the screen, made it hard to play precisely.
I also coded a few other ways of touch control, like directions on left and jump on right, and a drag kind of control too.

At the end, they didn´t work out. Your style of control design is the best there is for this kind of game.

I think you may be right about the height of the control. I did raise it quite a bit from the older versions.
Here an image of the touch sensitive parts. I think I will get them lower as it was before.

[spacefractal]

As long you add them at option, not a replacement. It's not a issue. You can never have a single perfect height, so a user adjustment would been very best. It's due different physical ScreenSize (not resolution).

Howover it's a way to detect width of a db(from 0.5 to 2.0), etc dpi.

Again small thing :-). It's can wait.

PS. Im do really want to play this on my iPhone 4s (which is my main device). Here you could hardcode without a hitch (480x320, 960x640, 1136x640 are phones, 1024x768 and 2048x1536 is iPads).