[iOS] Table Tennis Touch

Hi everybody!

I'd like to introduce you to our [pre-release] title, Table Tennis Touch, for iOS (Android to follow shortly).

Today we just launched our first Teaser for the game to Vimeo, you can watch it on our teaser site:
www.tabletennistouch.com

This will hopefully whet your appetite, then the full Trailer (with lots of gameplay) will appear this Friday (April 18th)

The game features a variety of events, from tournaments, leagues and knockouts, to one-on-one throwdown challenges and exciting mini games - including Little House where you have to serve the ball past a barrage of little men into the house, or Squares where you have to keep the ball in play on tiny little sections of table tennis tables! We have a full career mode, Game Center integration, fully 3D graphics with detailed physics and AI to boot. Plus our star of the show (and your resident Table Tennis coach), WiffWaff!

Some Background:
Although I'm using this new account to post about the game, I actually started the initial prototypes for the game (and lots of messing around with Unity!) almost 5 years ago (wow, time has flown by!), when the forums were a much smaller place. Unity has been an incredible platform to work in, and it's astonishing to see how much it's grown in that time. Within the last 2 years, development of the game (alongside my business partner James Gratton) got serious, and after many many man-hours of relentless dev work, we're very proud to have our little product!

If you like the look of our stuff, you can stay tuned for the latest screengrabs, videos and of course the all important release date:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/TableTennisTouch
Twitter: twitter.com/tabletennistch

or follow me, Jordan Kirk, personally (I've been a bit backwards on social networking up until now, but I'm learning!): twitter.com/thepixelplatter

Finally, here's a screenshot of a match in action.



And let me introduce you to WiffWaff:



Thanks,
Jordan

 

It's been a busy day trying to get going on our social channels, but we reached our first "mini milestone" of 100 views of our Teaser video, which we're very grateful for!

Don't forget the full trailer this Friday 18th April.

Night!

 

Another good day of Teaser views. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out at:

www.tabletennistouch.com

I should be putting up some of our early concept sketches tomorrow, but in the mean time, here's a latest piece of promo art.

Check more out at www.twitter.com/tabletennistch

 

Think it's time for a sneaky treat for the Unity forum peeps.

So, here's an exclusive screenshot of one of the Mini Games from Table Tennis Touch - this one is called "Little House".

Use your best serve to spin the ball off the wall and into the little house before the time runs out

 

Why hasn't anyone commented on this yet? It's Awesome! This is exactly what I want to see from the unity community. Polished, completely finished, and well done teasers and assets. I can't say anything about the gameplay but if it's on the level of what I've seen in the trailer I'm sure it's going to be great. I'm not a fan of table tennis myself but I'm definitely going to download this. Great job.

 

Hi Joni - thankyou for the kind words! We're at a very exciting stage with the project. The full trailer releases this Friday, and we can't wait for people to see the gameplay in action then.

Be sure to stay tuned to us on Twitter and Facebook, and of course right here where we'll be showing off some of our notes/artwork and screenshots of the assets inside Unity. After 2 years of development, there's plenty of stuff we can share!

Also, if anybody has any questions about any aspect of the game, feel free to leave them here or drop us a PM.

Thanks again,
Jordan

Web: www.tabletennistouch.com
Facebook: facebook.com/tabletennistouch
Twitter: twitter.com/tabletennistch

or follow our individual accounts:
Jordan Kirk: twitter.com/thepixelplatter (artwork and all things pixel-based)
James Gratton: twitter.com/jamesgratton (coding wizardry)

 

Very nice pre-trailer.
Some of the game modes look awesome.
Can't wait for the REAL trailer friday....

 

Just been looking back through the first (and main) folder of notes (there were many more additional pages ripped out of other notebooks and kept alongside it). Crazy to think though that it represents 2 years of stuff that just fell out of your head.

…and that's just the design side of things from me, it doesn't include any of James' coding plans!

Here's a picture that shows the main notebook, some sketches of WiffWaff and how he shoots balls from his mouth, plus two (of MANY!) pages of planning for tournament/league structures. I remember it being so hard to come up with a consistent way of styling and displaying the multiple possibilities of tournament sheet layouts that we were experimenting with. In the end, we focused on a clear way to handle straight knockout tournaments, round-robin leagues, and larger tournaments with group stages at the start.

 

thankyou Casper, glad you liked the teaser!

we just posted this tonight on FB Twitter:

 

I'll end my posts for the night with what I think was one of the key lessons from the whole project actually (certainly from my perspective)

Build everything higher res than you think you need.

Technology moves so quickly, in fact, that when we started the (what we thought would be a 6-10mth) project, hardware was less powerful, screen resolutions were lower, and even gamers expectations on mobile platform apps was lower.

The tech accelerates past you at an alarming rate, entirely new devices come along that make you re-evaluate your strategy, and you don't want to end up having to re-model/texture all your assets. Build them "high def" (you can always use these for your animatics and promo art), then reduce to suit (I build my low res assets and proxies by hand, but you could always use one of numerous decimation tools).

 

Great work, I'd like to see more of this quality in the Showcase section!

Those screenshots look great, are they in-game screenshots on iOS?
What shader did you use for the shiny floor?

 

Thanks Meltdown,

Yep, those stills are indeed the iOS screenshots. I'll post a picture tomorrow of the Unity editor so you can see how things look.

The floor, believe it or not, is "old school" (a nod to my previous post about the tech accelerating past you!), in that we used semi-transparent maps for the floors and a mirrored copy of the world underneath (built as a slight proxy to make it as light as possible). We toyed with more complex shaders in places, but for a really shiny floor like the one in the Dance Studio (which you're seeing in that screen grab), it was more than sufficient. When you're in that particular environment, after you change ends (following somebody winning one game/set), you'd see we also then have a mirrored wall, which introduced more complexity, as we had to mirror the game of table tennis that you're playing!! It all worked out ok in the end though (that's my casual way of saying James did a mountain of work to implement something that fit my aesthetic demands!).

In fact, you'll see that mirrored wall in the full trailer! Waaah, spoiler alert!

 

Very clever idea for the mirrored copy of the world for the shiny floor, never thought about that!

 

James did a great job

 

We're getting ever closer to the full trailer being unveiled to the world!

 

Hopefully this image will come out big enough to see (otherwise right-click and show it in a new tab to see it larger), but here's a quick glimpse at one of the environments in the Unity editor

 

I'm sure you all find it similar looking back, but it still shocks me to revisit the incredible amount of stuff you obsess over on a game dev project.

Here's a page of design notes/ideas just around what the shape and layout of the lozenges would be on the tournament sheets to hold the names of the players!

 

Looking great and really high production standards. Really looking forward to this coming out. Good luck.

 

Many thanks Tony, it's great to hear positive feedback from the Unity Forum community!

 

WiffWaff's getting a good night's rest, it's a big day for him tomorrow!

 

The trailer is live, guys. Go watch it, and tell your friends!!

Wiff Waff presents: Table Tennis Touch. The Trailer. www.tabletennistouch.com

 

Hi folks. It's been a couple of (busy) weeks since the last update.

We now finally have a release date for the game - Thursday 15th May 2014. Hope you can help us spread the word! If you're new to the thread and didn't see the trailer yet, please check it out along with lots of details about the game on our website www.tabletennistouch.com.

If you've viewed it already, then thankyou, and hope you like the look of it - now just 7 more sleeps until release day!

Thanks,
Jordan

 

our countdown has begun! night all!

 

Evening folks,

Couple of updates today - if you haven't checked us out on Google+, then please do - we're at google.com/+tabletennistouch. Add us to your circles if you like to keep up with things that way.

Twitter and Facebook accounts are growing ever gradually (man, social networking is tough! I can see why it's a full time job!!). Please Like and Follow us to help spread awareness of the game.

It's crazy that we're so close to the "finish" line (deliberately in quotes, as I know that the point of release is really just the beginning of this journey!).

We'll have some more gameplay videos up on our YouTube Channel this weekend too, and we're also busy putting together a little mini behind the scenes doc. Stay tuned for that.

That's all for today, but as a parting gift, here's Wiff Waff's "6 more sleeps" image - today he's been working out at the gym and pumping some iron in anticipation of keeping up with all those players. He needs to be match fit!!

Thanks
Jordan

 

Incredible!

[edit] I just realized whiff waff and my avatar have the same expression on their faces here

 

Looking impressive! I like the whole "build-up-to-release" media push, it is a good strategy to get those eyes on your game before the big drop. Hope things goes well, I have no iOS device, but if android comes along soon I'll be sure to give you +1 downloads

 

Hahah, indeed they do! For Wiff Waff, it's all in the aperture of his mouth and the angle of his head, but he does his best to convey emotion!

 

Thankyou! We'll keep adding other materials on this forum too, but hopefully the "story of Wiff Waff's final preparations" are enjoyable enough for people to see

Android is in the roadmap, along with various other big exciting updates, so stay tuned, and thanks again for the support!

 

Looks like Wiff Waff's having the evening off and taking in a bit of Eurovision...

5 sleeps to go until release day!

 

This evening's installment of Wiff Waff's pre-release preparations...


We asked Wiff Waff to check we've got enough table tennis balls ahead of release day this Thursday.

He took us a bit too literally.

 

this is really looking awesome
if its ever coming to android i might grab a copy

 

Thanks SnowInChina... and keep an eye out for our platform news in the future then! ;-)

 

Yes, yes, hilarious Wiff Waff. Now can we please concentrate on using the foam to clean the bats?!?

Clearly somebody's not taking these final preparations seriously...

 

You've done a very nice job mate. Love the looks of it! One can tell that you put many man hours into this. Congrats on finishing! Hope it sells well!

 

Thankyou Thomas, that's a wonderful compliment. It's certainly been a labour of love, that's for sure!

 

I love the look of this and all the different reasons to play it again. Looks amazing good job!

 

Thanks NutellaDaddy. Excellent name by the way.

 

Wow, only 2 more sleeps to go.

Meanwhile, today, the boys help Wiff Waff try out his tuxedo for the big premiere on Thursday.

 

We're actually LIVE now in many of the app stores (midnight tonight in each territory).

This was the image from tonight, I forgot to post here too in all the mayhem, sorry!

 

Finally, we can get settled into the App Store...

 

Just bought it, can't wait to get in and play it.

Did you guys do the promo video yourself's or farm that out to someone? I have a new game coming up and would like to have a good promo video to go along with it.

Thanks,
Zach

 

Hi Autonoma,

Everything is done with our very own hands - James does all the coding, and I do all the art-related bits (in-game plus promo stuff).

What's your new game called? Glad to hear you're excited about the game. We just got featured by Apple as Editors' Choice, so that's great news for Wiff Waff!

Enjoy playing, and rest assured there'll be lots of exciting updates to follow soon!

Thanks,
Jordan

 

Mine is a drag racing game - working title of "No Limit Drag Racing".

Thanks for the info. I am the only guy working on my game so I'm trying to farm out as much of the non-programming work that I can.

Congrats on the feature! I hope it turns out well for you two, with all the work you've put into the game you deserve it!

 

Thankyou very much Autonoma, we hope the players all love it too.

Drag racing sounds cool. Good luck with all the work, we know how hard it is for indies (being just a two-man team ourselves) to get from the early days and ideas through to finishing up and releasing. All the best

 

WOW, what a day!

Table Tennis Touch has been named Editors Choice worldwide! We're over the moon!!

Here's just how happy/delirious Wiff Waff and the Yakuto boys are:

 

OMG CONGRATULATIONS MAN! How much did you earn on the first day of editors choice?

 

Thankyou!

We're thrilled with the response worldwide for Table Tennis Touch. The attention and feedback is more than our little developers minds could ever have imagined! Re: sales, it's early days yet for data to come back, so we're not even sure ourselves! For now, we're just enjoying the press and wonderful feedback. I think I better get some more of those gameplay videos uploaded I was talking about before - that's a job for tomorrow morning.

night all!
Jordan

 

Been playing the game on and off all day. Love the gameplay and the way you can control where the ball goes and the speed you hit it. Also appreciate that you don't have to be perfect to get the ball over the net and in bounds. At first I thought it was too hard, but after lowering the opponents skill I won a couple games. Then in the middle of a game I had the bright idea to use my index finger to control the paddle instead of my thumb - and the game really game alive! I don't know if that's how you I intended it to be played or not, but it's certainly more fun that way for me.

If I had to change one thing it would be to default the opponent skill to 1 for new players, and I was a little disappointed that the mini games weren't included, but the game is just awesome all around.

Congrats again on the execution of this, you guys did great.

 

Just played the game. I was blown away by the smooth controls and the amazing quality. Can you please consider writing a dev story on your game Jordan? Us small indie debs could use a little inspiration.
Once again, my hearty congratulations!

 

Hi guys,

Sorry for the slow reply, as you might imagine we've been busy over the last couple of days!

Thankyou for the great responses. zDemonhunter99 - regarding the dev story, absolutely. We've lots to tell people about after our 2 years of slaving away on the title and I'm busy putting together lots of stuff for our YouTube channel that will be going up over the next week or so (starting with some gameplay vids, and moving onto some Meet The Devs stuff).

Autonoma, hope you're getting on ok with the game. Yeah, we really recommend finger control rather than thumb control, but one of our close friends plays very successfully with his thumb, so it's up to you!

Some people find the game tough at the start, but we find people come to it from all sorts of levels of experience, so we didn't want to set the first Quick Game to level 1 as we actually assumed people would generally find that way too easy. But, many don't, so hopefully with 3 we hit some kind of balance!

The good thing about career is that it introduces you to the game gradually, and should increase your reaction times and control as you play more. I promise you that Kao Jianjun (level 11 player in Quick Game) is fully beatable with NO BOOST. I recorded a video of it over the weekend and will post that at some point soon too, so stay tuned.

On that note, please do be aware that we're telling everybody, the game has no paywalls, it's entirely against our values. The Boost is there because with such a variety of players, some people do find it tough at first, and Boost can give you an extra helping hand (cheating? you decide we won't tell your friends!), but there are no players in the game that can't be beaten without just playing hard and finding out their weaknesses.

Hope you keep enjoying, and stay tuned here or on Twitter/FB/YT for our news and updates.

Thanks again guys,
Jordan