TouchFish

Hey everyone we released our first game, TouchFish a few months ago! We've been working with Unity since the last 2x versions all the way through 5x. I've become a better developer for working with these tools that are clearly loved and evolved around a great community!

The Trailer:

The Site:
http://touchfish.touchfactor.com/

24hr Twitch Streaming for hanging out and chatting in aquatic worlds:
http://www.twitch.tv/team/touchfactor

iTunes:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/touchfish/id680013428?mt=8

• iPad 2 & up
• iPhone 4s & up
• Free & we're not stingy with content

Here are a few of my favorite fantasy aquariums (these are player created and these are all in-game shots):



We're coming up on our 2 millionth install, and It's been a pleasure and honor to make this game with such a small team! We're very happy to see what people are doing with it (the next major feature release is going to be gang busters)!

~C - - -

 

That looks fantastic, if I had an Apple device I would certainly get it Can you shed any light on the techniques used for the fish animations etc?

 

Now this looks very original and exceptionally well implemented! Congrats on not getting buried beneath flood of mobile games. 2 million installs in 3 months obviously puts you in the top few % of mobile game developers. Also great job on charging some real money for the IAP instead of just giving everything away for joke prices. Wish you the best of success!

 

Sure thing. We basically use procedural animation for the fins, tail, facial, and dynamic pupil animations. Our goal was to create a character that felt alive emotionally to the touch, and we really felt having the greatest range of emotions was key so going procedural here gave us that range. We liberally influenced each of these procedural system for player interactions like petting the BuddyFish and for emotion detection (we're using the front camera to read the players face expressions and when detecting a smile the BuddyFish responds).

We then use traditional animation and layering for blending in and out of the procedural animations for things like big expressions, tricks, idles, etc.

We also implemented what we call a posture system with 3 main postures, sad, neutral, and happy. Based on which posture the BuddyFish is in we were able to trigger a wide range of emotion responses, and were able to to group traditional animations into these posture groups so the animations had proper context.

In this video you can see all the system in action for the sad, neutral and happy states of the BuddyFish.

1:21 BuddyFish is sad and hungry. BuddyFish emotion is communicated through procedural postures, fin flaps, dynamic facial animations, dynamic pupil control, eye flicks, and blended animations. On top of that BuddyFish have sophisticated AI to translate all of these behaviors into direct and indirect engagement with the player.

1:45 BuddyFish is in neutral emotional state.

2:12 BuddyFish is in a happy emotional state.

 

I am very impressed and great job on the graphics

 

Yes awesome graphics !