Unnamed Endless Runner on Android (Video!)

Firstly sorry about the video jerkiness, Android studio didn't enjoy recording video for me. But this is straight from a Nexus 5.

This is a little Android project that I started working on when I was helping out another forum member with their own Endless runner control script. I kept working on it and it kind of turned into a game.....

I have written a generic(ish) endless runner engine for this. The features include:

• Pooling of level pieces
  
• User definable direction for the level
• User definable view distance
  
• Automatic increase of difficulty - via increasing speed or obstacle spawn rate
• Automatic spawning of obstacles and items - these are also pooled. Each track piece defines the rules for where and what can be spawned and the base chance rate.
• Zones - where specific tracks are spawned in a specific order - for example the start of a level
• Event based framework where various events - death, item pick up, level increase etc. can hooked into (the games UI uses these to update itself to avoid polling every frame)
• Mission support - Collecting mission, time survival and score missions
• Endless (...) high score mode

If people are interested I would consider releasing the code for free under the BSD license.

This little game has real-time shadows, which does eat some performance but by having a very short shadow distance, being careful to exclude objects that don't cast any meaningful shadows, and having no shadow cascades it is acceptable. The game has an option menu to turn shadow on or off.

Graphics are various paid assets from the Asset store.

Now the most important question..... What to name it??????

All comments greatly appreciated.

 

Screenshot time! Again taken with Android Studio and framed around a nexus 5 handset to give the feeling of playing it on on a smartphone. The screen grab is exactly how it looks in the game, no messing around with filters.

Firstly, the level select menu. This is where you chose the chapter and stage to play in story mode. At the moment I only have one chapter. The first few missions will introduce various gameplay elements before making you actually try difficult tasks. I wanted this scene to imitate the characters planning there moves - hence the table with lots of books.
The level list is a scroll view.



Next, this is at the start of the level. You control the character by tipping the phone to the left and right. Walls wont kill you but obstacles will.



Last another action shot, this time a power up has been activated. It also seems i took the screenshot exactly as a spider web got in the way. Sorry!

 

Well a great name for this game would be Temple Run - but I believe that has already been used. Im sure there are other words that are similar to temple that you could use.

The shadows and effects look good and I like the challenge/quests. It makes the runner a little more of a game beyond see how far/long you can go/last.

The controls look kind of floaty and drifty to me. I like the fact the character moves more natural than the quick snapping motion used in nearly all runners, but it may be a little over exaggerated. This may be due to the your experience with the controls and your ability to keep a steady hand with the motion controls. That could explain why it looks floaty.

About the character - he has no upper body movement. This adds to the floaty look I think. If the animation was updated to include upper body locomotion movement and gait, and some dynamic leaning I think it would improve the look a lot.

Overall I think the automatic/dynamic loading options you listed in your first post are all awesome additions for a runner package.

Good job.

 

Hey. Thanks a lot for the comments. Really appreciated. As per your comment, I have implemented some more upper body rotation and animation. I cant upload a video just yet but I will when I get the chance.

I am also thinking about allowing button control as well, although it might make the game a bit to easier so I will probably have to increase the level speed or something to compensate.

As for the Endless Runner engine, I have made it all data driven with stages and missions all scriptable objects. I have some editor scripts for creating stages and missions.

Anyway, some more screen shots:


The new main menu.



I think you might be able to see a little bit of the leaning here and arm movement. Its more pronounced when playing.


Finally, the mission select screen. It is part of the main menu (the table with the candles on). There is a nice animated camera movement to the table. Thanks to iTween.

 

A new video!

 

It has been a while since I posted any updates, but here we go. Mass pictures!