iPhone Puzzle Game - WIP

Hello!

I figured it was time to start a development thread of my first project, an iPhone puzzle game that I'm casually working on and hoping to have released by the end of the year. I'm using PlayMaker for practically everything, with the exclusion of some standard-issue scripts.

Without giving away much of anything, here are some pieces that the levels will be constructed from:



I'm quite fond of the visual style of games like No, Human, so the visual style is currently looking like the above; no diffuse textures, but with baked lighting and a little bit of extra geometry here and there to add flavour.

I seem to curse every project I post up on here into abandonment, I'm hoping that that fate won't befall this one! (Although updates may be few and far between )

 

Sounds pretty interesting. I definitely know the feeling of never finishing a game lol I'm finally finishing my first game after having started several failed attempts. Good luck on this!

 

Graphics are cute as hell best of luck, love to see it progress

 

Update time!
I guess I really meant it when I said I was working on this casually! Though truth be told I've been working on little bits and pieces to familiarise myself with PlayMaker and Unity whilst exploring some game ideas.

Everything is a bit rough around the edges at the moment. The character is a placeholder, I just wanted something that moved so I could implement a basic animation system now. Thanking you generic blob.

All flavours of feedback are appreciated!

 

Cute, looking forward to see the final product

 

Looking good!

 

Thanks for the kind comments, they give me a bit of extra motivation!

I'm not too happy with the way the level is so sparse visually. I figure I can address this in a couple of ways, redesigning the gameplay so levels are more compact, or visually reworking the blocks. Given that it's to be an iPhone game, perhaps more compact levels would be better.

Here are some little tests, I think the :
a) old blocks that overlap to make more solid chunks of scenery
b) current blocks, no overlap at all
c) current blocks, only made wider so that there is slight overlap


In order to make it more compact and maintain a certain difficulty of puzzles I'm thinking that making the character motion automatic and getting the player to guide them to the exit by manipulating the blocks might be the way to go. Not entirely sure though, I suppose taps might be more intuitive to casual gamers than swipes are.

Feedback and thoughts welcome!

 

This is looking great. I love the style!

 

Slight overlap looks best, I would also do a slight gradient from bottom to top. So it gets darker as it heads to the core of the dirt. Visually all the little touches help but I like the basic idea

 

Still plugging away at this. I've incorporated what should be all of the block types, currently honing in on a visual style and doing some administrative stuff like getting my developer account up and running.

Stylistically speaking, I want to use fresnel rim lighting, as it adds a nice effect to simple models like these blocks, though I'm not sure if it will drastically impact performance on earlier iDevices. If anyone has had experience or success with rim lighting, feel free to share your insight! Would be nice to have a little bit of info before I start testing a tweaking

 

Also thanks earl and HellraizerHHH! I appreciate every word!

 

Wouldn't mind playing this on my iphone one day

 

This is very nice looking!

 

Cheers! Now I need to convince the rest of the iPhone-owning population to think the same!

Thank you, sir

Alright so I've started going through and UVing everything, had literally been years since I'd done it, too much polypainting I think!
I also got a start on texturing, probably the biggest weakness in my 3D game! D:

Here's where I'm at with the basic block texture at the moment, with a little version that would be more iPhone sized, I suppose.



The checker pattern is sort of a stab at myself regarding how much I was struggling with UVing a couple of days back, but I don't mind how it looks, will definitely experiment with other looks though. Would love to be decent at that hand-painted style, currently rubbish at it!

Crits welcome

To-do:
- Model last two and a half blocks
- Decide on a theme for character/goal

 

Gave hand painting a go:



I think it's a significant improvement to say the least! Not sure what I was thinking yesterday with that texture..

 

Yup looks supernice indeed. Love the style you aim for and accomplish !
Hope you keep the updates coming. Love to fill my inspiration-folder with stuff like yours. So I can dream about what I'll never accomplish, haha

Great work !

 

Woah! Thanks! Dude, I was looking at Droppin' Bombs the other day trying to get inspiration for how to frame my levels!
So keep up the good work yourself!

 

Textured the trampoline. Going to give texturing a rest until I model and remodel everything I need to.



Also, got Unity iOS finally, I don't have to look at a low quality jpg on my phone anymore and it gave me a chance to actually play my game for the first time. The swipe controls feel quite nice, I might still modify them later on though, time will tell!

 

That trampoline pic really looks awesome, it's just the style of graphics I like in games (Torchlight, Orcs must die, Spiral Knights etc).

About the player's motion, I would personally prefer to have control over movement ( as opposed to auto-motion) which gives the puzzle a more deliberate pace. Maybe you can have the two modes...

Can't wait to see how your game evolves.

 

Thanks! I had only heard of Torchlight, but never seen it really, I had a look at those three games on YouTube last night, really cool styles! Also gives me a resource to look at if I get stuck on how something should look I hope I can produce something that has even half of the polish that those games have!!

Regarding the player movement, the video up there might be a bit misleading, currently you move the character manually one block at a time, unless you hit a trampoline (or one of the other super-secret surprise blocks) that sends you flying in one way or another. I think this is what you mean, right? Early on in development I made the decision that the player can idle as long as they like without punishment, so that they can think about what steps to take and so on.


Changed the rock block to this, need to adjust the little cement bases slightly so that they tile better:



Then it's onto modeling the last few things

 

grrr, show more progress, more quickly.
NOW !

 

Haha, I'll try to pick up the pace! I had a mental block, I needed to come up with an alternate concept for something and literally had no ideas for days. Eventually decided upon something that sinks, so the thought process was then "What sinks and fits in with the other blocks?"

At first I thought maybe a different sort of island block might work, so I gave that a go:



But when I modelled it, it just wasn't as strong as I thought it might be, texture would have rescued it a little, but it was not distinct enough to be read quickly by a player. Had another go at it and came up with the following buoy-esque thing, which I don't mind:



I might do some tweaks before texturing, but for now I'm happy with it. Two elements left to remodel before I texture the lot and move onto the characters (that I'm pumped to make!!).

 

weeehuu
Can't wait to see all of these things put next to each other

 

Been working through some more of the texturing, not many left to go now!





(Also, a little bit sick of painting wooden surfaces.)

 

awesome looking assets you got there

 

omnom, makes me drool ! How freaking this doesn't get more attention and postings....
People seem so hesitant to post when something appears of that quality even though the person frequents the forums :/
I know I sound like a fanboy but this is just awesome art you have going there. I finally wanna see all of this in context to graps the bigger picture of it all !

 

I agree with Acumen. It looks really cool!

 

Yeah, not much to say other than the graphic style looks awesome and the gameplay looks really interesting. The demo video makes it look very appealing. Will you do an Android version for us Apple-haters?

 

haha thanks again for the nice words. I’m sort of hoping that when the final thing comes together everything does work nicely with each other, time will tell I suppose.

Thank you, sir!

Thanks! With a bit of luck the final version will be enjoyable. It’s an odd thing to work on, given that I know all the solutions to the levels before I play it, it’s hard for me to judge if it has the right level of difficulty and so on. Having said that, I gave some friends a play of it when we were driving the other day and they seemed to like it. They’re friends though, so once again hard to know for certain! Haha
As for the Android version, it all really hinges on whether the game does okay on iPhone, iPod and iPad. I haven’t done much research regarding the process for submitting to the Android Marketplace, so I can’t give you a definitive ‘yes’, but I would like to release it there in the future too, so hopefully!

Anyway, here are the last few bits I textured, ice, the two switch states and the springboard:



Not totally satisfied with the spring on the end, and the ice needs some refinement, but for now it will do. I need to take a break from texturing and work on other areas of the game.

Here is a video of the game in action on an iPhone. It's rather blurry, but still gives you an idea of what it's looking like at the moment. I talk a little bit about the game, but it's more me just thinking out loud rather than any sort of prepared presentation.

On another note, I might enter a modified version of the game into that Unity 3.5 Flash in a Flash competition. I'm thinking of changing the gameplay a little bit to better suit a mouse-based control scheme.

 

Don't rely on your friends
I'm the perfect test person for any game, since I forget game mechanics the moment I stopped playing. Even happens on my own games. I just don't get any better the longer I play - haha

I really really hope you'll open up a thread on toucharcade soon, to show your progress. That can be such a vital part in getting the word out. As well as making a nice betatest on there, too. Just to sparkle some interest. Just plain releasing, hopefully, is not your way to go

On other hands, I would think the ice could be a bit sharper on the edges, with more bright highlights to show the cold temperature ? Also the video is not showing for me :/

 

Haha I wish I had that talent, would be useful to be able to better test my games!

Yeah, I intend to open a thread on Toucharcade, I'm going to wait until I'm a little further along though. Also, a friend of mine is a games journalist, so I'm going to see if he wants to have a play around and write a review or something when the time comes, maybe even on a pre-release build to generate some hype.

100% agree with you on the ice. I think I actually got distracted before I finished doing the edge highlights and never returned haha . Next time I'm in that texturing mood I'll go back in and refine.

I changed the YouTube video from unlisted to public, let me know if that fixes anything for you.

 

I love your work, i have a soft spot for handpainted textures great work your a amazing artist

 

Nope, still doesn't show for me.
I see a blank white space where it should play but nothing else :/
Maybe something wrong with my flash player.
When looking at sourcecode I was able to sneak out the youtube link. Fun to watch already !
Gotta love blue background gradients

 

Thanks! I've got a long way to go but I'm having fun getting better at painting them!

Haha, blue gradient + vignette, boom done!


Here's the YouTube link in case it doesn't work for anyone else: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_8JGjeyXjk

 

awesome texturing!

 

Hey thanks!


Not much progress past few days, the sun has actually been out for the first time in 6 weeks so I had to clock up some beach hours!
I'm yet to come up with a final idea for the character so I spent some time investigating how to go about doing my UI, started on the step counter, might change later but for now I like this.

 

Decided on a character and started to block it out!



Once I retopo this I'm going to go back in and really try to up the cuteness factor as much as possible.

 

Amazing work, loving the hand-painted stuff man.

 

Wow amazing work dude. The character is even looking great. I am liking the style.
keep up the good work.

 

what an amazing workflow. Doing superawesome sculpt and then tone it down and cute-ify fo iOS specs. You're crazy nut

Make sure to enable anti-aliasing on your game. We did it on our little game, too and it made everything soo much more prettier.
Can't wait for some more gameplay videos !

 

Thanks! I'm loving your pixel art stuff in the 2012 thread, keen to see what it's all for!

Cheers, hopefully it all works together nicely!

Haha thanks! I just find it faster to block it out before getting the final topology done

I'll have to remember to enable anti-aliasing, the game isn't overly detailed so it should be alright performance wise.


Here's the turtle so far, who, due to an absence of flippers, is actually a tortoise (possible internal conflict plot-line!)



Sitting at around 540 vertices. Going to double check it all tomorrow, then onto UVing and texturing.

 

Did you have any (silly) gimmick in mind for this guy or leave as it is ?
That will make people remember "haha, yeah, that silly gimmick from...."
Or character coming to life through ubercool animations ?

 

At the moment I'm just thinking of having collectible hats and shells to customise the turtle.



Definitely open to suggestions though!


Hopefully I can bring it to life with some nice animations too though, I can definitely admit that animation is my biggest weakness.

 

Nope a hat was exactly what I had in mind, too
Your choice is obviously much more stylish, haha - loving it ! Looks like some vintage paperbox selling the news to some mafia/goodfellas boys until he starts to get introduced to the real world....

 

I think all the models that you made until now looks pretty good.
I wonder how is the script for the game look like. How much coding skills do you need for a puzzle game like this.

 

Looks great

Actualy a turtle dosent need flippers, it just has to live in the water were a tortise dose no. Infact a tortoise can drown, and mostly cannot swim atall. But if it makes a good story then dont let facts stop you man

 

I'm using Playmaker for everything and so I haven't written a single line of code for the game as yet

Wikipedia reckons a combination of them being land creatures, as you say, and also having webbed or non-webbed feet instead of flippers. Either way the bloke (or lady) is petrified of water haha


Currently UVing!

 

Cant wait to see it textured

 

Cool! And I love the art style. Would love to showcase your game on our site:
http://www.hutonggames.com/showcase.html

 

Thank you sir!

I'd be more than happy to be showcased! Just let me know what you need me to do (aside from think of a name for this game!!)! Also, will it be possible to update the info once the game is eventually released?