iPhone Puzzle Game - WIP

Great! We can update the info as often as you want I'll send you a PM.

 

I've been working on the character's texture.



I might change some things about the texture before release, but for now I think it'll do.

Next stop, rigging!

 

The whole game looks great so far marcos, the character in particular is very impressive!

 

Thanks! The character was a huge milestone for this project, so it's a bit of a relief to hear it being received well!


Oh, and someone wants to say hello to everybody..

 

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

*waves back*

 

marcos,

no real constructive criticism from my side..cause there is no need for something like this.
I love your work! And I love that tiny turtle-chap man!!!!

 

The turtle looks so great and cute. Next stop is animation, isn't it?

 

Thanks, I've just gotta keep at it!

Yep! I just went back and redid the facial rigging, now the the character is capable of some basic expressions, instead of blankly smiling. Blinking is too much of a hassle to do with bones, given that the eyes are so gigantic, so I'm going to resort to texture swapping to add that sort of life to it.

Here's a quick test expression:



Edit: One more!

 

good god, what did you do to this fluffy creature that it is sooo sad !!
Treat him right !!!
Awwwww *pet*pet*

 

hahaha
Possible virtual pet spin-off app??

 

Little update, I did a quick animation test.

Off to read a certain chapter of The Illusion of Life (such a good book) before I get going on the actual animations.

 

Very nice work!

 

That turtle is super cute and adorable! I am a big fan of recognizable unique characters in a game. The animation is a bit short to be able to really judge it though.

I also loved the facial expressions screens - but where is the cap?! Give him that cute cap again

 

Are you interested in working with me on a project? I am basically coding a similar game to you (of sorts), but it has different theme and a different type of 'puzzle'. At any rate, I have modelling ability but I am a novice and it would take me forever to get decent looking assets with animations, etc..

Basically my game 'components' are in place and the mechanics have been tested (similar to your turtle game). However, the score display, achieves, and level designer are left to do, as well as the enormous 3d model assets needed.

If you are interested, or want to know more, please e-mail me at:

mike@jesupdental.com

best,
Mike Yurgalavage

 

Thank you Raphael!

Thanks! I'm working on the animations at the moment, I'll be sure to show them all when I'm satisfied with them. Also, the cap shall make a return soon, with some other stuff too!

As a side note, having a browse of your website is a very humbling experience, you produce so much awesome stuff!

Sent you a PM.

 

Little update! Here are the changes:

- Tumble the Turtle is in the game!
- Idle and StepRight animations in game, more to come.
- Blocks squash upon being stepped on.
- Water foam added around edges of blocks, currently just placeholder, so it remains when blocks are destroyed.
- Added water, it moves.
- Blob shadow

(The screen capture framerate was very choppy but it gets the point across)

 

looks great

 

Very nice!! It's nice and simple! That's the smart way to do games!

Love the turtle!!

 

gosh, I didn't really expect this to turn out as awesome as it looks like now
you really know your stuff !
The end animation alone made it click for me. Always thought "god why sooo many triangles". Now I now - ignorant me
I only hope hope, you're doing some postings/contacts in the right places as well. I always die internally when I see a project evolve over such a long time and grow attached to it, just to find out, that it gets released with no major marketing effort.
But I think I made that remark earlier in this thread, already
so go ahead !

 

Looks awesome!
Why all good games are for iPhone I don't have >.<

 

Thanks, mate!

Cheers! I'm trying to keep this one as simple as possible, as it's my first real game project. It's been a great learning experience to find out what's involved in game development!

Thank you, sir!
As for marketing, it has definitely been on my mind for a while, and I feel that I am nearing the point where I should be unveiling the game to the general public. I think once a few more of the animations and the UI are in place (maybe the entry tunnel too) I would be more equipped to show it as an early alpha version.

As for where, I really need all sorts of suggestions. I was thinking a thread on the TouchArcade forums would be a good start (as you said) and a Facebook page would be helpful. I think a lot of it is to do with whether the sites notice your work, when one blogs about a game, the rest tend to follow suit. Once I get even further along I will send around a trailer and promo codes to reviewing sites. A friend of mine does a bit of games journalism on the side, I'm not sure how many hits he gets, but if even a handful of people read an article about my game I would be overjoyed.

Thanks. Yeah, currently the plan is just to release to iDevices, once it's released I'll investigate other platforms.

 

Turtle reminds me of Finding Nemo, very nice.

 

the turtle is just so PERFECT :'( makes me wish he was mine to say he was mine.. awesome work marcos, dont know how you do it.

 

You suck lol i wish I was that good of an artist. Two years of doing modeling and texturing,
I still suck.
lol

 

Love that movie! I used to draw this turtle when I was young, but I definitely had a look at various things when trying to transition it from a children's sketch to a 3d character. Originally the character was going to be an ilomilo-y nondescript cute thing, but the sentimental value of the turtle won over in the end.

Thanks, Charlie! Not sure if turtles can blush, but I'm pretty sure tumble is blushing.. Though I still think I have a long way to go quality-wise. Seriously, some of the work on this forum just humbles me.

As an aside, this game is effectively a portfolio item for applying to games and visual effects studios. If it makes me any money that'd be a nice bonus too, but realistically the odds aren't in my favour.

haha thanks, just keep at it!


I made an animation for the wharf block, first half is the transition from the stronger version of the block, then the second half from the weaker version to (quite obviously, I suppose) ruins.

Chelonian craftsmanship at its finest:

This is just a first iteration, I think it might look odd in game with planks bouncing off the water, I will probably make them sink after they come to a rest.

 

Looks good. You could possible cheat the need for sinking by adding some ripples around the base of the wharfs so when the planks collapse they just appear to be floating. Depending how you do the effect, this could be always on or just switched on after the 1st collapse

 

I think the animation lacks the betatest you should already be doing to test the gameplay

 

Why don't make a web player edition for us to try？

 

I'll likely get a little beta test going when all of the gameplay elements are in place. Just a few things left to implement then I'll be sharing a mini version I think! Ideally I'd like some testing on devices and also just trying it out in the browser. Hopefully people will find it enjoyable!

Also, I've picked up an Android license in the promotion that Unity currently running, so the chances of Android owners seeing a turtle jumping around on their screen have increased substantially! First priority remains getting the game onto iOS devices, after that is done I'll go from there.

I know it's been a while since I've posted an update, so I've made up for the delay with some new stuff! The first is the level exit:



This will open when you collect all of the eggs on a stage:



The ball of wool will function as a sort of currency to unlock hats for the turtle to wear . I'm not sure how a variety of materials can be manufactured from wool, but I'm sure our protagonist will find a way to get a bit of a wardrobe together

 

Oh well, I purchased an iPad today and would like to share this in your thread, to keep you informed that I'm ready for testing
Wonderful new items you shared and still I don't understand how this thread is not exploded with 29 pages already....
/me waves burning pitchfork

Get yourself a blog/webpage to spread the word finally. I need my weekly dose of awesomeness. NOW

 

29 pages would be pleasant

I'll be sure to get you an early version for testing when everything is coming together. Going to have to figure out how to do it all, I think I can email you the built app once you are registered as a testing device can't I?

And yeah, I need to get one started! I've been looking at hosting and found a pretty decent one, so I just need to design a page for it now!

Here's the latest update, I sorted out a better quality recording method, still tweaking it:

Updates:
- Egg, Wool and Exit models animated and in game
- Eggs and Wool can be collected
- All eggs need to be collected before the Exit will open for you
- Tumble is now smaller, and therefore cuter

Also, it's worth mentioning that I'm open to any game name suggestions, I don't think that "Tumble the Turtle" stands out enough. A friend of mine suggested "Shell out a Dollar", which made me giggle, given the price this game will have. But yes, open to suggestions!

 

Missed this video update - it's looking great! Love the close up at the end - but he needs a victory jig!

 

I think your character needs a goal. Why does he do what he does to solve these puzzles.
Could he be looking for gems left behind by a kidnapped girl leading to her location? You gave her a necklace at the start of the game, and after being kidnapped, she disperses gems from it to lead you to the villains lair. You must get one gem per level to access the next level until you reach the final level where the ultimate puzzle challenge awaits you. Where you beat the kidnapper and save your turtle girlfriend.

Names for the game or levels:

- Shell
- Puzzle under the Shell
- Shell live
- Shell love
- Turtle adventure
- Turtle Puzzle
- The Turtle and the Maze

That comes in mind.

Good job on the game, marcos.

MQ

 

I agree with MoonQuake, giving your character an overall goal is always a good thing and would probably help with coming up with a good game name. Having said that, how about "Tumble Run" or "Tumble Time" (named after your character obviously!)

PS: Nice video, but he definitely need a jig or some kind of celebration!

 

Thank you, sir!

Victory dances are on the to-do list! Just want to get all the mechanics in first before I get to the fun stuff

That reminds me, I may need to call in a favour from you and Jean in regards to some actions to get Gamecenter achievements implemented.. . There's no hurry though, still a ways to go yet!

Thank you for the input!
At the moment I'm thinking that all the turtle eggs have been scattered, so Tumble has to venture out into the puzzling and treacherous world to recover them all! Maybe mysterious, tall, two-legged creatures have damaged the environment and caused this to happen. I'm not sure if I want to venture down the environmental awareness route with the story though..

Thanks again

Thanks
Yeah, I agree. I should solidify the reason for your need to collect those eggs!
As mentioned above, victory dances are coming! I want to have at least a couple, and pick a random one to play each time you complete a stage.

 

Now that the Mixamo contest has concluded my focus is now squarely on getting this completed. I'm going to aim to have weekly updates, so let's see how we go!

Update:

- Added to the movement system, you can now queue up the next movement before Tumble reaches a block, it will then automatically be carried out once he does.

 

The Turtle is sooo cute, i love the videos and animations. Very good work.

 

Definitely! It's always good to have a real world test case for new actions...

 

Thanks! Happy you like it!

Awesome news! Thank you kindly, sir!

Little update, wasn't satisfied with a blue gradient as the background, so I painted a replacement, I think I'm going to need to sort out some kind of alpha map for the water to smoothly blend between the background and the moving water texture:



Also added a little fade in when the level loads

 

New hat!



No textures just yet, I hope I'm not the only one that giggles when they look at this!

 

The Aviator:

 

A rare gem this will be if you can have the fun-factor on par with the artistic quality. Please don't be discouraged because there are plenty games of the popular genres others are imitating yet you have something more unique. This kind of game is similar to the style that was much more common in the 2d and early-3d era.

 

Thank you kindly for the encouraging words! Hopefully the finished product will be enjoyable.

That era of gaming was the period I grew up in, so perhaps that has influenced my decisions a bit


Here's another hat I just made, a tribute of sorts to a TV show that I can't get enough of:



Maybe someone can guess which show it is?

 

Hey Marcos, my name's JB and I've been looking over the info for your game and it looks absolutely amazing so far. I work for an Indie news site and was hoping we could get in contact with one another but unfortunately I could find no contact info on your profile. If you could private message me here on the unity site or email me (info on full profile) that'd be awesome! I could also provide you with my superiors information at that time. Hope to hear from you soon!

 

Upps! Was trying to post in the WIP section. Game looks great though dude!

 

Been a while since I've updated. I wish I were able to devote the majority of my free time to this project, but such is life I suppose!

I've been working on some animations recently, here are the ones for when you step on a spike and when you jump off a trampoline:

Not many essential ones left to do now, just the victory dance and slipping on ice animations, really. After that I will mirror the movement ones, and likely add some additional victory dances and idle animations.

 

Finally managed to find some time and motivation to work on my turtle!

Recent changes:
- Cleaned up all the junk from the Unity project, I had all sorts of tests and obsolete assets in there. Also, not sure what I was thinking when naming things but naming scenes stuff like "work you darned guy.unity" was really confusing to come back to after a bit of time off the project. So yeah, generally clean up and organisation!
- Added the graphic for the weak wharf block
- Migrated everything over to prefabs so that any changes I need to make can feed to all of the levels instantly. This took some doing, as a lot of the playMaker stuff needed to be reworked in order to point to the right objects and so on at runtime.
- Added animations for switch blocks appearing and disappearing, video below:

Finally, I've pretty much mapped out all the steps that I need to take from here to completing the project. Of course there will be unexpected things along the way, but it feels as though I am heading in the right direction!

 

wow great game. great art. good work man.

 

Gracias! Hopefully I can continue to find time to keep working on it!

I did a little bit of tweaking and got draw calls down to under 50, from what I've read this means I should be good for iPhone 3GS and upwards, generally speaking, of course, no doubt other factors will come into play also. If anyone would like to chime in and give me some technical pointers though I would be most appreciative.

Stay tuned!

 

Set up a placeholder level select system. Next will be putting in place the other navigational elements of the game, then once all the placeholder stuff functions, I'll go in and make it look pretty!