Pacifism

So!
Since my last post I got a new awesome job and thus worked less on PewPew and Rollin' Droid. An update for PewPew is in preparation though. It will feature basic maintenance stuff (iphone 5 support, sound improvements, small optimisations, etc...), and more importantly a new game mode:

Pacifism

It is inspired copied from Geometry Wars' Pacifism game mode, and even in its unfinished form it's really a lot of fun. It will be available only in PewPew 2 when you finish the 3rd Campaign (in any difficulty).

Concerning Rollin' Droid, I've expanded my ambitions and need to re-do a part of the engine because I feel that my creativity is limited. I can't simply think of a feature and quickly implement it like I could do in PewPew. The hard part about RD's engine is that I have randomly generated levels that are potentially infinitely wide and height so I can't just alloc enough memory in advance. Also, I absolutely want to maintain 60 fps with no hiccups when loading a new area, so I have to create and stream it chunk by chunk to the GPU. To top it off, I can only use integer to have a deterministic game because I want people to be able to replay each other's games across different CPUs.

Asteroids

Quick post to say that I released an update for both PewPew and PewPew 2, that includes a new game mode called Asteroids.

It's of course an homage to the classic 1979 game, albeit PewPew style: lots of shooting, and lots of enemies.

A few notes: To keep the retro mood going on, the ship's color is forced to white. The asteroids' shape is generated at run time: it was faster for me to write code than to draw manually them :-) Added bonus: they have a unique shape every time. Final note: I resisted the urge of making the asteroids rotate, to stay closer to the original. A game developer's life is tough.

PewPew 1.4 and PewPew 2 1.2 submitted to the app store

I finally submitted to the App Store updated versions of PewPew and PewPew 2! Both versions now support the iPad's and the iPhone 4's resolution.

Most changes are in PewPew 2:

• There's an improved Chapter One: among the things I did was adding visual feedback showing destructible objects were reacting to the players' bullets, so the players would know those objects were destructible . More importantly, I've corrected the bug where the game denied the completion of a level when a player died just after completing the level's objectives, but before the transition back to the menu.
• There's the long awaited Chapter Two ! It took a really long time to create because it's containing a lot of new enemies, and the levels are more complex than in the first chapter.
• I now display the best times for the campaign levels.

• I've added a new infinity mode that you unlock by completing the chapter Two. This mode is very different from the existing ones since you actually control 2 ships. It took a while to adjust the difficulty progression because I am actually not a very good player at this game mode =). It's tough to adjust the gameplay for players that are going to be much better than you.

• I've slightly improved user interface. I've made the buttons prettier because I've always felt the old buttons (just a rectangle) were boring. Also I've removed the explosions in the backgrounds since they just weren't justified, and in my opinion reduced the purity of the menus.

I've also re-done the website. The client side is done in GWT while the server side is in python. One of the visible change is that the high scores now include the colors of the nicknames :-)

Now that I think about it I was quite productive. I really hope you all like the new stuff. My goal is to make PewPew 2 the best twin joystick game on the App Store, so I am going to keep on working on it.

PewPew 2's progress

I haven't posted in quite some time now because I've been so busy with programming PewPew 2, but quite a few people are asking for news, so here we go:

PewPew 2 is progressing real well. Here are some of the new features that are currently done:

-Scores can be uploaded anytime, not just after you've played (it should have been the case from the start, I know)

-Replays are now uploaded along the scores. This will allow you to watch and admire the best players play. Also, you'll be able to show off.

-Better graphics, 3D sound, seriously optimized engine.

-2 new sound tracks.

-A 10 level campaign with a lot of diversity. And a boss.

-2 new unlock-able game modes (in addition to megagore, assault, chromatic conflict and dodge this)

-Medals. These are rewards when you achieve certain scores in one of the 6 game modes.

-6 different ships. You progressively unlock them by obtaining medals.

-Lot's of new ennemies.

I think it's enough new content for a first release of PewPew 2. Make no mistakes though, there will be updates ;-)

So what am I waiting for? Why am I not submitting PewPew 2 to the app-store? Well, I need to polish everything up. This is the step that will make PP2 awesome. I have to carefully balance everything, make sure the difficulty is not too high (I tend to do that), not to low (no worries there), that the in-game explanations are clear, that the objectives in every campaign level are also clear, etc...

One more thing... I have been busy bringing PewPew 2 to the iPad! Here are the first screenshots of PewPew 2 HD:

That's Megagore. Notice the increased viewing field.

And that? That's one of the level of the campaign ;-)

That's the splash screen. The quote comes from a review on the Canadian App Store, and I find it absolutely hilarious. I had to put it somewhere; I hope the author doesn't mind!

Fun fact: like 99% of the developers creating iPad apps, I haven't got an iPad to test it on. To find the ideal position for the virtual joysticks, I've made myself a dummy iPad in cardboard and imagined myself playing with it! Actually, probably all the game developers for the iPad have done the same thing.

OK, enough chitchat, I have a game to finish.

Let there be PewPew v1.1

PewPew v1.1 is finally out. I have not received any crash report (yet?), so the update code seems to work well.
Also, it seems that people appreciate the new game mode =)

Review!

First of all, I am happy to announce that App of my Eye reviewed PewPew:

[...] the biggest praise we have for this game is it’s controls, which are very responsive and just feels great overall. If not THE best controls that we’ve ever had in an iPhone game, definitely one of the best. Other publishers/developers should take note. A must-have app for every level of gamer and amazingly, it’s free.

Secondly, last Friday (the 19th), I submitted an other update. Let's hope Apple will validate it more quickly than the last one I submitted!
The most important changes in the new version (PewPew v1.1) are that:

• The difficulty increases more slowly in the Assault mode.

• Because the gameplay changed a little bit, the replays you did are incompatible: you will not be able to watch the replays you made in PewPew v1.0. I am sorry, but it was just too complicated to maintain compatibility.

• I finally added a new mode, Chromatic Conflict. In this mode, you can change the color of your ship. Depending on the color of your ship, you can destroy certain enemies.

• During the replays, you can stop the rotation of the camera, and fast forward.

Edit: and I forgot to mention that PewPew v1.1 allows you to listen to your own music.

Update cancelled!

Okay, so I submitted the update two weeks ago, and it is still "In Review". I had not realized my update was so big it required 2 weeks of attention.

So I canceled the update, because right after it would have been accepted it, I would have submitted a new one, and I am pretty sure Apple wouldn't have appreciated it.

Forcing xCode to update the bundle

When you modify some of your ressources files in a xCode project, the bundle does not get updated until you modify some port of the code (or do a rebuild all, which takes a while on bigger project).
So here's my (ridiculous) work around:

mac:~ jyaif$ while [ 1 ]; do touch /Users/jyaif/PewPew/Resources/data/boo; rm /Users/jyaif/PewPew/Resources/data/boo; sleep 5; done

In other news, I am still waiting for my update to get approved. I suspect Apple takes this long, to discourage devellopers from updating their apps too often, as this would force them to hire one or -god forbid- two additional testers. In totally unrelated news, I installed and tried the Android SDK :o

Update sent to the App Store

I uploaded an update of PewPew. From what I read, it will probably take a week or so for the game to be available on the App Store.
Anyway, PewPew now:

• encourages doing the tutorial when playing the game for the first time
• asks for confirmation when quitting a game
• permits the activation/deactivation of rotation during a replay
  
• makes it visually obvious to the player that he has taken a bonus
  
• has a lower amount of particles
  
• has prettier explosions
• puts the game in pause when a low battery alert (or a music menu pop up) appears
  
• ignores replays that can no longer be played
• make the difficulty increase more slowly in the "Assault" mode
• respects the players that are listening to their own music :)
  

Under the hood updates:

• versioning system for the scores
• precalculation of the explosions
• needed models are loaded at the beginning of a game (to avoid ingame slowdowns)
• externalized descriptions of the game modes

What I should have finished:

• The 3rd mode
• An obvious optimization to the collision detection

I am still not satisfied with the way the "3rd mode" is. I have tried a variety of gameplay models, but I can't find anything that's not too hard and not too boring.
Also, the "obvious optimization" will take a lot of time to do, and right now I prefer focusing on finishing the "3rd mode".

More countries

Yesterday, I made PewPew available in all countries, except the english-speaking ones (US/Canda/UK/Australia/Ireland...)