First thread and my first game

So there it is, first thread in this section and first game product on which I spent approximately 5 months. It’s written on top of the Android API version > 2.2 and with the use of OpenGL ES 2.0, no third party libraries included. Hope you’ll enjoy it. I will appreciate any comments or suggestions of improvement.
Cheers

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rixment.game.rocketcraze&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5yaXhtZW50LmdhbWUucm9ja2V0Y3JhemUiXQ

It looks like a good game from the screenshots, but I can’t get it to work on my Samsung Galaxy S II (Android 2.3.3). I can get to the start screen, and click Launch. But clicking the red button causes the app to force close. I’ve submitted an error report via the Android Market.

Happy to help you sort out this issue, if you need additional testing / logs for a fix!

Cheers,
David

Oh, this is quite an information for me. Unfortunately I don’t have myriads of devices and cannot test my game on each and one of them. As for the crash situation, I already ‘fixed’ two errors people sent me in yesterday’s reports. One related with Android being unable to acquire SENSOR_SERVICE and the second one which occurred during binding OpenGL’s framebuffers (in both cases I display proper error dialog box). Could you recheck the scenario described by you on the newest version (1.0.16)? The game runs without a glitch on Samsung Galaxy S, therefore it should also work on S2 too. Many thanks!

I’d like to try this, but my standard permission paranoid has kicked in. Can you explain what “DISCOVER KNOWN ACCOUNTS” is used for in the app?

Quite honestly I have no idea :slight_smile: I have exactly the same knowledge as you. Google says [1] that this is low importance (see at the bottom). The game doesn’t use libraries such as Flurry, or Google Analytics etc The only third party libraries included are:

  1. Google’s AdMob
  2. TapJoy
  3. OpenFeint social network

And that’s pretty much. And I wouldn’t call it paranoid, only cautious and that’s good characteristic :wink:

[1] http://techpp.com/2010/07/30/android-apps-permissions-secure-private-data/[hr]
Ok, I looked deeper and now I have an idea. This is something which was required by OpenFeint [1] And the citation:

“To allow OpenFeint to retrieve the logged-in user’s email address from Phone SDK version 5 or above so that the user does not have to type the email address in when creating an account, add the following to the AndroidManifest.xml:
<uses-permission android:name=“android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS” />”

[1] http://support.openfeint.com/images/ref/1.10.2-OFAndroid/APIdocumentation/com/openfeint/api/doc-files/OFinYourGame.htm

Cheers, I’ll give it a go then (even though I despise OpenFeint :wink: ). Sorry to have been a pain, but I have a strong belief that android devs have a responsibility to A) reduce the permission requests as much as humanly possible to keep them meaningful for end users and B) publicise what they want a permission for to keep them honest for end users. It’s small practices like publishing explanations of rights that will go a long way to improving the perception of the market.

That said, clicky, downloading.

I downloaded it.
First time startup I choosed not to enable openfeint. The app crashed.

Next time starting it worked.

The game is great, however I had to play it about 5 /6 times before I got the controls working.
Maybe a bit more explanation on that part.

Also it would be nice to have a fuel meter. And a bit bigger hight meter.
Maybe a speed indication?

Possibly with a bit of inspiration for my dislike / mistrust of waggle controls, but any chance of some very accurate indicator of what the accelerometer is actually reporting to the game for steering. Just an arrow or something. Not obvious from the outset whether I have phone slightly wonky or hands slightly wonky …

Just downloaded the latest update & it works fine now. In terms of constructive criticism, I’d echo the sentiments of falo and Martin - the controls are hard to get used to. Some kind of meter, or even a settings page where you can adjust the sensitivity would be nice.

I also have no idea what the screen flashing red means, or the red bar on the left of the screen. With the way I was handling the controls, the bar never seemed to change and the screen would glow red every time I pressed for thrust. I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to figure this out, but it was confusing for me as a new user.

That said, it seems a well thought out game, and the upgrade screen is pretty clear. It also gives people some reason to keep coming back for more. OpenFeint seemed to work flawlessly, very much in the background which was good, considering my low scores :slight_smile:

… Oh, and I love the explosion animation :wink:

I prefer constructive criticism as now I know where I need to make the proper changes.
Uff, feel relieved that it started to work on S2, many thanks for retesting and of course your opinion :wink:
Merry Christmas!!

I think that you will get a lot more players if you tackle the controls issue.

The controls work fine when you know how to steer, but I doubt most players will be as patience as I was. The first times when playing I was tilting and rotating my phone as much as I could to try to turn the space ship. Now I know that especially with the first space ship you must be very careful not to oversteer. Maybe a big flash warning with OVERSTEER or STALL something like that :slight_smile:

Martin you sum it up just perfectly. Today I travelled to my hometown and luckily I was able to see how the end-user in the form of my sister played the game and oh boy oh boy this was an experience. Phone flying in different directions, rocket crashing all the time, tilting, pitching, yawing. Evidently something that was obvious for me wasn’t obvious for her and probably is not obvious for the players. Therefore, the change need to be done, I will make some tweaks within the rocket configuration to make it more predictable, that’s for sure.
Thanks for your comment

I downloaded this last night and had a play. I’m using an HTC Desire, with Cyanogenmod 7.0.3. As others have said, the controls seemed a little twitchy - my first few tries resulted in immediate crashes, which doesn’t build confidence (especially when the cheapest upgrade is hundreds of points, and I’m getting 0 or 1 for a particularly good flight).

I did start to get the hang of it, and once even earnt 17 points for a single flight.

I completed an offer on the tapjoy offerwall but haven’t yet had the points. Once I get them I’ll try a few upgrades and see if that changes things.

One thing that did happen was on occasion the screen would stop responding to touch. I could still steer the rocket, but nothing happened when I pressed for boost and when it crashed I was unable to click to continue. Not sure if this has happened to others - if so it might be worth looking into.

Thanks Zelazny for pointing out the last issue. Last time I spoke with my friend he told me that there was a problem with touch response, but on rocket’s upgrade screen. I definitely need to check this out. Let’s hope I’ll be able to reproduce this behaviour on my phone.
As for the steering issue, it seems that I simply overdid it. Personally I don’t have any problems with the steering and unluckily for me my friend who’s also writing a game (soon to be published) and to whom I sent the game multiple times for retesting purposes haven’t noticed any problems as well (are we too good or just had too much practice?). But as I said before, I’m in my hometown now and luckily I have my sister which I will use to tweak the game a bit. I should be able to sent an update of the game later today, with the new rocket configuraion.
Cheers, thanks a lot

Tried the game.

I love the simple art style.

Controls are very hard. Funny, they seem too sensitive to get you off course, but not sensitive enough to get you back on course, if that is even possible. A thing about control is that it is hard to code so that it performs the same on all phones. I am not sure whether this is just my phone or on others, but the game is basically impossible for me - droid razr. I can’t believe it is that way for you, so I suspect a coding problem in the control. If you are applying adjustments to your game object (rocket) based on tilt, you should make sure you are doing this on a schedule, not just doing it every frame. Maybe I am just being a little too speculative. If so, sorry.

Couple other things.

Once I start to crash (rocket past 90 degrees) I can’t save myself. Not sure if this is intentional. But, if it is intentional, then you need to speed up the decent so that I don’t have to wait forever for the inevitable.

Other thing is that the animations seem a little slow, especially the explosion when I crash, which I always do. I love the animation, it is just slow.

Overall speed of the game needs to come up, I think, but since I can’t really get started, I just don’t know.

I think the giant clouds way close in the view are a little much. They block view too much and, because they are scaled up, they are very pixilated. I would move them back. In front of the rocket is fine if smaller.

Not sure if it is in there, but a sense of gravity would be cool. This would make taking off slower but cooler and also would potentially solve the slow decent problem I mentioned earlier.

Finally, I got a sense that everything was a little big. I couldn’t see what was coming because, since everything is big, you are limited on what you can put on the screen at one time. Move the camera back maybe?

Hope this helped in some way. I am sure I am wrong about a lot of this, but these were just my impressions. I hate doing these things because I sound critical. Trust me, my own stuff needs lots of improvement as well.

Regards

EDIT - just wanted to add that pressing the red ‘button’ at the bottom of the screen to start the game was not obvious to me. Took me a little while to figure out how to start. Silly, huh?

First of all many thanks for your email. You pointed out many issues that I struggled with while implementing the game, or simply the issues that I couldn’t solve, or haven’t spent enough time on it. As for my replies I put them below, under the proper sections of your comments.

Controls are very hard. Funny, they seem too sensitive to get you off course, but not sensitive enough to get you back on course, if that is even possible.

The behaviour you pointed out relates with the gravity force and the engine thrust. If you’ll get off course it is simply not possible to get you back as the force generated by the engine of first level is not powerful enough. As for the controls sensitivity, yes I made them too sensitive, because I wanted the game to be more engaging and hard to play, but in retrospect I think this approach wasn’t the best and I already eased them up.

A thing about control is that it is hard to code so that it performs the same on all phones. I am not sure whether this is just my phone or on others, but the game is basically impossible for me - droid razr. I can’t believe it is that way for you, so I suspect a coding problem in the control. If you are applying adjustments to your game object (rocket) based on tilt, you should make sure you are doing this on a schedule, not just doing it every frame. Maybe I am just being a little too speculative. If so, sorry.

Hehe, funny you mention that. First versions of the game actually had that problem. I simply had too many data, too many code and too many members and I couldn’t manage to get a grip on them all. This behaviour was leveraged by my friend some time ago when he showed me on his Galaxy S that he has no problem with the rocket steering, where on my HD2 the controls were a bit too sensitive as you previously mentioned and probably on devices such as Galaxy Ace, Htc Wildfire the game was probably unplayable. At the end I reimplemented my physics and the issue shouldn’t exists anymore.

Once I start to crash (rocket past 90 degrees) I can’t save myself. Not sure if this is intentional. But, if it is intentional, then you need to speed up the decent so that I don’t have to wait forever for the inevitable.

It’s intentional. Unfortunately the particles generated by the engine are shot with some speed and the thing is that when I give the rocket ability to drop without any speed restrictions then the result image doesn’t look good (there is too much space between the smoke and fire particles). Personally of course I totally agree and I need to figure out how to solve this issue.

Other thing is that the animations seem a little slow, especially the explosion when I crash, which I always do. I love the animation, it is just slow.

The explosion is made in the slow-motion way and actually when you mention about it I start to think did I make it based on delta time? I will have to check this out too. The explosion animation should take approximately about 5 seconds.

I think the giant clouds way close in the view are a little much. They block view too much and, because they are scaled up, they are very pixilated. I would move them back. In front of the rocket is fine if smaller.

Hmm problem with the android platform :slight_smile: There are too many devices and as well to many screen sizes :wink: I don’t know how did I manage to implement everything so that the game works on for example Htc WildFire and Asus EEE Transformer. To be honest with you I don’t have an answer for this… yet… but this issue is quite important and I will definitely spent some time on it.

Not sure if it is in there, but a sense of gravity would be cool. This would make taking off slower but cooler and also would potentially solve the slow decent problem I mentioned earlier.

Finally, I got a sense that everything was a little big. I couldn’t see what was coming because, since everything is big, you are limited on what you can put on the screen at one time. Move the camera back maybe?

Hope I did answer those, above in my comments.

Hope this helped in some way. I am sure I am wrong about a lot of this, but these were just my impressions. I hate doing these things because I sound critical. Trust me, my own stuff needs lots of improvement as well.

Not at all, you’re not wrong about these stuff, this is a matter of fact.

EDIT - just wanted to add that pressing the red ‘button’ at the bottom of the screen to start the game was not obvious to me. Took me a little while to figure out how to start. Silly, huh?

You obviously never played in the game “Push the big red button!” :slight_smile:

Cheers!

FYI. Added a five star review to the market. Hope that helps just a tiny bit.

regards

Those stars really helps when it comes for motivation, which unfortunately currently is at the bottom. Thanks a lot!

I’ve also added a 5 star review. I saw that there was an update, and the controls are so much better now - I can fly a lot longer!

Now I can start to earn rocket points and play with upgrades :slight_smile:

Funnily enough I have a feeling that the only people that gave me those 5 stars on the Google’s market are the members of this forum :slight_smile: Anyway thanks IronMan! :wink: