Phoenix Details

I think its now time to shed some more info about Phoenix, as the major code is finished, it now all about level design and a bit of polish here and a bit of juice there.

Phoenix is a puzzle game.  You, the player are a ball, you enter a world of a specific shape (World 1 = Square,  World 2 = Triangle, World 3 = Circle).  In the game you destroy a particular 'normal' block(s) to get your self to the goal line,  for every block you destroy you loose 10 points,  so try to destroy as few a blocks as possible.  Sounds simple right, well there are obstacles to make things harder, here are some of the obstacles:

Bouncy Bouncy - If you collide with this obstacle, you will bounce away in a particular direction, this could either be in your advantage or most likely not.

Death - Collide with this obstacle, and you will be destroyed, particles flying everywhere and level restarted.

Shape Shifter - Enter this obstacle and after a few seconds you will be converted to another shape, but will that shape be to your advantage?  Who knows!

Teleport - Enter this obstacle and you will be teleported to another section on the level,  again, will this help you complete the level? or will it take you to your death?

Earthquake - Collide with this obstacle and your screen will shake for 10 seconds,   watch out you don't destroy too many normal blocks as you will loose points.

Lights Out - Collide with this obstacle, and your screen will mimic that of a strobe light for 10 seconds, it will annoy you, as you loose sight for a few mili seconds, and it will confuse you.

Spin -  This obstacles stays in one place, but spins at a certain speed, if you collide with it, it will push you in the direction it is spinning (not an amazing obstacle, but needed something small to start off with)

Gravitron - Enter this obstacle, and you will encounter almost zero gravity,  and it may take you in a strange direction, tap the player on the screen to gain more speed and gravity and escape the Gravitron.

Electric Pulse - Collide with this obstacle and you will be electrocuted - that's not good is it!

Each world will have 25 levels (free version will only have 1 world).  In each level you have bonus drops, 2 purple and 1 gold.   The gold bonus drop is the one you have to collect, the gold bonus drop is the location where you have to guide yourself to. You have to collect all 25 gold bonus drops to unlock the next world.  Each bonus drop is worth 50 points,  so it is worth collecting all drops in the levels to increase your total game score for the leader boards.

Once I finish World 1 levels, I'll post a gameplay trailer,  all of the obstacles will not appear, as some of them are for the paid version only.  

Just another brick in the wall!

Just as I thought development of Phoenix was nearing the end,  it seem's I have hit a brick wall.   I have found what I can only see as a bug in the software (not a bug in the game) that I am using to develop the game.  The bug does not stop me designing and creating the levels,  but it really does stop the game being a polished one.   I am not going to be releasing this in August it seems, as there is a major update to the software coming up in the next 2 months, so I will have to wait until then :(

The good news is, I can carry on with Apollo,  which is more or less finished code wise (apart from a few things),  but there's a lot of work needed for the graphics,  this is the only major work that needs to be done for that.

We have also started working on another app,  the app is not a graphical app,  so the app should be finished in 2-4 weeks.  I will give this the code name of "Socrates".  Socrates will be a free app, and this is a type of app that seems to be popular in the last couple of months.   The game will contain iAds, and Game Center leaderboards.  I am unsure about achievements at the moment,  but I will think about it.

We will also be busy partaking in a game design contest on http://totgb.com/page/game-design-contests  (Think Outside The Game Box).   The theme is yet to be announced (announced on 5th August),  but if the contest seems like something we can do,  then we will do it.  It will be our first contest, and we look forward to competing against other developers.

Keep reading, I will post updates on the development of Apollo on Socrates.

G

Lite/Free version nearly complete

In the last week or so I have been working hard trying to complete the major bits of code that is stooping us separating the App to one Full version and a Free version.  Yesterday we finished what I think was the hardest bit of code left to do, and all that remains is the finishing touches on all first 25 levels (first 25 will be on Full and Free version), a few graphics for world select and a touch up on some features to get it running smoothly.  I anticipate by next week sometime, we can get the free version into an Alpha testing state, we might even go straight to beta with the free version.  If all goes well, I'll go and add iAds in straight away.

For the full version, once we have completed the split between full and free, we have a lot of work to do.  The major part of this work is the GameCenter Leader Boards and Achievements.   We have decided on the achievements we were going to create, but no graphics have yet to be made for the notifications, badges and no code as been implemented to track the achievements.

We also have to create further 50 levels for the two extra worlds that are bundled in the full version (we are discussing adding extra levels in each world before release).  Once the free version is out in beta, I'll get straight to work with the achievements, as it seems that will be the most time consuming and most problematic.

We will also be testing the universal app feature with the free version, if that goes well, we will most certainly be introducing "Phoenix" as a universal app for all iDevices.

I have also been working on trying to get proper social integration working on my app so that users can post their score on Twitter or on Facebook.  I have spent a lot of time trying to sort it out, but kept running into problems, so it looks that a smooth social integration will be off the cards for now, and I will stick to the old simple way of social integration.

The difference being that the simple less hassle way and the proper integration is just a url that passes a string to twitter and allows the user to post.  The downside of this is, the text appears in an editable box, so the user can type anything he/she wants, which is not desirable really, but if they wan't to cheat that's fine.

The way I was trying to get it was, that it was passing certain variables from the app to my webserver, a php script would be dealing with the request, and send information back and forth between the app and facebook, but it proved to be too big job for me.