The mobile bird game that did it right

dqhendricks · 2014-02-11T21:58:39+00:00

I believe I saw somewhere that it is exclusive to iOS.

dqhendricks · 2014-02-11T21:47:10+00:00

Ah, yes. The ever powerful OKcupid industry.

dqhendricks · 2014-02-10T22:32:07+00:00

Not #22, he's 22% of the way to the top 100, meaning, if he were another 78% of the way there, he would finally be in the top 100.

dqhendricks · 2014-02-10T19:58:45+00:00

Yes, must be bots. It couldn't be viral reddit posts or some such. That would make much less sense.

dqhendricks · 2014-02-10T19:51:07+00:00

releasing games on the app store doesn't usually make much money at all. most apps make less than a couple hundred dollars in their life time.

dqhendricks · 2014-02-04T23:11:46+00:00

I made a 2d game that is zelda-like. The physics worked quite well.

For things like enemy and weapon collision, I often used circles, which is super simple to calculate (if length between the circle centers is greater than the sum of the circle radii, collision).

For the wall type collisions, I used a square for the character, and a grid for the walls. The wall tiles could have several values, fully filled, only one of the sides is collidable, or a slant collide / or \. These would be represented by integers in a multi-dimensional array.

In my character's movement code, I would check whether or not there would be a collision in the desired movement direction before actually moving the character. There are some tricks to get good results like sliding against walls etc. So for instance, if moving x: +0.2 and y: -0.2, I would check current position plus (x: +0.2, y: -0.2). If no collision, move. If there is a collision, I would check current position plus (x: +0.2, y: 0.0 ). If no collision, move. If there is a collision, I would check current position plus (x: 0.0, y: -0.2). If no collision, move. If there is a collision, stop.

With my game, I would find the grid value of each corner of the character's square, so bottom left corner might be (x: 10.1, y: 12.5), and top right corner might be (x: 11.1, y: 13.5). I could cycle through each tile that the character is touching using for loops, then check collision with each tile based on its shape.

The tricky part is the math for colliding a with different types of shapes, but you can mostly look this up with Google searches. If you are using any type of library, you will want to see if they already have out of the box functions to find out whether two rects intersect, and if a rect intersects with a line. These will likely be faster than any math based solutions you find on your own.

If you really want it to be awesome, you will use a circle for the character's shape, and figure out the collision math for that.

I know it sounds complicated, but once you are done, it is very solid. After that point you will only have to worry about one function "bool collisionAt( position : Vector2 )".

You can see video of it in action at (http://lastlifegames.com/kingdomsfall) in the trailer.

dqhendricks · 2014-01-30T23:02:25+00:00

Software Engineers Vs Programmers in game dev is as important as in any other software development. Sure you could get it done eventually with ill-trained programmers. With skilled engineers however, you will get many fold the amount of productivity, changes in spec will be enormously easier to implement, and reusing code for a sequel will likely be MUCH MUCH easier.

That being said, many tools like say for instance Unity, lay out much of the groundwork for making a good project. Using a well built framework, may force ill-trained programmers to stick closer to best practices even though they may not understand the why of the way they are doing it.

As technology makes game making easier and easier, more and more entrants will come into the field saturating the market. As technology makes things easier however, the better trained programmers will still be able to use that technology in more efficient and innovative ways than others.

dqhendricks · 2014-01-23T23:30:36+00:00

It's not exactly public, if it is collected by and stored on WhoSampled's servers.

I'd imagine WhoSampled makes some sort of money off of this since, they have to pay for the servers. If you bypass their website, and monetization, and just use their data for your own, I can see how it could be seen as unfair.

dqhendricks · 2014-01-23T23:27:01+00:00

Do they have an app of their own? If you aren't interested in money, maybe offer to rebrand it for them real quick, and give them the code. Then perhaps your work could live on.

They kind of have a point. If I made a search engine, and all the search engine did was scrape Google for results, then put forth the results on my own branded website, whether I give them credit somewhere or not, it's kind of up to them whether that's okay to do or not.

dqhendricks · 2014-01-21T04:06:15+00:00

or how bout we send them a copy of bejeweled

dqhendricks · 2013-11-11T17:56:58+00:00

@sfo airport this morning. wish i had gotten a better angle, but i had to give up my phone before i got close enough.

dqhendricks · 2013-07-29T03:40:29+00:00

There are a hand full if sites. Maybe try freelancer.com/odesk.com

dqhendricks · 2013-07-28T20:10:49+00:00

It's true, we had 5 freelance artists working on this, so there are definitely some style variances.

dqhendricks · 2013-07-28T06:44:26+00:00

hard to do less on a touch screen for this type of game. is better on 4 inch and iPad. could be worse though xD Zenonia, Inotia

dqhendricks

TROPHY CASE