[game] AutoTrafego submitted « cocos2d for iPhone

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[game] AutoTrafego submitted

(45 posts) (14 voices)

Started 2 years ago by ob1
Latest reply from malphigian

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ob1
Member

After a few frustrating hours fighting XCode signing bugs, Adam and I are proud to announce that we have finally submitted AutoTrafego.

It’s far from the first traffic management game, but I believe it’s the first isometric one.

Development started around the end of May and the game is build around Cocos 0.7.3 with many modifications. Adam did all the artwork and I did the coding.

Until recently, I was an embedded systems security engineer and reverse engineer. The world is small, because during that time I had occasions to interact with one of the Cocos developers and pick up some Spanish at the same time. :-D

Well, after 8 years I wanted to do something else. And since I was a child, I had wanted to write video games. Some of my friends were pretty successful on the App Store, so I decided to take my chances.

This wasn’t an easy task however. Apart from little scripts and plugins here and there, I hadn’t programmed a line of code since the software engineering class in college ten years ago. I had never owned a Mac and had just heard of Objective-C, but never looked into it. So I bought a Mac, borrowed an Objective-C book from a friend, read it twice, and started building simple UIKit apps.

After I felt a bit confident, I thought it was time to build my first simple game. But I knew that I am a terrible artist and that I would need a graphics artist. That’s when I contacted Adam. I couldn’t afford to buy artwork from him, but he proposed that I code a traffic game he was working on. At first I refused, but I really thought I didn’t have the skills. But I finally changed my mind, and here we are today.

Thanks to all of you here that have help me and to the Cocos developers!

App Store description

You've just landed a new job as a municipal traffic controller. It's a pretty easy job - all you do is watch a camera and flip the lights when the cars get stuck.
Can't be that hard, right? That psychological test they made you take was probably just a legal precaution.
Nothing to worry about.

- Control the flow through 7 levels of cities, countryside and more
- Survival modes for the truly ambitious city employee
- Detailed and striking artwork
- Up to 200 cars onscreen at once
- See your ranking on the online high score list
- Integration with Twitter and Facebook
- Option for left-handed roads
- Original sound track by Squall
- Available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Russian

Screenshots

Video

Website

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

Really impressive iso-art. I like the glowy/translucent traffic light indicators. Whats the bomb icon do?

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

The bomb icon creates a vortex that engulfs cars. You can drag it on gridlocked intersections.

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

"The bomb icon creates a vortex that engulfs cars."

I bet every municipal traffic controller wishes they had that.

Posted 2 years ago #
PhilM
Member

looks sweet. Very nice gfx, and also very nice menus (in the video on your website).

Congrats on your first game! Hope approval doesn't take to long for ya.

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

Thanks! The video on the site is from an old beta. I am uploading a new one.

Posted 2 years ago #
patrickC
Member

this looks sweet!
really good idea of having "slices" of world to play in, looking forward to trying it out, good luck!

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

Thank you! I added the new video.

Posted 2 years ago #
dnsolo
Member

Hi,

Great looking game, I'll definitely buy it!

I really like the lightning effects, how did you do these?

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

@dnsolo: ColorLayer with randomized opacity.

Yeah, I had to think about it quite some time when Adam proposed to have a lightning effect. But the solution was amazingly easy in the end.

Posted 2 years ago #
bradparks
Member

well personally, i think it looks totally awesome... great work... really!

how long did it take to make it?

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

Well it depends how you count. But basically Adam and I started working together on it at the end of March. Adam had already been working on the art for some time.

Posted 2 years ago #
natanavra
Member

The game really looks amazing, I like the style!

I think by "How long did it take to make it?" We mean, how much time did you spend each day on the app, and how many days a week. Did it like become your day job, or a hobbish, free time coding?

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

It's my day job currently as I am unemployed.

However it's hard to count the hours, because some days I worked from 7am to 2am including the weekend, and other days I just watched TV or was doing stuff outside :-D

I also traveled a bit, so it's really hard to tell how much time I spent.

Posted 2 years ago #
jd
Member

All your hard work looks like it paid off in the end. Looks cool, congrats.

Posted 2 years ago #
sunsu
Member

Very good indeed. Top notch production! Hopefully the fickle app store will show favor.

Posted 2 years ago #
bradparks
Member

without a doubt, it looks like your hard work paid off.... congrats!

Posted 2 years ago #
Mitch Lindgren
Member

Wow, that looks amazing! I hope I'll see this featured in the app store some day soon!

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

Thanks for the encouraging words.

If anyone has questions more about graphics or the conception of the game than coding, Adam would be happy to chime in.

Posted 2 years ago #
natanavra
Member

I have a question if you don't mind,
How do you manage the cars movement... they don't collide and stop right before the other cars - calculating distance isn't too difficult, but managing all of them without collisions (or maybe they are colliding? The Canvas Size is bigger than the image size?

Just wondering, Thanks!
~ Natanavra.

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

Okay, I did the collision algorithm myself (the toughest part of the game). It's not perfect and sometimes there are cars overlapping, like when frames are skipped and the collision check is not done in time.

Otherwise, I have a clipping layer on the edge of the playfield and the cars are created a bit off the playfield. Each car is on a "road" which are arrays of cars, so it's easy to see which car is in front of the other. Then for each pair of roads there is an intersection where complex collision calculation take place (car in front, car coming on the intersecting road for each direction, red light...).

Posted 2 years ago #
John Robbert
Member

Well from the pictures its seems great.

nice graphics, great idea :)

liked it.

Posted 2 years ago #
leftright
Member

Wow, this is a great production, the graphics look awesome. Let us know when it hits the appstore.

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

I just got the approval mail. I hope it will hit the store soon (I have seen apps take several days after approval).

Going to bed.

Posted 2 years ago #
jd
Member

This isn't a time to sleep!?! Keep refreshing ITunes every 3 minutes until your app shows up. Good luck.

Posted 2 years ago #
Mitch Lindgren
Member

It's on the store! I've downloaded it, and I've gotta say, it's a ton of fun! I must admit I was a little skeptical about the concept, but it's actually the perfect kind of game for the iPhone. Very simple controls, short games, but addictive and fun to play.

Congrats, ob1!

Posted 2 years ago #
dnsolo
Member

Hi ob1,

I've just visited the App store and downloaded your game. I expected to pay for it though, why didn't you charge for it? I would have happily paid 3 dollars.

Brilliant game design, graphics and animation, well done!

Posted 2 years ago #
ob1
Member

it's a promotion. I have to update the store description.

A little busy at the moment.

Thanks guys.

Itunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=329821720&mt=8

Posted 2 years ago #

Steve Oldmeadow
Administrator

Its a great game. I got an interesting crash - the crash log says that the application failed to terminate in time. I always wondered what would happen if you took too long in applicationWillTerminate. When I started the app after this it seemed to be locked up on the Default.png, the loading screen never displayed and then it crashed.

Process:         AutoTrafego [439]
Path:            /var/mobile/Applications/3A746FAF-0C89-465D-AEA2-01CA4AE7906E/AutoTrafego.app/AutoTrafego
Identifier:      AutoTrafego
Version:         ??? (???)
Code Type:       ARM (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [1]

Date/Time:       2009-09-17 10:25:52.507 +0800
OS Version:      iPhone OS 3.1 (7C144)
Report Version:  104

Exception Type:  00000020
Exception Codes: 0x8badf00d
Highlighted Thread:  0

Application Specific Information:
mobi.offbyone.AutoTrafego failed to terminate in time
elapsed total CPU time (seconds): 1.930 (user 1.370, system 0.560), 32% CPU
elapsed application CPU time (seconds): 0.090, 2% CPU

Posted 2 years ago #

ob1
Member

Thanks Steve, that's interesting. It never happened to me or my testers I think.

I know that sometimes Pinch can not terminate in time, that's a known problem. That's why on terminate I save the game and everything before ending the Pinch beacon. However, saving the game might take a long time, that doesn't help.

I will check on connect if I get a lot of those.

(For those interested, on ApplicationWillTerminate I send my own notification MyApplicationWillTerminate and then end the Pinch beacon. Since a notification is blocking and my application parts only act on MyApplicationWillTerminate, it works well).

http://resources.pinchmedia.com/faq#termination

I guess that on restart it's again the Pinch beacon that has trouble starting. :-/

I am just glad I read the FAQ and coded around this limitation. It still sucks though.

Posted 2 years ago #

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