Peter und Vlad - Available on the App Store

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Peter und Vlad - Available on the App Store

(23 posts) (9 voices)

Started 2 years ago by johannth
Latest reply from johannth

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johannth
Member

Hi guys, I want to announce the Cocos2D powered game I've been working on for the last three months. I couldn't have done this without the help of Cocos 2D, as I'm new to game programming, OpenGl and Objective-C. But I'm really proud of the results!

We used Cocos2D for the bulk of engine, a little bit of code from CocosDenshion (I had some performance issues when changing songs so I couldn't use it as-is.) but chose AGON-Online for our leaderboards instead of CocosLive. I really like the design of Cocos2D because everything feels natural, I like the Director and Scene design but find that the framework possibly overuses the Singleton pattern. The community is also excellent, an active forum and regular releases.

But back to my game, which you can buy in the App Store.

Official video on YouTube

Get the Flash Video

Peter und Vlad is an adventure game for iPhone and iPod touch with a herding flavor that chronicles the adventure of the Sedov brothers, Peter and Vlad in their epic battle with a dangerous and out-of-control weather machine! It is a family friendly game where the users help Peter by herding sheep into a farmhouse before the weather machine transforms their wool into energy.

The story of the game can be summarized as follows:

The mad scientist Vlad Sedov has created a weather machine to help his brother Peter with his farming chores. Vlad's design of the machine was supposed to make good use of his brother's flock of sheep by using the wool as the main power source. However, the brothers soon found out that this was not an optimal design - and the off-button to the infernal-machine is nowhere to be found!

and you can read the whole short story on our website.

You could categorize Peter und Vlad as a line drawing game, as you issue commands to Peter by touching and drawing a line through the environment, but we always considered this to be an arcade adventure or a herding simulator. You have the infinite gameplay of arcade games like Tetris but also realistic flock model, compelling story and likable characters.

Some screenshots:

Marketing games is hard but we've tried to mix it up by attacking the problem from various angles. We have the official website, , our twitter page, an YouTube account and the one I personally like the most: Vlad's MySpace, which contains some of the music from the game (which incidentally was composed by me ;).

I really liked creating this game and I'll hope you'll enjoy it too. The whole game creation process was made painless by Cocos2D but we had some problems with Apple. Does anyone understand how the release date works? We launched the game today but it has a release date of 15. September which is the day it was approved.

Anyway, we have started work on another Cocos2D powered title so I'll see you guys around in the forum. If the game does well in the store, I'll definitely contribute to the Cocos2D project!

Posted 2 years ago #
jd
Member

Looks really nice. Congrats!

Posted 2 years ago #
johannth
Member

Man, I'm having trouble with this post. There seems to be something wrong with the video embedding but the post is too old for me to edit. Could some admin fix it for me or allow me to edit the post briefly? Sorry for the inconvenience, I seem to be forum disabled.

Posted 2 years ago #
cybergreg
Member

-> forum disabled
I love it - ha! :-)

YouTube link:

Get the Flash Video

:-)

PS the video, while very nice doesn't really show me the game play, especially because I'm cheap and won't part with $3 unless I'm very sure I'm going to play the game for more than 5 minutes. Sorry, that's just me.

Posted 2 years ago #
AkumaStreak
Member

Johannth, what are the negatives/points wrt to "possibly overuses the Singleton pattern"? Just curious. I find it very practical/appropriate (given that there only needs to be one instance of the director, the audio engine, etc.).

Great-looking game!

Posted 2 years ago #
johannth
Member

Regarding Singletons, I agree that the Director should be a singleton, (at least there should only be a single instance) but I often feel the use of singletons hides coupling between components and introduces global variables. It makes it more difficult to use inheritance and reuse components if not applied carefully, and it makes unit testing really hard. I found it almost impossible to unit test my cocos2D code and that made me very nervous about introducing bugs when adding features. Misko Hevery at Google has some nice posts on the matter and can explain it better than me.

I'm not sure how I would done it differently in Cocos but I felt like my code and the Cocos code had been tangled together more than necessary.

Thank you for the compliments, we are very proud of the game's look and feel and we'll post live gameplay footage sometime over the weekend on YouTube. I agree with you that it is necessary to see the game in action before you buy it, but I find $3 very cheap, even for a casual game. We have put too much effort into this game to sell it for a dollar.

Posted 2 years ago #
Steve Oldmeadow
Administrator

"...a little bit of code from CocosDenshion (I had some performance issues when changing songs so I couldn't use it as-is)"

Can you elaborate? What are you using for your sound effects if you aren't using CocosDenshion?

Posted 2 years ago #
cybergreg
Member

re: "but I find $3 very cheap, even for a casual game. We have put too much effort into this game to sell it for a dollar."

No, no no - I did not mean to imply the game wasn't worth it... very sorry... I just meant I need to see more of the actual game play in the video, even if it was $1.

Hope that helps and it does look great and I look forward to an updated video or a lite version that I can try out the game play myself.
:-)

Posted 2 years ago #
johannth
Member

Steve, I started using CDAudioManager but parts of the gameplay required smooth changes of background music. After many failed attempts of optimization I ended up using CDSoundEngine for the sound effects (works great!) and my own threaded hack of a wrapper for AVAudioPlayer for smooth fades between music tracks.

cybergreg: Sorry if I sounded harsh, I understood you perfectly. I would never buy an iPhone game without either good reviews and recommendations (Spider!) or a real gameplay video. It is too easy to fake something in a glossy trailer. On the other hand I really hope, we developers are brave enough to price our games a little higher than $1 - no self respecting video game should be sold for $1 on launch!

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

Maybe games *should* be $1 on launch and then get pricier when a free version is released and people have written reviews. The initial buyers are taking a risk - they havent had the chance to try the game first - they cant read many user-reviews - and if they are anything like me theyve bought *tons* of games that had a good screenshot but really really sucked. Then when you release a lite version the game goes up to $3. Just a thought.

PuV looks really lovely btw. I like the sheep AI/flocking. Good luck in the store.

Posted 2 years ago #
cybergreg
Member

^ I agree with Codemattic however I have also noticed that there is a trend to move away from bargain bin prices, aka $0.99. In contrast I think Fare City should be priced at $1.99 or even $2.99 (current price $0.99). I also think games like Flight Control should be more than $0.99 too.

My feeling is if the game is complete with full features / functionality then price it greater than $0.99, however many recent games (even on these forums) seem more like proof of concepts and should be free.

Just my $.02 * .7 (don't forget Apple's cut!)
:-)

Posted 2 years ago #
rolando
Moderator

wow... congratulations! really nice. I still have left some US$ in my account, so I think I'll buy a copy.

cheers!
rolando.

Posted 2 years ago #
neobamboom
Member

No no no. I feel you guys should always release a trial first. You know... to get the buzz going... If people like it, then I'm sure they would not worry as much about paying something other than $0.99. I feel that you have to get established first. Look at gameloft... they sell apps for $10... many of which are not nearly as enjoyable, but people still pay because they 'trust' the company.

Indie developers need to build a rapport with the market before they can price things higher..... sucks.

Posted 2 years ago #
rolando
Moderator

@neobamboom: while I agree that indie devs should build a reputation, I don't think that reputation should be built based on cheap games.

If your game is not a basic "toy", you should price it at tier 3 or higher. If your game is just a demo or a proof of concept, place it under the "impulse-buy" category: tier 1 or even free. We should really stop pricing quality games at 0.99. It's bad for everyone: it creates unnecessary noise. Look at STP: they stopped reviewing "cheap" games (tier 1 and 2), but are now focusing on more complete, game-games (tier 3 and up). That's what we all should do.

Don't get me wrong though... if you plan to create only small, casual games (or games with name =~ /^i\w+/), then it's ok to price them at 0.99.

Regarding the "lite" version, yes... it is important because APPLE DOES NOT ALLOW US TO UPLOAD VIDEOS, only still shots. It shouldn't be necessary to have a lite version if you had a good video (showing actual gameplay).

rolando.

Posted 2 years ago #
Steve Oldmeadow
Administrator

"...I ended up using CDSoundEngine for the sound effects "

Okay, the way you worded things in your original post i.e. "a little bit of code from CocosDenshion" it sounded like you weren't using CDSoundEngine because you thought it was causing performance problems. To me CDSoundEngine is a huge part of CocosDenshion - that is why it lives in the CocosDenshion file.

Posted 2 years ago #
neobamboom
Member

@rolando

I never once suggested that you build/sell cheap games in order to get your reputation. That will actually do more harm then good. I prefer the demo/lite idea... while videos showing the game play are always a plus... it just does not compare to a hands-on trial.

Posted 2 years ago #
johannth
Member

@Steve
Sorry for that, I should have rephrased that sentence because it sounds like there is something work with CocosDenshion, which is definitely not the case. CDSoundEngine is rock solid and the performance issue originated from AVAudioPlayer and probably from hardware limitations. I only meant that I didn't use the whole CocosDenshion framework as-is and had to hack my way around AVAudioPlayer.

Posted 2 years ago #
plasticpower
Member

The graphics look beautiful. Wonderful job!

Posted 2 years ago #
johannth
Member

Thank you! We recently posted a real gameplay video and also an instructional video for you aspiring herders!
Enjoy:

Get the Flash Video

Get the Flash Video

Posted 2 years ago #
cybergreg
Member

Okay, since I originally asked for a video I'm going to post my comments. Note: These are "my" feelings and as such are pretty much worthless. :-D

Video #2 is very well done and I now understand the game, but I think you should trim it down to either 1 minute or 1:30 (to use it as a promotional tool). Unfortunately video #1 (9:50) was, well pretty boring and I'm not sure it will help drive sales. Again, these are just "my" feelings and if I just watched video #2 I "might have" purchased the game; however since watching the first video I feel like I've already played the game. :-/

Please understand; I think you've done an incredible job with the game, it looks very professional and well done. I wish you well in the App store.

Posted 2 years ago #
johannth
Member

Those are great remarks and I really appreciate them.

The first video was not made by us but one of the more competitive players and I agree that it is way too long to use for real promotion. But this guy, Kastaniubrunn, is currently the World Champion of the game and if somebody wants to learn the tricks necessary to excel at our game, you could learn a lot from him. He's probably the son of a farmer or just a real herding prodigy ;)

Another great news! Peter und Vlad is currently featured on Apple's list of hot games!
http://bit.ly/4pgovb. To celebrate this we decided to lower the price to $1.99 for a limited time.

Posted 2 years ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

"Peter und Vlad is currently featured on Apple's list of hot games!"

Congratulations, thats terrific!

What does "Whats Hot" mean? Does it mean that Apple likes the game and is featuring it? Or does it mean that its popular with customers? "New and Noteworthy" I think means Apple likes the game. I wonder how the "Whats Hot" is decided on?

Posted 2 years ago #
johannth
Member

I have no idea what we did to appear on that list but if find out, I'll tell you about it! My guess is that someone at Apple noticed our game and decided to promote it a bit

Posted 2 years ago #

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