A fast, easy to use, free, and community supported 2D game engine
I'm getting close to finalizing my project, hopefully getting it done for a March release.
I don't have a game play video up, but I do have a basic site showing the screen flow:
http://classicalcontraption.com/
I would appreciate any comments as to how things look. Since I have been staring at these for a long time, it gets difficult to see the obvious...
Here's the general screen flow:
letmeknow
Member
Firstly, who are your audience ? Look like not everyone who owns an iOS device. About 1% of them, I presume.
Secondly, it's not world wide game, it's for English countries only, eh, maybe not, a few or 1 country that having the poets.
Thirdly, typing is boring game; things that only a mother could love. In my life, I played a few typing games, 20 years ago, today I turn off & delete every typing game I happened to download even they are free.
Fourthly, reading is boring too; I barely know someone who love reading game text. I skip every text I see during gameplay, I prefer playing not reading.
What is your expectation ?
@letmeknow Zynga does pretty well with 'Words with friends' over 1000 5 star reviews on uk app store, 745000 5 stars on android etc etc so there is an audience if the game is right. Not sure this is a typing game but I could be wrong, certainly doesn't appear to be a keyboard. I'm assuming if there was a keyboard @cadaei would have created a custom one to match the design and would show it in the images.
reading is boring too
This just makes me sad. :( fortunately not an opinion shared by screenwriters, directors and creators of all things shiny in the world ;)
It's not a typing game.
The lines of poems/verses are presented one at a time with the words mixed up. You tap the words in the correct order. The idea was simply to see if it was possible to make a game that would help someone memorize poems/verses etc and have it be a fun experience.
Yes - it would be for English countries only (question to others who have made word games - do you specifically release to English countries?)
I will try to get a game play video up in the next few days.
The audience here is more towards education games, and people that like to read. :)
Another market is homeschool families (a large and quickly growing population in the US).
The poems I'm using are all public domain (at least in the US). I need to research a bit more if the same usage is ok in UK and other english countries (worst case I only release in US). Since all the poems are old, I tried to make a old style (steampunkish) contraption.
Graphics done in Blender/Gimp
Also used LevelHelper/Sprite Helper which really helped out a lot.
I used Tim Roadley's tutorials for the game data persistence:
http://timroadley.com/tutorials-index/
And of course I read many of Ray's tutorials:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/
Of course a huge thank you to Riq for Cocos2d!!
Though I myself don't play them, I know that there is a big market for word games. Some people just love them.
My friend has word games in the market and he's making a killing with 'Word to Word'.
The presentation looks very nice. Best of luck to you :)
letmeknow
Member
@abitofcode: I did not mean any scripts of screenwriters, directors and creators; I meant text in game for players. Read & understand the context, not word by word .... reading game text.. would you ? I don't know how you love reading game text, maybe that's your enthusiastic; but that is abnormal; normal people don't read too much while playing game; just play.
I share my view as a gamer not director or creator. Zynga did pretty well .... eh .... because they are Zynga, could an indie make it with the poem things ? that is the question. Anyway it's my personal opinion.
letmeknow
Member
@cadaei: most famous worldwide things have things in common; less words more images/actions, ex: Tiny Wings, Angry Birds, Tetris, Plants v.s Zombies etc.
Not only games but movies, music, etc. That's why movies like Star Trek, Star Wars, Terminators, XMen, Avengers, Fast & Furious etc, are shown world wide from China to India, Europe, South America...; but oscar movies like The Piano, No country for Old men only well known in a few countries.
Gangnam Style is famous not because of its lyrics, like other KPop music/singers, non-Korean can't understand them. Gangnam Style is famous just because of the dance; if PSY just stand still and sing, it will be turned off after 10 seconds.
I do not tell you to stop or something, I just try to tell you what might happen when you release your app.
@letmeknow: Seriously? "reading is boring"? Good thing you are on a forum filled with words that you have to read and write. Or do you just look at the pictures? Comparing worldwide box office releases to games is just wrong on so many levels. A better comparison would be comparing English language books worldwide, and I can tell you there is a HUGE international market for books that are only written in English. And word games are a massive market - one that encourages people to use their brains and not simply honing their twitch reflexes. There is really no reason to disparage this interesting/original game, simply because you don't like to read.
@cadaei: This looks really polished (by the screenshots anyway), and I love the steampunk aesthetic. I worked on one steampunk-styled game for a client, and it gives such a different feel to the iOS devices. Very cool. Also, the concept of using poems in this manner is very innovative. I think it will really get players closer to the poems than just reading them would. Getting people to actually think about the words, and perhaps why they are written as they are, is a noble pursuit. Best of luck to you. I look forward to buying this game when it comes out!
letmeknow
Member
@Dragyn: again, read context, not word by word. read my reply for @abitofcode.
What I wrote is: "Fourthly, reading is boring too; I barely know someone who love reading game text". What you guys read is " ...reading is boring too. FULL STOP" , yeah look like reading is boring to you guys too, if not so, why you guys stop reading after the word "too;"?
Context is the magic word.
There's a big difference between using words to explain what's going on and words as content. I use very few words where possible in my own apps to explain how the app should work but words as content is a very different matter.
My $0.02. From 30,000 feet a game mechanic pretty much breaks down into pattern recognition, even the thumb twitching games require there to be some kind of order to the chaos and give the impression that if you figure the game out you can progress ever onwards. Games with little order that rely on finger dexterity alone tend to have limited appeal and a short life (Super Turbo Action Pig ;)
So why not use words? They come with meaning (often more than one), the meaning changes with context and position to other words, they're free and you can read a lot into them.
GeivN A SnecetnE OF JbmuleD WrdoS YoU SiltL SeE MianenG
Sprites on the other hand need all their meaning ascribed to them.
screen If I stick a of words wrong on the in the order bunch ...
The first thing your brain starts to do is look for the pattern. A sentence starts with a capital letter so this sentence probably starts with the word 'If' etc. Add to this all the other rules we pick up as part of learning a language and you've a rich tool set to work with.
Then we're back to context. It could be a poem, a limerick, a newspaper headline etc Our brains are constantly looking for meaning in the inputs they receive. Do the words rhyme, is this something that this author would write, does this fit with the other lines.
The iPhone is a popular device with the older generation, and in the first world there's a lot more of them every year. If you really want to increase sales, then targeting the over 50's and their disposable income is probably the right way to go (they may even take the time to give a positive review).
@cadaei You may want to make the font a little larger though ;)
letmeknow
Member
Something like "After mom died, the dog stopped eating". If you only read "after mom died." you surely think that's a human's mom; but when you read "the dog stopped eating", the context change, maybe it's a dog's mom or someone's mom. Now come the tricky part, you will need more data to know that's a human's mom or a dog's mom. If that's the only data, "mom" surely a dog's mom.
After mom died, **the** dog stopped eating.
Nope, it's not the dogs mom, unless the dogs mother was called 'mom' :)
@letmeknow - it appears you don't like word games, which is fine, you are not my market. :) I understand some of your points - any dialogue between players (like Zelda/Pokemon etc) I never read, and frankly those type of games I find quite boring. But the key difference here is that in this instance the text is the game, not part of it.
@Dragyn & @abitofcode Thanks for the feedback.
Regarding the font, since I designed it to only present one sentence/phrase at a time, I needed to find that spot where it's not too big, but not so small so it's not playable. It's a universal app, so on the iPad it is very easy to tap the correct words. The iPhone is not difficult either.
I actually fiddled around quite a bit with the touch detection. The first approach was just a simple bounding box - which makes touching an "I" rather tricky. Instead I use something like:
If touch in bottom part of screen:
Find the closest word to the touch based on center of word
If that word is the correct one - remove and write it
else wiggle the word so they know they choose poorlyThis works really well for everyone I have watched try it out. The only issue is if you have a really long word next to a short one:
[ civilization I ]
If you touch the "on" part of the word, you will actually be closer to the "I", so it counts it as touching the "I". I don't think this is much of an issue since when you click on things (with a finger), you naturally try to click the center of them. I need to watch a few more people play it and see if it needs refinement. One of the goals of the game is to get a 100% accuracy, so I don't want the player to think they were cheated. The only time this became an issue that I noticed was when testing on the simulator where I was using the mouse (a more precise pointer).
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