Another bubble game : Dr Bubbles « cocos2d for iPhone

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Another bubble game : Dr Bubbles

(11 posts) (6 voices)

Started 2 years ago by Clain
Latest reply from jonathan0382

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Clain
Member

Hi,

My first "real" game made with cocos2d 0.7.3 was released 3 days ago. In this game you have a grid of bubbles with different colors. You don't have to burst them, you don't have to align three of the same color. You just have to capture them thanks to the syringe that allows you to change the color of the already captured bubbles. When you inject a color, the previously captured bubbles change to that color and the ajoining bubbles of the same color are also captured. This way, the captured bubbles are spreading. The goal of the game is to capture all the bubbles with a limited number of shots.

Game homepage : website
AppStore page : iTunes link

The game is sold $1. Here are some promo codes for the lucky ones who can use them (I mean the ones who have an iTunes account in the US) :
KYLWR9PN4KHM
FPT7YMLF7N7Y
XW9JRR6XA4TE
MXMPT7YKRFMY
PYWKA3YY3M39
RAPX3PAPHMKL
9N37THJH7TYN
JKT43E7N4PM4

Be careful if you want to try it, it's very very addictive. I know for sure : I've never spent that much time debugging a program ;)

Many many thanks to Riq and the whole cocos2d community. If it wasn't for this great framework, Dr Bubbles wouldn't simply exist. I've only had to tweak a single cocos class for the needs of this game : the LabelAtlas class (to reduce the space between two characters).

Clain

Posted 2 years ago #
Cypher
Member

This is quite a fun looking game and thanks for the promo codes, I snagged one. THis game is similar to "Flood it" and I'm sure equally as addicting. Will play it soon and give my impressions..

Posted 2 years ago #
Clain
Member

The first update of the game has been approved. I now have a video :

Get the Flash Video

It sometimes seems to lag. It's due to the simulator. It runs perfectly fine on the device.

Here are some more promo codes if you feel like trying it :
FXJYKLT7JEXJ
AFRTA4TEAPER
7LRYKN99NHKA
R3X4MXRM44PJ
XX6TJNHR7N6M
6HYK6NP43FTR
47WPPNRHWMKF
33L4W69LALPK

Posted 2 years ago #
jonathan0382
Member

I love injections Clain! This game looks cool. I snagged XX6TJNHR7N6M and will write you a store review when I've played it.

Thanks!

Posted 2 years ago #
jstart
Member

How did you write your color checking function?

My bubbles game gets stuck in a loop when trying to check the previous row or column....

Posted 2 years ago #
Clain
Member

@jonathan :
You love injections ? Is it a confession or what ? xD
During the early stages of development, there was no syringe, no Dr Bubbles character and no bubbles. The injections were done by a nasty bacteriophage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phage_injecting_its_genome_into_bacterial_cell.png ). I even made a short animation in Flash and created a sprite sheet out of it. Have a look :

The bubbles were just ugly squares with rounded corners (so ugly I didn't keep an image of them). Anyway, when I had my proof of concept with the AtlasSpriteManager for the injections and the code for spreading the colors, the graphic designer came in. After a few days of reflection, the bacteriophage was replaced with a syringe, square cells with round bubbles and the excentric Dr Bubbles character was born (you can see him at 0:15 in the video a few posts above).

@jstart :
You need to be careful when you loop through your bubbles, you shouldn't check a bubble twice, You better have a boolean for each bubble telling if it's already been checked or not. Post some code and maybe I can help you.

Posted 2 years ago #
jstart
Member

Wow that is a simple idea, boolean for each bubble. I kind of abandoned the project in favor of my other game. I'll try and get some source code to show you if I still have trouble.

Love Dr.Bubbles by the way. A great addition to the puzzle game genre

Posted 2 years ago #
plasticpower
Member

This does look very well designed and fun to play! The designer did a great job and you did a great job coming up with a pretty unique gameplay.

Posted 2 years ago #
friken
Member

Clain, I checked out this game and it is fun. Seeing that it has been out a couple months, I'm curios what ratio of reviews/purchases you are seeing. There is a thread going in a generic iphone dev forum where people are seeing anywhere from a 40purchases to one review to as high as 600purchases to one review. I've been pretty curious as to paid app review/purchase ratios as it gives us all a ballpark range to go off of. If you are inclined to share such info, great, if not, no big deal I understand not wanting to release sales info.

Cool game and hope it does well for you.

Posted 2 years ago #
Clain
Member

You said some people have ratios varying from 1/40 to 1/600. I think it really depends on the game, on the targeted audience, on exposure and on luck. I have 4 games in the store and they all have different ratios. But I'll tell you what, this ratio means almost nothing. Maybe it does if you have an app in the top 50, I don't know about that (I wish I did). But from what I see, the reviews have no noticable impact on sales.

I can also say that people are more inclined to leave a review when they find something they don't like in a game. Very few happy customers leave a good review. This is a ratio I'd like to know : what percentage of happy players leave a positive review and what percentage of unhappy players leave a negative or mixed review. I'm convinced the latter would be greater than the former.

Anyway, Dr Bubbles didn't sell too well so I don't even think the reviews/purchases ratio is significant. Now thinking about it again, maybe it was a mistake to call it "Dr Bubbles" considering all the bubbles popping games out there. It's hard enough to get noticed in the App Store jungle.

Posted 2 years ago #
jonathan0382
Member

And don't forget the Bubbles was Michael Jackson's pet monkey, right? Dr. Michael Jackson's Monkey just sounds disturbing.

Posted 2 years ago #

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