A fast, easy to use, free, and community supported 2D game engine
I'm happy to announce that our newest game Occurro! just hit the App Store!
Please check out the trailer here:
| Get the Flash Videos |
iTunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=321211937&mt=8
$0.99 - requires 2.2.1 firmware or newer.
-Bryan
Occurro! just launched in the App Store about 7 hours ago. I have posted the trailer here before though.
Thanks about the space photos! The photo of the earth in the trailer is a NASA image taken on an Apollo mission. I took the photo of the Orion Nebula (the photo after the earth photo in the trailer).
Cheers,
-Bryan
I just submitted version 1.1 with a bunch of improvements & a couple bug fixes. The two main bug fixes were in how I handled the UIWebView & Geocade's online score system.
The list of game improvements & tweaks is pretty good sized. Hopefully it'll be out soon!
-Bryan
Here's the improvement list for 1.1:
- Fixed a bug that inhibited multitouch after viewing high scores
- Fix a crash when viewing/submitting high scores
- Added online high score viewing capability without requiring location
- Added roll accelerometer calibration (some 3GSs are way off)
- Improved phone call handling
- Improved high score initialization speed
- Added primary weapon type to saved game data
- Added score to game over screen & improved graphics
- Improved player respawn initialization
- Dodger enemy AI improved
- Improved enemy spawn logic
- Adjusted volume on launch sounds
- Improved explosion blending
- Improved network error alerts
- Reduced tendency to drop multiple bombs
- Tweaked weapon graphics
- Tweaked “Fakie” spawn logic
- Added “submit score” main menu option when a score is waiting to be submitted
The initial approval took 3 weeks. Hopefully the update approval doesn't take that long!
-Bryan
Tell me about it. At least they've sped up the payment process a little. I'll definitely post when the update is out to let everyone know what the current timeline is like. (Hopefully that'll be in a few days!)
-Bryan
Thanks everybody! Getting featured by Apple was definitely the dream. I wish I knew the process that went into getting featured, but I have no idea. Pure magic I think.
Air Hockey was written when the iPhone SDK first came out. It's entirely UIKit stuff. Each sprite is a UIImageView that gets moved around based on user input, a physics engine that I wrote & my enemy AI. I've been curious how much better it'd run using Cocos, but I haven't tried it yet.
For now, I'm not sharing exact sales numbers. It's a lot more for a given rank than when Air Hockey hit the #1 game spot though. There's always more potential (and more sales) when you hit breakpoints in the charts though. #100 has way more visibility than #101. The same goes for #50, #25 & #10.
Thanks! It's doing pretty well - I'm very happy with sales so far.
I'm working on adding some new stuff for the next update. Lots of new stuff!
Occurro! stabilized at about #47 overall for the first few days of the feature. That spot is about 1400 sales/day depending on the day of the week. Occurro!'s sales slowly slipped as the week went on.
A new group of apps just got added to the featured lists, so Occurro! is now moved down a page. It's at the #70 spot overall right now (sub-1000 sales/day). Sales will drop significantly this week, but I'm not sure what kind of numbers we're talking about. Occurro! didn't make the top 25, so big sales won't be self-sustaining. Still, it's been a great week!
The sales this week have paid for my monetary investment for Occurro! plus a bit more. Now I just have to make back my time. :)
Codemattic
Moderator
Thats great, thanks. So the #47 and #70 data is for the "top paid apps" list? How long did it take from releasing your game to when Apple put it in "New and Noteworthy"
Do you have a free version? If not, maybe its time to offer one to get more people interested.
The thing that bothers me is that except for LJE's "Stick Wars" nobody has made it on the charts w/o getting picked by Apple for the front page. Soo much depending on Apple's tastemakers.
To get in the charts without Apple your game must be addictive and viral. That means for example, that one person buying and playing the game, will talk about the game and generate 1.1 new sales in average. That means the sales grow by themselves. It's the jackpot but it seems you need a lot of magic to achieve this ;)
I don't have a free version - for now. Those numbers are for the top paid apps list.
It took about week for them to feature it. I think it somehow corresponded to my first update (a pretty big one). I'm not sure how the feature review process works, but it looks like someone digs through the new & updated games for ideas.
Getting on the charts without Apple's help is indeed tough. Lots of games are using Facebook & Twitter now. My next update will have Twitter integration. I don't have any data on Twitter click throughs though. Hopefully there's some money in it.
-Bryan
Ditto that!
Awesome game, best of luck.
Any shared info would be great. I'm particular loving your Touch control system. Both the "dual analog" feel and the dynamic sticks that show up wherever you touch.
Got some example code or tutorials on that?
Thanks guys. I could definitely write a book about all the design decisions, architecture, etc for the game. Unfortunately, I'm still spending time making it better - so, there isn't a book yet.
I've written in a couple threads here about little parts of the game, but never the overall design ...or detail on things like explosions. I'm probably going to do a series of blog posts on a couple of the topics, but for now here are some rough details:
Game Structure/Architecture
I started with one of the Cocos game skeletons in February '09. I stripped it down to the core and built Occurro! on top of it. Since then, I moved it from Cocos 0.5 to 0.6, then 0.7. A stripped down version of what I use currently is here: http://acceleroto.com/share/MultiTest.zip That file includes Cocos2D 0.7.3, so it really should be updated to the latest before you get going on a project with it. Otherwise, feel free to use it how you'd like.
Occurro! currently has 15 different Cocos layers that it can switch between, all in their own class. The game launches into a layer that does some pre-processing (i.e. is there a saved game, what are the default options, etc). From there it decides to go to the main menu or the resume menu. The main menu has several submenus that allow the user to do all the typical game setup stuff, see credits, and view high scores.
Occurro!'s high scores are handled by Geocade's service. I display a UIWebView within a Cocos layer (just like in the above sample code). That layer handles all the location services, web requests, and keeps track of scores the user still needs to submit.
The main game is structured much the same as the above sample code - just much more complex. I set up a series of timers to handle various things in the game. My main game loop (called "step") is fired at 60Hz (I don't use fastDirector). I also use a gun firing timer, an enemy spawn generator timer, and a couple other housekeeping timers - that all get fired at different rates.
When I start the game layer, all the initialization stuff is done. To speed things up during gameplay, I create a fairly big pile of each enemy, weapon & power up type and keep them around for the entire duration of the game.
After the initialization, I jump into the game loop & do this stuff:
- update the player ship based on inputs & its physics
- update enemy positions based on each of their AI & physics
- update laser positions
- update and/or remove power ups
- check for collisions (lasers, enemies, power ups, etc)
- handle player death or other status changes if required
- kill enemies if required & generate explosions
- add points
- check for level ups and extra lives
- update the score board (if the player got any points)
- update other HUD indicators (if the player got any power ups or used weapons)
- update control indicators based on user inputs
- update the camera position
I tried to keep everything fairly compartmentalized in their own classes. I subclassed CocosNode to make the player, enemy, power up, and weapon classes.
Special Effects
My explosions are new classes that I made by copying and modifying the ParticleExplosion class. Each one of my enemy explosions is made up of 2 different classes each with their own custom artwork. The first is the "flash" class - it shows a couple of initial flashes & picks between about 6 different art files for the flashes. The second is the flying particles of the explosion. When an enemy is killed, I start both of these particle systems at the same time. To make them look like I wanted, I just modified individual parameters within each class until they matched what I was thinking.
Touch Controls
The touch control system is fairly complicated & would take a couple pages to explain properly. In a nutshell, whenever a new touch is detected in a control zone (for example, one control zone is the area that I designate do control the lasers) it removes any old control on that control zone & sets the center of a new one at the touch location. After that, the touch location is compared to the initial position, some trig is done along with some other input shaping/calculations to determine what actual command is passed to the ship's motion or laser system. When that touch ends, the corresponding input is stopped & that control indicator is removed from the screen.
This really just scratches the surface, but hopefully it helps get you thinking on the right track (or at least one of the right tracks).
-Bryan
@Codemattic - "Occurro" is a Latin word that means attack, to charge, or to meet in battle. The name actually got decided when working on a previous project (that got put on hold because the game engine wasn't as good as Cocos). I wanted to name the game "Attack!," but there was a board game with that name and some market research with parents showed that name was a little too negative.
Similarly, Acceleroto is from two Latin words: accelero and roto. Accelero means to accelerate. Roto means to whirl around. I mashed them together & got Acceleroto. It's not a real word, but that's not a requirement is it?!
The bad part with Occurro! is people don't really know how to spell it when they hear it...and they don't know how to say it when they see it.
-Bryan
Got any more in depth insight into the joystick implementation? I'm working my first cocos2d iPhone game right now, and I am having a struggle with just the basic logic of the controls. Using either the Apple or Cocos TouchDelegate, it seems so much easier just to manipulate your actor by direct touch, but the passing of commands from a separate controller object has thus far mystified me.
Of course, being a ActionScript/Java/TourqeScript developer in a brand new Objective-C world may be the root of my troubles...
P.S.-
If you DO write a book, Accelerato, I wanna line up to pre-order it! We need some good iPhone game design texts out there.
PJ Cabrera has a new iPhone SDK + Cocos2D programming book. I don't have it yet, but PJ's wicked smart on this stuff. I bet the book is great.
@Coolman - I didn't notice any fps difference when I added the 3 motion streaks. An emitter is certainly another way to do it, but at the time emitter particle coordinates were not world coordinates if I remember correctly. I seem to remember that 0.8 has that option. I'll look at that again once I get Occurro! moved to Cocos 0.8.0.
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