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My iPhone game

Blogs > GroT
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GroT
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
Belgium2988 Posts
Last Edited: 2021-01-17 09:07:12
January 14 2021 17:51 GMT
#1
Hello sirs,

Please check out my brand new game for iPhone/iPad!


LINK


So yeah, I lost my mind and actually spent my time on this ridiculous idea.

When I was a kid many decades ago, some of the games I enjoyed the most were games like 'Heroes of Might & Magic II' and MTG which seemed like they wouldn't be as hard to make as other game genres.

Because of the nature of cards, I didn't need to have any animation skills to make a card game.

[image loading]

For example, here's my buddy Harry posing for the 'Majestic Aura' aura card in the game. I mostly used stock photography in the same way to get some 'art' for the cards. It's tough sometimes because you need to find something that's for sale and/or has explicitly abandoned its copyright claims, so you don't have an infinite choice of images to work with, but for your first game I think it's a fine option compared to pouring money into an art studio.

Next, I tried some existing games on the app store to see what I'm up against. This can be pretty disheartening because the popular games on the app store are made by actual companies (not by 1 dude in a basement), use powerful game engines like Unity to get a head start on the tech, and invest on getting great looking visuals with cool animations.

I knew that none of these I can possibly compete with - but I did notice some imperfections I thought I actually could improve.



Idea 1: screen sizing


A lot of the games I saw seemed to be designed for PC (where games can actually make money) and ported to iPhone later. Something that commonly bothered me was how tiny the assets looked on my screen, probably exacerbated by my terrible grandpa-level eyesight.

Plenty of games were 'borrowing', from the HOMM series like me, so they had 8x8 tile battle maps on the screen like in the classic games. I decided really early on that I wanted to have tiny maps.

[image loading]

The smallest battle maps in my game ended up having only 4x4 tiles, and the largest (which starts getting too small for the screen to my taste) are 7x7



Idea 2: complexity ramp


One leading game I tried had me start out with 4 different troop types, a hero, a city with 3 building types, and some resources to acquire even more stuff. It all looked great and pretty much like what I wanted to play, but introducing all that stuff at the same time made it feel like studying instead of playing.

On top of that, because of the complexity, they had me go through a tutorial where I didn't have any options (I just had to tap next-next-next to indicate I understood the lesson). This experience seemed to me to take away from their otherwise sweet game.

This gave me the idea to have the player start with 0 cards instead of some kind of 'beginner deck'. Even then, after asking some of my friends to test it, they commented that it became too complex too quickly, so I slowed it down even more.



Idea 3: a harsh game


So another game I really enjoyed as a kid was Diablo II. The game had a 'hardcore' mode where, if you die, you're actually dead and lose the countless hours 'invested' in your character.

[image loading]



Idea 4: No pansy end-boss


Another thing about Diablo II was that even though the game itself was pretty difficult, the final end-boss, you know, the one that the game was named for, was a total pansy. What the hell? I always remember feeling disappointed when contemptuously wiping the floor with him. No such nonsense in my game! The hardest fight is the boss fight.


Idea 5: Secrets

Another easy thing I could do is add secrets everywhere. This doesn't take any great programming skill, so I thought it would be a great fit for my 1-man mission. I tried to mimic the classic 1993 game 'Doom', where players get rewarded for pushing walls randomly until they discover some secret bonus.


Idea 6: Boomer references

So if you read this far, you probably noticed that nostalgia was a pretty big motivational factor for me. During the design, at one point I noticed I had the cards 'Doom' and 'Earthquake'. If I just renamed the 2nd card to 'Quake', it'd become a reference that some boomer gamers out there would appreciate.

I did, and I started renaming cards everywhere in this manner. I even had a card named 'Craft Star' at one point, but I think that was taking it a little bit too far, so I ended up cutting it



I still have a lot of things to be disappointed about.
- I don't understand anything about how networking happens, so my game is single-player only. That's really a shame, because it would probably lend itself pretty well to multiplayer.
- Because I'm all alone, the content is pretty sparse (there are only 8 levels to go through for now).
- I'm good at AI, but I had so much trouble making the basic game and it took me so much longer than I expected that I didn't end up actually making a proper AI. The computer follows some basic rules while playing and that seems to give a reasonable enough result most of the time.

And I could list a lot of other disappointments. But at the end of day, I'm stoked because I actually released a game. That's pretty crazy!

Thanks so much for reading!


***
bring it
Chairman Ray
Profile Blog Joined December 2009
United States11520 Posts
January 14 2021 23:03 GMT
#2
Looks like an exciting game, love the art style!
TL+ Member
GroT
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
Belgium2988 Posts
January 15 2021 00:41 GMT
#3
Thanks so much man I really appreciate that!
bring it
GTR
Profile Blog Joined September 2004
49076 Posts
January 15 2021 06:46 GMT
#4
good to see you around

hung out with royo/rage when he came to korea a few years ago and your name came up quite often during our chats!
CommentatorTwitter: @GTR1H
Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/GTR1H
GroT
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
Belgium2988 Posts
January 15 2021 07:24 GMT
#5
LOL really? I was hoping nobody remembered me but that sounds like good times! How long was he in korea for?

I have good memories of playing bw with royo until he suddenly got way better than me and stomped me like 10-0 in my best matchup. Couldn't sleep for years. (between u and me, obvious maphack though... I was totally #1).

I wish I had a better way to see where all the people I played bw with ended up.

Anyway thanks for saying hi man you made my year!
bring it
_fool
Profile Joined February 2011
Netherlands583 Posts
January 15 2021 08:00 GMT
#6
Looks good! And the fact that you finished it is something to be really proud of. Too many good initiatives end up existing only in one's head :D

I know nothing about the mobile implementation, but I do know someting about backend services and providing JSON game state to each player without them having knowledge of each others cards etc. So if you find a way for your app to frequently fetch new game state somehow (iPhone might have a built in library for this), then I could give you some pointers on the backend. PM me if you want to know more
"A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam" - Frederick Pohl
GroT
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
Belgium2988 Posts
January 15 2021 08:46 GMT
#7
Hartstikke bedankt man that's really nice of you!

Yeah no doubt you're right and we could get that working, but I'm not sure if I'm up for it anymore. For now I just wonna take a break and get some physical exercise because this was a bit of a death march at the end. You've heard of the software guy who thought he was 90% done but then the remaining 90% was pretty brutal? That was totally me....
bring it
Manifesto7
Profile Blog Joined November 2002
Osaka26310 Posts
January 15 2021 23:02 GMT
#8
Nice job! Any RWA support implemented?
Moderator@Manifesto7 - Ancient.
GroT
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
Belgium2988 Posts
January 16 2021 05:40 GMT
#9
Holy shit another legend!

All right man I'll admit it I miss the days of being a famous RWA maker in my mom's basement at 16. The fame, the mon y, the respect... but most of all the women

These days it's all about tasteless this and artosis that... where did we go wrong mani?

btw I live in Tokyo let me know when you're in town!

bring it
Manifesto7
Profile Blog Joined November 2002
Osaka26310 Posts
January 16 2021 06:26 GMT
#10
Yeah, really shocking that my 110 apm gameplay and D+ level knowledge didn't translate into a marketable streaming career I am still in Osaka, if we are ever allowed to leave our houses again I'll let you know!
Moderator@Manifesto7 - Ancient.
GroT
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
Belgium2988 Posts
January 16 2021 07:57 GMT
#11
if they're not impressed by our apm
we can just rely on our rugged good looks & charisma imo.

Come on man we could be the Japanese Tastosis. GrotfestO?
bring it
EvilTeletubby
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
Baltimore, USA21830 Posts
Last Edited: 2021-01-17 19:01:54
January 17 2021 19:01 GMT
#12
Rugged good looks? Have you SEEN what Mani looks like?!?

Very cool you not only got this going but finished it as well. Definitely sounds like a labor of love. Nice to see a name from the past!
Moderatorhttp://carbonleaf.yuku.com/topic/408/t/So-I-proposed-at-a-Carbon-Leaf-concert.html ***** RIP Geoff
GroT
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
Belgium2988 Posts
January 17 2021 23:16 GMT
#13
if memory serves mani looks approximately like this:

[image loading]


Thanks so much for the kind words ETT! Really appreciate your support
bring it
Last.Midnight
Profile Blog Joined July 2006
Australia866 Posts
January 18 2021 05:16 GMT
#14
Holy crap it's like a RWA reunion up in here.

I listened to you and HovZ a lot. Inspired me to try some of my own - although I probably needed to be on meds at the time :p

Is your game available on Android?
GroT
Profile Blog Joined January 2004
Belgium2988 Posts
January 18 2021 06:23 GMT
#15
thx Midnight! No it's just iphone sorry - a lot of my belgian friends are asking for android too but I don't plan on it

yeah man HovZ made bw so much more entertaining, awesome character. I wonder what happened to him
bring it
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