henke on 25/8/2014 at 17:00
I'm trying to set up a ragdoll in Unity for another project.
[video=youtube;qTjQBN_XGsM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTjQBN_XGsM&feature=youtu.be[/video]
er... maybe I'll just get one from the asset store instead.
Fafhrd on 14/9/2014 at 18:10
Finally integrated Google Play Games services into Rocket Blocks (which was remarkably easy), so now Leaderboards are a thing. Also added the title screen and made some tweaks to the menus.
[video=youtube;rohjTNj_e4I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rohjTNj_e4I[/video]
Fafhrd on 11/10/2014 at 01:05
Hey Guys!
I'm doing an Android Alpha release of Rocket Blocks on the Google Play store so I can get some feedback about performance on a wider range of devices than I have access to and also gameplay features that may or may not need to be added.
If you're interested in trying it out, and have an Android device, dust off your Google+ account and (
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/114519532848436565195) join this Google+ community. I'll have the opt-in link for the Alpha posted in there by ~midnight tonight (PST) (I still have to a little bit of set-up in the Google Play console).
It'd be cool if everybody at least gave it a shot, since I've largely been making it in a vacuum and am not entirely sure what stuff that I've gotten used to is genuinely awful. A lot of the stuff that Renz complained about in the super-pre alpha version has changed significantly.
henke on 12/10/2014 at 08:16
That's a damn fine puzzle game you've made Faf! :D
Few things to note:
-it's perhaps too easy for too long at the start, before the difficulty ramps up and gets superhard at the end. Consider having it start at a faster pace but not ramp up the speed as fast as it currently does. (tho I guess this is what the Force Blocks button is for, and sure, that works too.)
-near the end it got super laggy on my Samsung Galaxy S2. Combined with the fast pace this makes it really difficult.
-consider putting some kind of pattern on the blocks as well to easier distinguish them. It feels like green and yellow are quite close to eachother in hue.
-at the end the ad that comes up at the top blocks the view of the score! When I clicked "Back to menu" it vanishes tho, and I can see the score for a second before it jumps back to the menu. But either move that ad or display the score in the middle of the Game Over screen.
Highscore: 3856! (Is that good?)
But good job on the gameplay, it's fun and self-explanatory. I figured out the basics within seconds of starting it up, and some things, like that blocks could stall and that I could put blocks under the ones that had stalled to get them to the top, I figured out during the course of my first game.
Fafhrd on 12/10/2014 at 20:07
Quote Posted by henke
-near the end it got super laggy on my Samsung Galaxy S2. Combined with the fast pace this makes it really difficult.
-consider putting some kind of pattern on the blocks as well to easier distinguish them. It feels like green and yellow are quite close to eachother in hue.
-at the end the ad that comes up at the top blocks the view of the score! When I clicked "Back to menu" it vanishes tho, and I can see the score for a second before it jumps back to the menu. But either move that ad or display the score in the middle of the Game Over screen.
- The lag is the thing that I'm having the most trouble figuring out how to fix. I've got the draw calls as optimized as they're going to get (they don't go any higher than 13), the issue seems to be the physics. I get basically no lag at all when I play on my Nook HD+, but my HTC DesireZ gets pretty bad once the stacks get above about the half way point. I'm thinking of putting some sort of Physics Performance slider in the options menu, but changing the Fixed Time brings with it a bunch of other problems (a lot more bouncing, a higher probability of blocks getting stuck inside each other, etc). That it's as bad as you describe on an S2 is really worrying. Especially if you were playing at the default gravity.
- Definitely planning for this. Either a texture, or just having different shaped blocks for different colours.
- If you've logged in to Google Play Games (in the options menu, along with the different gravity pre-sets), your score will post to the leaderboard on exit. Having it say "Game Over: Your Score Here " is a good idea (and a super-easy fix). And I should probably figure out local scoreboard storage either for people who don't want to log in to Google Play, or are offline when they're playing (though that might get complicated, since I'll have to hash the save file so that people can't edit it externally and post faked score).
Renzatic on 16/10/2014 at 07:22
Writing all those tutorials down in TEG made me want to make something myself. It's been forever since I worked on anything big, so I figured I might as well start by doing the most complicated thing I've ever done.
(
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/Bike_WIP.png) And here it is.
Not even a quarter of the way done, and I'm already at 1.25 million polygons. I'll finish the struts and handlebars up tomorrow, but then comes the hard part. I gotta figure out how motorcycle engines are put together (or at least figure out which parts are important so it'll look good), then fit it into the design I have in mind.
henke on 16/10/2014 at 07:38
Renz, that looks awesome.
@Faf:
I figured I'd play your game once or twice and report back to you but I've ended up playing it every day this week during my coffebreaks. This is really good stuff. :D
Disregard what I said earlier about changing the pace. It works great as it is once you get into the habit of using the force blocks button. But I gotta ask how that Force Blocks button works. It seems like it simply shortens the countdown timer to the next wave of blocks while you're holding it down? Might be better if it actually initiated the next wave as soon as you press it instead.
As for the lag, it seems to show up when there's a lot of stuff on screen, and there's two sets of blocks flying upwards while new blocks are falling. At one point near the end of my last game this meant the game stopped responding to input when I was trying to move another block. Probably goes without saying that this kind of stuff is really irritating.
I understand if you've reached the limits of what Unity and the hardware can do tho. I guess a physics performance slider might help but wouldn't that change the way the game plays? If you're planning on implementing a global leaderboard (and a game like this should totally have one) the playing field needs to be even.
Fafhrd on 17/10/2014 at 00:56
@henke: Excellent. I wish I could take credit for the gameplay hook, but it's a flagrant clone of Meteos.
The Force Blocks button does immediately spawn blocks, but the blocks spawn ~13 units off screen and fall down, so it takes them a bit. When held down there's a one second delay between waves, since otherwise there'd be a constant stream of solid rows of blocks, instead of them being randomized.
I've made some tweaks to the time settings that I think manage to keep the framerate up on lower end devices (I've managed a score of 6000 on Earth gravity on my phone, and 1800 on Jupiter gravity on my Nook Colour), but there's only so much that can be done before the physics will start going totally wacky on a device that can't handle that much going on.
And there are leaderboards. Sign-in to Google Play Games in the Main Menu options (also where you can select different gravities). The build I'm pushing out tomorrow night will have auto-sign-in, as well as the physics tweaks and some UI tweaks..
