Dave Hailwood's Forum Posts

  • farflamex

    Just tested the game on my ipad3 (in Safari). It works really well; resizes properly to fit the screen, adverts all display correctly (did you ever get ads working on Newgrounds? If not, you can enable their own ads from the settings option in your account) and aren't too much of a hindrance (I get the ad that flashes up at the start, and the advert bar down the bottom which disappears once the game starts, but comes back at the end as its supposed to).

    I did encounter a lot of frame rate stutter, especially at the start and end of every level web the base ship thingie is on the screen. This might be caused by the size of the sprite.

    Anyway, I can see why it's doing well as its good fun and nicely put together (just enough enemy and level variety to keep the player interested).

  • SecondDimension

    Not sure if this will help, but I'm currently experimenting with Webfonts myself at the moment. To get rid of the annoying flash of the wrong font even after webfont has been set, I set the font to size 0 whilst being visible, then put in a wait of half a second and then set the font to the size I require (so it still acts as being invisible until the font is resized). This seems to stop the change between fonts showing on most occasions (and if it doesn't work, try a longer wait).

    Hope this works for you. If not, I still have more experimentation to do and will be happy to let you know if I find something that works better.

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  • C-7

    Looking forward to it! And well done in meeting your personal deadline.

    One pre-test comment to start the ball rolling; in the pic above, the woman leaning on the table looks strangely positioned, as the shadow makes it look like she's stood in front of the table and couldn't be leaning on it from that angle. It might also be a perspective thing (moving her up a bit might help). Anyway, the rest of the scene works well; nice character designs and scenery.

  • harrio

    It's okay, there are support groups for gamers like you. Hang in there...be strong! You're going to get through this...

  • Excal

    I'm glad that you're alright, given the Tornado experience. The most we ever get here in England is a slight breeze that unsettles the odd bowler hat.

    I'm happy to impart any knowledge I have, to assist when it comes to creating your board game (just bare in mind that I'm probably not using the best techniques as I'm largely making it up as I go along).

    Sometimes you've just got to go with creating the type of game that means something to you, rather than knocking up the popularist stuff. At some point I'm planning on doing an rpg even though it will probably take a year to complete, just because I have a story that I'm really keen to tell. If the strategy game genre is what's calling to you, then go make something ingenious!

    Right, I really am going now. Honest...

  • farflamex

    I forgot to say thanks for the vote! Much appreciated.

    If you can get your game featured on Newgrounds then that also does wonders for it; Magnetized, Seed and the shootemup that came third all got featured and their viewing figures went up by several thousand rather rapidly.

    I can understand being annoyed by your new game getting the best ratings. I once wrote a book with a friend (in the pub, and on the bus) which was the quickest thing we'd ever written. It is now sitting in second place on the iBooks 'free humour books' chart, whereas all the books I took years and years to write instantly sunk away into obscurity. Still, sometimes the projects you take more time over are more satisfying to complete even if they don't get the recognition you hope for.

    You're right about the merits of honest criticism; its only annoying when they don't give a reason as to why the don't or do like it. If they're saying its too damned hard or too damned easy then at least it gives us something to go on.

    Anyway, I believe I was meant to be working on a game of some sort. Best get back to it, I suppose. Cheers!

  • farflamex Excal

    Literally within two seconds of uploading my game to Newgrounds it received about three zero votes. Also there was someone bragging on the message board recently about how he voted zero for every game entry, for absolutely no reason. Still, there are some decent folk there who are willing to provide feedback (including the judge, Tom Fulp, who took a lot of time to analyse as many of the 95 game entries as he could) and I can see how the html5 gaming community could really take off once Flash takes a backseat, so its worth persevering.

    There were some games that I didn't like much which made the top ten, and others which I liked a lot that got barely above two stars. A lot of the time it can come down to personal preference, or something as simple as whether the game actually works on the browser or device the persons using; even though some creators put on the front pages of their games 'works best in such and such a browser', if that's not the browser that the player has open then he'll try it anyway and rate it badly if it doesn't work (and then leave the comment 'didn't work' without saying anything helpful that'll assist us in improving our games).

    What I found a bit odd about the competition is that you could vote for your own game once a day (which I didn't do) which may explain why some of the less polished games pushed their way to the top. At least when it came to the actual judging, it wasn't just down to selecting what was at the top of the list.

    Farflamex, thanks for commenting on the music. The musician did me a huge favour at short notice, so its nice for her to have some positive feedback.

    20 hours to make your game is pretty impressive going! Board Horde has probably taken me about 400 hours so far, and it isn't even finished yet (then again, its my first game so its bound to take a while)

    Anyway, before I get back to the joys of game creation, Excal I'd just like to say that I really enjoyed playing your game. The touch controls are probably the best example of their kind, and I had great fun trying to work my way up the leader board. If i was making a top ten of my favourite competition games then yours would be in it (along with Bunker Control, which also fared quite badly). I really look forward to seeing what you do with the game next.

  • mineet

    I love your new avatar and the drawing style; I've been watching your artwork develop with interest. The lifelike pixel quality reminds me for some reason of the classic Another World game (though the art there was a lot more blocky). I look forward to seeing what you do with the characters.

  • farflamex

    The Newgrounds entry can be checked out here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/616297

    It didn't place in the competition, as it was let down by dodgy a.i. (Which was the best I could get it in the time available). The two that won were very polished and enjoyable games (Magnetized and Space Hamster).   Still, without that competition deadline my game wouldn't be as far along as it is, so I got a lot out of it.

    I'm glad you haven't stumbled across any bugs yet, though there's definitely some lurking around. Finding the cause of the problem is made all the more tricky by the fact that the main collision bug seems to happen randomly.

    Anyway, thanks for stopping by to give the game another test. There should be a lot more improvements on the way over the next month.

  • blonduck

    I can probably be a bit of help here, as my Board Horde game contains pretty much all the elements that you mentioned (link to the game can be found in this forum entry-http://www.scirra.com/forum/topic65322.html)

    Firstly, as Arima mentions it is a tricky thing to approach for your first game due to the lack of tutorials, and also the lack of Board Game style Behaviours etc (though there are some useful third party plug ins, I opted to do everything myself so I would learn more). Since Board Horde is my first ever game and I've only been using C2 since December, it is doable if you're patient enough.

    Things I'd advise getting to grips with are: Variables (which you will use for a lot of the commands within the game), Families (useful for grouping units together when the same conditions apply to all of the units), functions (I didn't discover these until several months into my project, and could've halved the amount of events I was using and the time it took to make the game if I'd been using them from the offset) and Groups (I also use arrays to create my boards, and store direction changes for when the heroes hit the corners, though this isn't essential).

    Using groups is very handy for a turn based game, as it allows you to disable events you're not using and organise everything methodically (basically, as you open one door, you close another behind you) So for example, in my game once Player Ones turn has ended it opens the group Player Two and closes the group Player One behind it. Then it opens the group 'Dice Roll'. Once the dice has been rolled, it opens the group 'Collision Detection Movement' and closes 'Dice Roll'. Once the Collision Detection Movement orders have been carried out it opens the group 'Collision Detection Consequences' whilst closing the previous group...and this continues up until the End Turn group, when the next players group is opened.

    With regards to a.i., how tricky this is to pull off with depend on the complexity of your board game. For mine it mostly involved replacing touch commands with variables. So instead of waiting for a touch command to roll the dice, it would check to see if the a.i. Boolean= true, and then roll the dice. When it comes to the a.i.s intelligence, to start with I created a V.I routine (as it operates with all the intelligence and reasoning of a Village Idiot) which basically operated like this: if more than one a.i. piece is on the board, randomly choose one and move them. You can see this in action on the Newgrounds Touchjam version of the game here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/616297

    As you'll notice in the comments, the main gripe people had with it was the easy ai (as it blunders around the board, and dies lots). The updated a.i. Which can be viewed in action in the link on my c2 forum entry works a lot better, as I created a routine that runs in order of importance. Eg, is hero stood on the Entrance square? If so, move (as its a dangerous place to be). Next: if hero moves will he land on an opponent? If so, move. Next: is hero further ahead than all others on his team, and if he moves will he land in a free space? If so move. Etc, etc.

    When the a.i. has selected something that meets the highest priority condition, it changes a variable to Hero Selected=1, and all other a.i. checks that come after are ignored.

    Anyway, I'm probably taking up about 18 billion pages with my waffle so I'll stop now. If you have questions about any element of my board game then just ask (though bare in mind I'm learning as I go, so the way that I'm doing things is not necessarily the best way).

  • http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Business-iPhone-iPad-Development/dp/1430233001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369261701&sr=8-1&keywords=The+business+of+ipad+app+development+book

    'The business of ipad app development' book contains lots of useful information, including how best to market a free app, use of advertising, etc. Even if you're creating your game for PC, there's lots of helpful marketing advice which could be useful when approaching the later stages of your project.

    Your horror games coming together nicely by the way, Robin. Love your art style and the smoothness of your character animations.

  • A competently put together shooter. Good to see you back on the scene, dear chap!

    It didn't work for me on Internet Explorer (struggled to load the ads, and then just stopped completely) but was nice and smooth on Chrome. Good to see you experimenting with all sorts of advertising techniques. I'll admit, it felt a bit like overkill as there was so many of them, but I can see what you're trying to do; test them for placement and see what works best (the one on the far left of the screen seemed the least invasive).

    I've also been having a bit more of a play on your other games on Kongregate. When I eventually sign up to Kongregate and upload my game I'll be sure to stop by and give you some good ratings as they really don't deserve the low ones that they've got so far.

    I'll have a bit of a go on my ipad either tonight or tomorrow, and let you know how smoothly it runs.

    Got to level three by the way, and was so dented up that I never managed to get a single upgrade! I really need to improve my game playing skills...

  • indiegamedesign

    I just wanted to say a quick thanks for the great tutorials. I've only had a quick look at your site so far, but I found the one on seamless game tiles very interesting, and will definitely return for more info.

    Keep up the jolly nice work!

  • TELLES0808

    I'm currently using two methods to attempt text outlining on my Board Horde game, which both seem to be viewable on my ipad (over the web. Not sure what the results would be when using CocoonJs or something).

    I created a retro style font to use in the game; rather than importing it as a font, I created each letter on a vector package (inkpad) arranged the letters within the package to spell out the words I needed, and imported the words as different frames of the one sprite. This is a very time consuming way of doing things, as every time I need a new word I can't just type it in and have to copy and paste each letter, arrange them, and then import them.

    So the second method which I've recently used (currently only to display the players name in the game, after its been typed into the text box) is to create two Webfonts using the trial version of Font Creator (which is a months limited trial, and limits the fonts you can export though you do get all the letters and numbers that you need); one of the fonts is slightly thicker than the other and acts as the outline for the thinner font when overlaid as two separate Text objects in c2.   The advantage of doing things this way is I can now type whatever I want rather than having to arrange each letter by hand, which is a lot more flexible. I still have a few problems to iron out, as occasionally the outline font will appear on the screen a fraction of a second before the text overlay which looks a bit odd. Also it can sometimes take a while for the webfont to register.

    Anyway, I'm sure there's got to be an easier method for displaying outlined fonts on iOS devices! But, if not, my gung-ho methods might work for you (both types of outline text styles can be viewed in my game link above) I will continue experimenting, and let you know if I find a better way or encounter more problems.

  • cklester

    I had started to implement an 'automatic move' routine for if there's only one hero on the board, but had to disable it whilst concentrating on getting more important features ready for the Newgrounds competition. Now the competition's over I'll probably have the chance to finish adding it at some point, so thanks for reminding me! (bug hunt and asset size reduction is the priority at the moment, though)

    Blacksmith

    As soon as I start uploading Board Horde to various sites I'll be sure to let you know (any assistance in drawing people's attention to it is always appreciated). It's likely I'll try Kongregate, Clay.IO and Market.js to start with (and update the Newgrounds game).

    I hope to have the game ready to upload in about a week or so, and then spend June adding in lots of extra features before I move on to developing something new in July (though I'll still add new boards, potions, traps etc from time to time).