philx's Forum Posts

  • Hi Community!

    I am currently working on a single device multiplayer game. It's going to be playable by 2-4 players. The main Idea is that every player got his control panels in one corner of the device.

    I started with somewhat of a joystick and a 8-direction movement.

    Here's a quick overview of the game mechanics:

    old version

    But then i thought if i create 4 more buttons to let everybody shoot, a mobile device might get overloaded with so many touch inputs. That's why I came up with the Idea to let them automatically shoot at certain different time intervals. I didn't really like that Idea so i started all over.

    I came up with 3 buttons for each player. 2 to let them move left and right, while they automatically move forward and 1 Button to let them shoot. Here's a quick overview how it should look like:

    second version

    The first layout is considered to be the later Main Menu where every player can drag the desired Character in their corner. They will of course look different when the game is finished. Dragging a Character in a corner will lock this player in and the control panel will show up in this corner when the game goes to the next layout.

    After locking in the characters the players can either choose between the green and the red button which stands for normal and crazy mode.

    In this preview the red player can be controlled with

    A - Left

    S - Shoot

    D - Right

    In normal mode the players will fight against each others for kills. It's possible to collect power up's (yet only speed buff). I guess there will be something like a time- or kill- limit to terminate the game. And if a Character gets out of the layout he will die.

    In crazy mode the controlos are the same but the players shot cooldown will be reduced by every kill he gets. After death, his cooldown to shoot will be reset to default. If two or more players collide with each other they will either get bigger (so it's easier to hit them) or they will get slowed (which will become an easy to hit target too). Size and speed of course will also get reset on death. It is planned to make snake-like layout boundaries where you teleport to the opposite side of the map if you leave it.

    I am planning to release the game with CocoonJS after I finished the normal mode and included all the graphics which will be made from two creative talented friends of mine. (the characters will be Jellyfishes) I am not sure about the platform of the first release yet since my Apple developer Account will expire in less than 10 days.

    If it's completely free for google play store i will focus on that one.

    It will only be available for tablets / iPads since the phone screens are too small to enjoy the game.

    After releasing on Android and iOS or if the game need too much resources for these mobile devices i want to make a OUYA release.

    There are various different Power Up's in development and I am constantly trying to improve my event's aswell.

    I really want to get this done so i'm going to make some threads on things where i stuck the next days. I will link them all on this thread and I'd be happy if you could see wheather you can give me a hint.

    There's a lot to do left but I would like to know your opinion about it.

    • How do you like the game Idea?
    • What would you change or do different?
    • Have you got any other comments?

    Greetings!

    phil.

    EDIT 07.11.2013:

    I just created a Thread where I describe my biggest problem right now:

    Handling 4 players and combine events

    This is and old thread which also describes my problem and no one ever answered:

    Old Thread

    EDIT 11.11.2013:

    Check out my latest version with cooldown system and movement control are actually finished on this one.

    Latest version 11.11.13

    Have a look at my discussion Thread aswell!

    Handling 4 players. Combine Events

    EDIT 12.11.2013 Thread Post:

    Allright guys I got pretty much uf my stuff to work.

    I worked with sub-events.

    This is what I came up with for my cooldown behaviour:

    Live Demo

    with these little events I achieved more or less the best cooldown system i ever had xD I didn't test it on a mobile device for multiple touch inputs at the same time but i really hope it works lol

    (edit: url did not work for some reason)

    CAPX

    EDIT: ignore the animation frame for now. It does not reset properly, If you have a good solution feel free to write me.

    This is the new array which i store almost all information about players in. (edit: url did not work)

    y0 - player number

    y1 - wheather a shoot button is on cooldown or not

    y2 - custom cooldown time, can easily be reduced on kill

    y3 - amount of degrees I change the bullet.angleOfMotion while a movement key is in touch.

    y4 - bullet.speed of each character .. very easy to change if someone picks up a speed power up for example.

    y5 - player kills ...

    y6 - bullet speed ..

    y7 - animation / "skin"

    and so on ..

    this is my movement example which i also reduced the events a lot.

    Live Demo

    CAPX

    If you have any questions about the array just ask.

  • i have a question on performance on iPad because of the Touch-inputs.

    check out this thread:

    scirra.com/forum/ios-cocoonjs-performance-with-many-touch-inputs_topic75503_post451421.html

  • Hi folks!

    I'm creating a 2-4 Player game for the Apple iPad with C2 and i'm planning to wrap it with CocoonJS when i'm done.

    I'm a bit concerned because i have 3 buttons for every player. If there a are 4 players, the Game has to handle with 16 touch inputs!

    what do you think? is this possible?

    has any of you already wrapped a iPad game with C2?

    what are your experiences?

    here's a live preview:

    googledrive.com/host/0B9IR6fhnjEUvbFEwWThyRm1oUjg/index.html

    at the beginning you have to drag the squares (later character skins) in your corner and press the green square in the middle.

    do you have any hint to make the most performance-friendly inpud method?

    Thanks.

    Cheerio!!

    philx

  • oooh man i'd love to come along! But it's too far away from switzerland.

  • as said in this topic, the performance won't be a problem if scaling the screen down in a lower resolution. for example from ipad3 to ipad1

    http://www.scirra.com/forum/a-thought-on-mobile-image-resolutions_topic51062.html

  • try out some more stuff and if you can't get there, send me your capx tomorrow i gtg to sleep now z..Z.z...Z..z.z

    check out tutorials on hud's there are plenty.

  • i dont think this is the problem. scaling down shouldn't be such a loss of memory .. have you tried different full screen modes like "integer scale" or "inner scale"?

    if you send me ur cocoonjs zip file i can test it on my ipad1

  • check out the plugins of rexrainbow, i think he made some great gyro plugins

  • no, if your layout size of "HUD" is the same like your screen size, you'll be able to see the timer all the time. this layer has to be transparent and on top of your game layer. the textbox of the timer is on layer "hud" and the car, road usw on one layer underneath "game".

    only set parallax 0,0 to the hud layer.

    and "scroll to" to the car or whatever

  • you have to upload it with Xcode, which can only be installed on Mac Computers.

    there are loooads of tutorials on how to upload your game to the app store. check out the official apple homepage for example.

  • to count the laps i would creat a sprite called "finish_line" and a global variable called "laps"

    and then do something like

    car -> on overlapping -> add 1 to "laps"

    try it on your own you will pretty soon be able to do such things on your own

  • to keep the text at the same position put it on a layer called "HUD" and set it's parallax to 0,0

    for timers and lap counters have a look at the Plugins form rexrainbow, I use his plugins alot.

    check out the manual on "how to install plugins"

    and to end the game if the player drives the car out of the screen just make an event like:

    car -> on outside of layout -> destroy

    car -> on destroyed -> go to layout "GAME OVER"

    or something like this.

    i very recommend you this Software. what you are willing to do is totally possible with C2.

  • hey rexrainbow

    I love this plugin! but i have an improvement idea. in my game i want to reduce the cooldown of "fire the weapon" if the player hits an enemey.

    like: Bullet on collision with enemey -> reduce Cooldown interval by 1 sec

    i would very appreciate if you could tell me how i could handle this or maybie if you want make an update?

    i was thinking of setting a instance variable for each player called "CD" and then set the time intervall to player1.CD (= instance variable) but this is neither working, i can only put numbers in there.

    cheers!

    phil

  • Hi guys,

    in the near future i want to work on a multiplayer game for iPads.

    Since the information on mobile platform development is scattered over the whole board, i was thinking of creating a game step by step and discuss every problem i will face during this process.

    I decided to go for a four player local multiplayer battle where each player has it's own joystick in the appropriate corner.

    it should more or less look like this.

    [2][https://googledrive.com/host/0B9IR6fhnjEUvMlhZaU1uR3NCUWc/index.html]

    The first decision i had to make was for the screen size and resolution.

    Since the iPhone screen is to small to play with 4 players, my target platform is only iPad gen 1-3.

    I read that it would be best to pick the best possible resolution with the same aspect ratio for all devices, which is 2048, 1536 (iPad 3Gen)

    For the "Fullscreen in Browser" i chose "Letterbox Scale" because it's said to be the best for mobile devices.

    For more information have a look at

    [3][https://www.scirra.com/tutorials/73/supporting-multiple-screen-sizes/page-1]

    as said in this topic, the performance won't be a problem if scaling the screen down in a lower resolution. for example ipad 1

    [4][http://www.scirra.com/forum/a-thought-on-mobile-image-resolutions_topic51062.html]

    the second problem i had to face, were the 4 different fingers touching the iPad at the same time.

    i played around with touchID's and invisible sprites and came up with this:

    here's a live Demo

    [5][https://googledrive.com/host/0B7m-eoWIKsSMeVNlVzBzMTdFanM/index.html]

    test it on an iPad to move both at once

    and this is the capx file.

    [6][https://www.dropbox.com/s/j5v8oi5ruuyyp4y/multiple_touching.capx]

    I am right now facing something, which is not really a problem but it would be great to know a solution.

    Because i have four players, i have 4 different controls, player characters and bullets.

    right now i repeated exactly the same events for every player.

    can i create something like:

    "on touch of Control_Left.ID(2), move Player.ID(2) to the left"

    like 3 events for left, right and to define somehow to pick the player with the same ID as the controls have.?

    is there another way to achieve this?

    I've been discussing this topic in this thread:

    [7][http://www.scirra.com/forum/topic72500.html]

    Here's a quick view on my events:

    <img src="https://www.scirra.com/images/articles/players.png" border="0" />

    and here's the latest version of the capx

    [8][https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9IR6fhnjEUvWWlxNGdxU1IyV1k/edit]

    the second problem which i'm facing is the combat. it's a bit similar. I have 4 different player characters and four appropriate bullets. now i want the bullet 1 to destroy p2,3 and 4 on collision but not p1. And bullet 2 i want to destroy p1,3 and 4 ... and so on.

    i tried a lot of things with families and instance variables but i was not comfortable with it.

    Of course as soon as i know how to do these things i will write it down here because i want it to be like a full report on what problems i faced for you as a tutorial. I will constantly continue to develop my game.

    as you might have noticed, there aren't any nice sprites in it and so on. My graphic support is working on it and i will let you guys have a preview as soon as possible.

    For next steps are planned:

    • Power UP's
    • Combat Engine (Bounce of Walls, Teleports, Time, Respawn ... and so on)
    • Achievements

    I haven't got the time right now to commentevery step but i will post problems and solutions here and maybie comment everything like a tutorial when the game is finished.

    cheers!

    phil

    26.08.13

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  • check out

    scirra.com/forum/topic65502.html

    where i provide a file for a possible solution for multiple touch inputs.