dock

I just entered Tumbledrop into the IGF Mobile awards! It's a big step for me, because it's a playable build that's in a good enough state to enter into a competition. Of course it's up against hundreds of other games, so its a long shot, but I'm glad that I was able to get things together. Here's a quick video based on the iPhone version:

I'm working really hard on Tumbledrop iPhone at the moment, and it's really starting to take shape. I'm aiming to enter this into IGF Mobile early next week, so I'm really in crunch mode at the moment. Working on new level designs is a lot of fun though, and it's exciting to see things fall into place!

Eurogamer Expo was last weekend in London, and I was due to attend as part of the 'Indie Arcade'. Unfortunately I've been ill for the last ten days with con-flu, i.e. a bad cold from London Expo. This killed my productivity and also made it so that I couldn't travel down to attend Eurogamer Expo as planned. Tumbledrop was there without me though, and apparently it went down pretty well. My favourite shared moment from the show is that one of the stern looking security guards became enthalled by Tumbledropfor a while! XD

I really regret missing this show, as it was something I was looking forward to. Nevertheless, it sounds like it was a cool event for everyone, and I hope I get to show my games at upcoming shows.

The latest episode of Bytejacker did an awesome piece in to raise awareness of the Tumbledrop clone 'Blopo' that is currently being produced for iphone. I'm really appreciative of this support, especially as I've been watching Bytejacker for a long time.

The creator of Blopo has since taken down his video of the copyright infringing game, and has claimed to be changing the graphics. I've been in contact with Apple about this matter and the situation is currently in review.

Thanks again to the Bytejacker crew, and everyone on Tigsource for the support over this matter.

I'm getting to the point where I'm going to start making weekly builds of Tumbledrop iPhone to send out to testers. If anyone would like to help me test the game, I would definitely appreciate the help!

You need to have an iPhone or iPod Touch. You also need to have access to a Mac, because iphone test builds only work with the Mac version of iTunes. Send an email to tumbledrop@gmail.com with your UDID codeif you're interested. :)

As you can see I have started to add alternative island types into the game. This mixing up the gameplay quite a bit, but the goal is still the same - land on [one of ] the green islands. There are several different island layouts in the game, I'll be showing those off over the coming weeks. :)

toothycat made me a Tumbledrop-themed Birthday Cake!! Thank-you Morag & Carol!! It was an amazing surprise. My Birthday is actually tomorrow (well, in ten minutes, technically, April 6th), but we happened to be having a meet up today. It's was an awesome surprise, as I'm especially fond of receiving birthday-cakes like this. I still can't quite believe she did this! <3 <3 !!

(even pandas enjoy Tumbledrop!)

The last month has been pretty crazy! Working on iPhone has been a lot like throwing myself in the deep end, and Tumbledrop has turned out to be lots of work. However, it's all be worthwhile and the late nights have been worth it so far. I've been optimising like crazy, and ripping out masses of code to get the frame rate nice and smooth without compromising the contents of the game.

I'm now at a point where the game itself runs very well, and I'm starting to build the framework around it, as well as working on new levels and features. I'm pulling out all the stops with this game, and it will be quite a departure from the original web version.

So I've decided not to work this evening. Relaxation time is now!

Progress on iPhone Tumbledrop has been slow over the last week. I've been learning a bunch of new techniques, and I'm learning that I'll have to do some heavy changes to my code in order to get the game running how I want it to. This upcoming week will be quite hard work, but I think it will be worth it in the long run with this project.

I finally came up with a company name, with domain name and logo! I won't mention it just yet, but I'll hopefully have something to report soon enough. Of course, I need to find a new webhost so I can build a new website.

On other random topics, I just discovered Busymac which allows me to synchronise Google Calendar with iCal on the mac, which in turn syncs with my iPhone. This is really great for me, and should mean I have a better time using the calendars in general. I should start putting milestone deadlines for my iphone project on there.

Time to sleep before the busy day of work ahead of me!

Tumbledrop 6teen launched on CartoonNetwork.com today! :D This was the first thing I did when I went freelance. It's a version of Tumbledrop branded with characters from the show '6teen', including music and artwork. I am pretty pleased with how this came together. There aren't many changes to the content other than a few bug fixes, and there will be a new version of Tumbledop coming up on tumbledrop.com within a few months.


My mac is one year old now! It's been quite a rollercoaster of a year with me, and my mac is definitely one of the most positive decisions that I made. It wasn't just the mac, but rather it represented sweeping things to the side and starting afresh. It got me into game programming proper, and made Tumbledrop. It got me into making music, and now it's a hobby of mine I'm keen to pursue. It's an awesome machine and something I really enjoy using.

So, speaking of Tumbledrop and Macs, I should get back to working on the iphone version of Tumbledrop. Progress is slow and it's requiring more care than I expected, but I'm getting the quality that I want out of it which is the important thing at this stage. :)

I just finished the new version of the Tumbledrop logo!

Feedback would be appreciated! I opted to avoid the apple-gloss-shine you see on many logos these days because Tumbledrop doesn't use any of that in its visual style. However, anything else that you can point out or any opinion you have on it in general would be appreciated.

I was never happy with the old version (which you can see here), and the old one reads as 'Tumble Drop' rather than Tumbledrop as a single word. Tumbledrop only became a single word part way through development, which is how that happened.

So, what do you think?

I won "Best Gameplay" award in the Unity Awards 2008. See the competition results here.

"Best Gameplay:
Tumble Drop – Dock

Special Recognition in following categories:
Puzzle, 2D, Physics."

Yaaay!! I didn't win 'forum favourite' (but I appreciated every who voted for me!), and I didn't win 'best overall game', but to win anything at all is fantastic news. I'm delighted with this result.

I win €200, and I get a 20% discount on a license which is worth almost the same again. I'm going to take those €200 and put that straight towards a 'pro' Unity license.

Tumbledrop is currently up for public vote, as part of the competition I have entered. Please take some time to vote for me if you like my game, I would really appreciate it!

Voting form is HERE.
You have to register a forum account, which I know is a pain, but every vote helps a great deal.

Today Tumbledrop was featured on the front page of Tigsource, which is quite an honour for me! I have been reading tigsource for a while, and it's very encouraging to have my first game show up on there as a featured item. Somehow I thought it might be a bit lightweight for them, as they generally tend to focus on platform games or more hardcore indie titles, but I'm delighted that it has been well received. It's even more pressure for me to to fix it up!

Yesterday I fired up Unity (and 3DSMAX) again briefly and decided to fix a very minor bug... the only bug that no-one has noticed or mentioned, but one that annoys me every time I play. Which bug? This one:



That's right, there were some parts of the shape outlines that were lighter than others when the shape disappears after clicking on it. This has been driving me crazy for ages, haha! Now it looks like this:



Graphical glitches like that drive me wild.. I'm quite finicky when it comes to visuals, I have to admit. I'm leaving the more obvious bugs until the big update in a few weeks time, such the fact that level 6 and 17 are the same level... (wtf, didn't realise that until today). I hope to get a few life-things out of the way so that I can knuckle down with development again.

The tumbledrop 'launch' was a success! ^_^ The game has been received well, and was even posted up by a few gaming blog sites. I managed to get a lot of feedback about it, and I just need to compile a list of bugs to fix. I've decided that I'm going to aim to release a 'final' version of this game in about three weeks time, before London Expo. It's long enough to take off the pressure, but soon enough so that I don't get distracted and don't want to go back to it. So, some time around 23rd October expect a shiny new version.

So, now that Tumbledrop is done, I figured I should take some time out on this blog to consider how the development went. Today I'll focus on 'concept art', and take a look at what I produced.


"game - shape stacking.psd" (11-Aug-2008)
At the time was just a doodle of a potential game to make, one of many that exist. I wanted to do something very simple with the physics engine in unity, and figured that a 2D game with shape stacking would be good. I had played and enjoyed some 'physics tower' games before, but didn't like the square shapes much. The folder is called "Topple Tower" at this point, and this became the unity project filename too.


"game - shape pieces.psd" (12-Aug-2008)
I had settled on which of the pieces I liked, and I started to mock up a bunch of different shapes. I was aiming for some geometrically robust shapes, but also ones that would roll and tumble in an interesting manner. I was also trying to settle on some sort of look for the faces at this stage. I had also changed the stage to an island at this point.


"game - shape mock 2.psd" (13-Aug-2008)
So, this was the mock-up that I posted when I started this blog, and this pretty much became my aim in terms of what to achieve. It was called "TumbleTower" here, as I was still trying to settle on a name. I think I managed to get most of the visuals here in place, such as splashing, stars upon impact, and scared faces when the shapes are falling. The clouds in the sky I threw out because they conflicted with the GUI, and hot-air balloon in the background is still penciled in. The number on the island at this point was going to be the moves guage, but I didn't like it there.


Page from my sketchbook, around the same time...
Not all the concept art for this was done on computer! As well as many post-it notes that I have since discarded, I was drawing up ideas for shapes and visual designs in my sketchbook as well. This was when I came up with the 'triple', the three pronged shape you see here, which is probably my favourite of the tumbledrop shapes.

Of course, I didn't commit myself to development at this stage, and I only announced my intention of developing it some 10 days later. This was more like 'maaaaybe I'll make this'. I then went on to do some small tests in Unity and MAX to see if I could make the shapes and have the physics work, which pretty much took us to the 22nd August when I decided to enter the Unity contest.

Next time I'll post about how using Unity worked out for me. :)

I can't believe it! I managed to get Tumbledrop done on time!! I've submitted Tumbledrop to the Unity Awards 2008... and the game is also playable on its own website! :D Please give it a try! For Mac and Windows, needs a browser plugin.

www.tumbledrop.com

There are still some small bugs in the game that I intend to iron out of the coming weeks, and I have a 'medal' system planned for high scores (and medium scores) on each of the levels. I might implement level unlocking, or at least acknowledging that you have completed each stage. Any feedback you have would definitely be appreciated.

I'm actually stunned that this game came together as well as it has done. Yesterday the game was a mess, and I wasn't confident at all that I would pull this off. Today was very productive however, and things came together at the last mnute. Literally, in some cases... the 'level complete' sound effect was added at 11:35pm, and submission was only 10 minutes after that.

Phew, now I can exhale!

Tumbledrop is looking in pretty bad shape right now. I only have a couple of days left before the competition submission, and there are some horrendous bugs that I'm struggling to overcome. The problem with bugs is that they tend to get worse rather than better if you're in a hurry... or at least this is the case when you're inexperienced with coding. I'm going to get stuck in and focus on a couple of key parts of the game today, which could make all the difference.

It's worth pointing out that lots of progress has happened as well. Most of the user interface was designed and put in place, which makes a big difference to the overall look and feel of the game. Right now, however, the game is broken so I need to work hard!

Of course, after wednesday I can update my game to my heart's content, but I just need to get it to a state fit for entering into the contest before then! o_o

I'm surrounded by bugs! Nooooo!!

Progress has been really slow over the last few days on Tumbledrop, starting off on Sunday with a very simple bug that literally took about 24 hours to fix. -_- It's very frustrating getting 'stuck' with coding when you're inexperienced, because you often don't know where to start. Is your use of syntax wrong, or are you simply trying the wrong approach? Unity's scripting language is case sensitive as well, so it will sometimes give completely nonsensical bug reports and suggestions when in fact I should have just been using 'yield' instead of 'Yield'. o_O

Nevertheless, things are slowly coming together. Today I'm determined to put some GUI in place, with level select and level progression, to get a better feel of it being a completed game. If nothing else though, my game has a good sense of polish. Transitions and responses are good, and the sound effects are still pleasant to listen to after hearing them a billion times.

Plans for an updated demo have been thrown out of the window for the time being, but maybe I'll sneak something out at the weekend to get a few days playtesting before the competition deadline. I'm certainly aiming to have all the pieces in place by then.

I've been working on Tumbledrop all day long, getting up early and making sure that I really poured the hours into the project. I managed to scour several important items off my list of things to get done, and I'm going to bed now with a view to having an equally productive day tomorrow.

As you can see from the screenshot, Tumbledrop now has water splashing. I'm working on some other visuals effects too, but implementing them is proving a little tricky. I also need to track down some more boring bugs with regards to the 'recharge timer', as well as consider the visualisation of this. Lots of work to do! :)

I'm still aiming to get a new demo out on Monday, so I had better hit the sack and see how much I can get done tomorrow.

I've had a fantastic evening of games development, perhaps too long an evening considering it is 2am now! Whoops! I had a rollercoaster evening of things not working, then theorising a solution, and fumbling through all the code until that solution worked perfectly. I now have complete control over the expressions on my shapes, and it works smoothly and precisely how I want it to. On this particular screenshot you'll notice the two chaps on the left hand side expressing their discomfort at the collision from the shapes above.

I'm proud to say I have 'FaceYay();' as a line of code in my game! ^o^

The rainbow you see was something I did at lunch-time. This is the 'win' rainbow, which forms after you succeed at the level, along with some other exciting on screen decorations. It is inverted and quite wrong!

Finally, I found out a way to further smoothen my export-pipeline. I'm now saving files directly into the project folder over the network from max into Unity, and Unity is neatly re-importing these objects and silently integrating the changes into all instances of that object. I'm flabberghasted at how robust Unity is with this sort of thing, especially considering I've done a lot of custom work to each of the objects after importing.

I'm really starting to feel comfortable when working with Unity, and the prospect of doing projects after this one is actually quite exciting.

It's been a few days since I posted up my beta-demo of Tumbledrop, and the reception has been much more positive than I had ever anticipated. I'm very appreciative of all the feedback that I've received as well, and I've definitely been taking everything into consideration (I know I need a better system for showing the countdown timer between clicks, for example!). It's all very encouraging, and it has really fueled my enthusiasm for getting this game done.

Here's a video that someone made demonstrating the two-click solution! Spoilers!! XD The two-click thing has motivated me to make sure the game logs your lowest number of moves.

I've been working on the additional shapes for a while now, and they've been taking much longer than expected. There are 17 shapes in total, and each of them has a range of facial expressions. I also ran into a bunch of problems in 3D Studio Max, where animations and exports were being screwed up be Xform problems (that old chestnut!). It's already obvious how the gameplay changes quite a lot with the new shapes, with interesting leverage type behaviour occurring. My aim is to get the shapes fully implemented as proper 'prefab' objects by Friday night at the latest, to give me the whole weekend for programming the main game interface and working on levels.

I think I'm going to try to release another 'demo' next Monday, as an incentive to make sure everything works and to get some further feedback on the interface. Watch this space!