Spinja - Game Dev Log by sciTunes - Showing Off Some NEW Art!

scitunes

Just thought I would share what I'm working on. Never done this before, but I thought I would try and create a little buzz for my game. I'm having a ton of fun making it and playing it. It's based on the Mr. Ninja template that I made and shared with the community a while back. You'll see that I have added a ton of stuff not in found in the template.

Pics and video coming in just a bit.

Stay tuned!

scitunes

Thoughts, young grasshoppers?

scitunes

And a video.

scitunes

The object of the game is to collect all the throwing stars

Here's a list of the game elements:

-Clockwise rotating platforms
-Counterclockwise rotation platforms
-Moving rotating platforms - horizontal and vertical movement (both rotational directions)
-Rotating platforms that break after one jump (both directions)
-Rectangular platforms that bounce (both one jump and unlimited) (both moving and static)
-Circle platforms that bounce (both one jump and unlimited)(both moving and static)
-Cannon Platforms that fire a projectile when ninja jumps (to take out bombs)
-(that reminds me) Bombs
-Regular throwing stars and stars that must be collected in order
-Warp Zones

Coming soon-

Fans that blow your ninja around
Revolving platforms (they spin and travel around the screen in an elliptical "orbit")
???

JamieOneil

same objective as my game in development Bunny Spin.
But the art looks great! can't wait to play this one!

scitunes

uptimistik said:
It does look very good. Does it have the same appeal as A Long Way Home and Mr. Ninja? Only time will tell.

To me it seems like a technical masterpiece, but some tiny element that I can't put my finger on is not there to draw me in....

Don't take my comments to heart though, lol I'm a bit of a weirdo.

Any idea what that tiny element is?

JamieOneil said:
same objective as my game in development Bunny Spin.
But the art looks great! can't wait to play this one!

Thanks. I am trying to add in lots of different elements to keep the player interested. Somewhere I saw a graph like the one below:



This graphic is for a different style of game, but the idea is that at each trough in the graph you start a new world with a new element. The dip represents a drop in difficulty so that the player can learn the new element. By the end of that world however the game is more difficult than at the end of the last world (the previous peak on the graph). So the idea is to make the game get progressively harder but it has these dips so that the player has the chance to learn the new element. In theory it will make the player want to keep playing.

Any suggestions? Ideas for improvement?

Thanks!

scitunes

Fans



The fan and the wind are two separate actors, but the nice thing is that they can be placed in the scene and rotated to any angle and the ninja will be blown in that direction. Should make for some fun level design.

Braydon_SFX

Hey there,

Looks really good, cannot wait to try it. :P

beefy_clyro

Coming along nicely mate It seems a bit jerky in places, is that from the video?

scitunes

Braydon_SFX said:
Hey there,

Looks really good, cannot wait to try it. :P

Thanks!

beefy_clyro said:
Coming along nicely mate

Thanks! I'm feeling pretty good about it.

beefy_clyro said:
It seems a bit jerky in places, is that from the video?

Runs really smooth on the device (and in the creator). So yeah it's just the screen capture software. Actually my overall computer performance (13" macbookpro with 4gig RAM) has really suffered after upgrading to Lion. But on my iPhone 4 it stays right around 60 fps on even the busiest levels. There are rarely more than 10 moving actors in a scene so it is pretty light overall.

JeffreyShimane

The gameplay looks good.

In my opinion, the one tiny element it is missing is a consistent graphics style. Each graphic on its own is good. However, taken as a whole, they don't fit together in a unified way that you see in hit games in the App Store.

- Jeff

scitunes

JeffreyShimane said:
The gameplay looks good.

In my opinion, the one tiny element it is missing is a consistent graphics style. Each graphic on its own is good. However, taken as a whole, they don't fit together in a unified way that you see in hit games in the App Store.

- Jeff

I personally like the overly simple black and white platforms because it sets them apart from the background which I think helps with playability. Is this what you think needs changing? Or do the various backgrounds not fit with each other? Or maybe it's the backgrounds with the win screen. I've been thinking about the vector style of the win screen. I recently had more vector/cartoony styled backgrounds and the ninja master dojo win screen fit perfectly. My dilemma now is that I really like the textured backgrounds with the black and white platforms, so I am thinking I may need to try and somehow add some similar texture to the win screen graphics. Not sure.

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate honest criticism.

Clock

JeffreyShimane said:
The gameplay looks good.

In my opinion, the one tiny element it is missing is a consistent graphics style. Each graphic on its own is good. However, taken as a whole, they don't fit together in a unified way that you see in hit games in the App Store.

- Jeff

i think they fit together in my opinion. i like the overall designs too. just a quick question, is there a similar app out there? also call ninja something?

scitunes

kinwaing said:
i think they fit together in my opinion. i like the overall designs too. just a quick question, is there a similar app out there? also call ninja something?

There is a game called "Mr.Ninja" that has rotating platforms that you jump on and spin around until the player taps the screen. But in that game you are simply trying to progress as far as you can, almost like an endless runner style game. In that game the longer you stay alive the faster the platforms rotate which makes accurate jumping more difficult.

In my game there are the same type of rotating platforms and the same one touch game play but the objective is totally different. In my game you are trying to collect all of the throwing stars. the other big difference is all of the other elements listed above. In Mr.Ninja there are only rotating circular platforms.

I released a Mr.Ninja free template that seems to have been used by a number of GS users (which is fine - in fact that was the point of releasing it). It also just so happend that Jon released "A Long Way Home" around that time which is similar but clearly was completely his own work. He had obviously been working on it way before I released that template and in his game (awesome game btw) you can have your character walk on the spinning circles (planets in his game) as well as stand there and rotate. So he clearly used different logic and math in his game as I have no idea how he pulled that off.

So the short version of this long winded answer is - Yes there are a number of games that this is similar to. I am trying to make mine as unique as possible by adding all those other elements to spice up the game play.

scitunes

Two Different Art Styles For The Dojo



Which one works better for this game? Clean Vector or Grunge Textured Vector? Or perhaps neither?

Feedback appreciated!

mu-kowAPPS

out of the two, i would go with the first one shown

scitunes

New Menu System



I was inspired by the GS User (Sorry I forgot who) who used Joe's slider to change the level. In keeping with the spin theme I have designed a "dial" of sorts that can be turned to change a game level attribute that then triggers the actor on the right side of the screen to change it's image. I have it set up so that you can touch your finger anywhere on the dial or the ninja and it will smoothly turn with no jumping around (no matter where you start your touch from). The next step is to add the change scene rules (i.e. when game.menurotation = 1 and touch is pressed, change scene to Level1, etc.)

I am thinking that I will have a screen like this for each of the 10 dojos (worlds). But I will attempt to NOT have 10 menu scenes, but rather use some camera trickery and some image switching tricks as well to keep the scene loading to a minimum (hopefully zero) and the actor count low as well.

quantumsheep

scitunes said:
Any idea what that tiny element is?

Thanks. I am trying to add in lots of different elements to keep the player interested. Somewhere I saw a graph like the one below:



This graphic is for a different style of game, but the idea is that at each trough in the graph you start a new world with a new element. The dip represents a drop in difficulty so that the player can learn the new element. By the end of that world however the game is more difficult than at the end of the last world (the previous peak on the graph). So the idea is to make the game get progressively harder but it has these dips so that the player has the chance to learn the new element. In theory it will make the player want to keep playing.

Any suggestions? Ideas for improvement?

Thanks!

No suggestions on improvement. That is a classic 'Pacing' graph.

Burn it into your mind till it comes natural to you. It's the holy grail of game design

It doesn't just apply to each level though. It applies to everything. How often enemies show up sure. But also powerups. And even the timing of jumps (or shooting if you're doing a shooter!).

I'm glad you found it!

QS

EDIT: I knew I'd seen it somewhere!

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/episode-07-pacing

This is where having seen Star Wars is actually useful!

QS

scitunes

uptimistik said:
Looks lovely! And that loon who modified joe's slider would be Uptimistik I think...

Nice one! I was very impressed with that idea. Hope you don't mind that I did my own "spin" on it (har har)

quantumsheep said:
No suggestions on improvement. That is a classic 'Pacing' graph.

Burn it into your mind till it comes natural to you. It's the holy grail of game design

It doesn't just apply to each level though. It applies to everything. How often enemies show up sure. But also powerups. And even the timing of jumps (or shooting if you're doing a shooter!).

I'm glad you found it!

QS

EDIT: I knew I'd seen it somewhere!

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/episode-07-pacing

This is where having seen Star Wars is actually useful!

QS

nice find! I had also seen this and was actually trying to find it when I found the graph above. Obviously the reason I couldn't find it was that it was part of an extra credit movie clip and not a static image.

Thanks!

HoneyTribeStudios

How about some funny (mystical and non-sensical?) lines for the dojo master?

Not sure if it's the screen capture but the jumping movement seems a bit strange. Is he jumping in some kind of curve as opposed to straight lines?

(Thought the 1st of the two dojo backgrounds were better)

scitunes

HoneyTribeStudios said:
How about some funny (mystical and non-sensical?) lines for the dojo master?

Not sure if it's the screen capture but the jumping movement seems a bit strange. Is he jumping in some kind of curve as opposed to straight lines?

(Thought the 1st of the two dojo backgrounds were better)

Funny ninja-master lines are definitely coming.

The screen capture was horrible in the original video. The ninja actually jumps exactly straight and then falls due to gravity (not scene gravity, but accel 270 to scene within actor).

There is the video clip of the fans that are "blowing" the ninja in the direction that the particles are moving. That will make the ninja's falling a jumping a bit strange, but that's intentional.

Overall I am really pleased with the gameplay and the performance. I actually just got a brand new MBP with the quad core and 8gigs of RAM, so I will try to redo the gameplay video on that to see if it is less choppy. But as I said, in reality it is perfectly smooth.

scitunes

New Video Showing Actual "Smoothness"



Made this with my brand-new MBP quad core 8gig of RAM

This shows how smooth the game runs (actually it's even a bit better on my iPhone 4)

JohnPapiomitis

looks awesome some really cool gameplay elements in there

quantumsheep

JohnPapiomitis said:
looks awesome some really cool gameplay elements in there

Agreed!

How many levels are planned?

QS

scitunes

JohnPapiomitis said:
looks awesome some really cool gameplay elements in there

Thanks, John!

quantumsheep said:
Agreed!

How many levels are planned?

QS

Thanks, QS!

As far as number of levels, I am shooting for 100. The plan is to introduce a new element every 10 levels. So to stick to the graph shown above there will be a dip in the difficulty every 10 levels so the player can learn the new element and then the difficulty will ramp up over the course of the next 10 levels and so on...

This of course assumes that I can come up with 10 unique game elements! I just completed level 65 (it's the one towards the end of the last video with the fans) so I still need three unique game elements for 70-100. I have three ideas but not sure how well each one will actually play out in reality. We'll see!

3xL

i loved mr. ninja. can't wait to play this one!

quantumsheep

scitunes said:
Thanks, John!

Thanks, QS!

As far as number of levels, I am shooting for 100. The plan is to introduce a new element every 10 levels. So to stick to the graph shown above there will be a dip in the difficulty every 10 levels so the player can learn the new element and then the difficulty will ramp up over the course of the next 10 levels and so on...

This of course assumes that I can come up with 10 unique game elements! I just completed level 65 (it's the one towards the end of the last video with the fans) so I still need three unique game elements for 70-100. I have three ideas but not sure how well each one will actually play out in reality. We'll see!

If you haven't got a copy of Gravitrixx, let me know and I'll see if I have a spare promo.

I'm not saying it's perfect, but it does the whole 'introduce a new element every 10 levels' thing pretty well, making sure the difficulty goes down as the elements are introduced, then upping the difficulty within those 10 levels till the new lot are unlocked.

The new set of levels will introduce a new element, while still retaining the previously learned elements.

It works pretty well I think!

Might be useful?

Cheers,

QS

scitunes

QS, that's a mighty kind offer. However I am pretty sure I have bought just about everything you have on the appstore. So I have Gravitrixx (and GravitriXmas as well). And I totally agree that it does a great job of difficulty pacing by adding new elements - I will totally give that another look.

Thanks!

beefy_clyro

Yup i used that 'law' in 'Line Ar(X)' and seemed to go down well

scitunes

Ok guys, decided to dust this off, polish it up, and FINALLY FINISH IT!!!! (hopefully)

New art is on the way! Basil Murad (artist for QS's masterpiece, Air Supply) is working on creating a fully animated ninja character. In this video you can see the prototype he created for this character. There will be a jumping/spinning/sword-slashing animation for the jumps, an animation for when you have been on the same platform for awhile, and animations for the cut scenes when the ninja bows to his sensei. Can't wait to see what Basil comes up with!

I also added 3D platforms using the replicate trick. I WOULD LOVE YOUR FEEDBACK on this aspect of the game. Is it too much? Is it cool?

Thanks!

jonmulcahy

Looks awesome, I would try and get the character to sit more centered on the 3d platform, it looks like he is on the far edge.

Also, and I'm not sure how hard this would be, but the closer the object is to the center of the screen, the smaller the 3d effect you should have, that would make it look even more realistic