My little friend and I read your comments about Burning Platform.

Then we got to work…

We tweaked.

We Playtested.

===========================

And we posted an update to Google Play

We’ve addressed the main criticisms from the comments in the compo release and we’re really happy with the way the game plays. If you tried the original and rated it, have a look at the post compo update and let us know what you think!

And of course, if you never played the compo version, now’s a great time to try it out since the main “fun” adjustments have been made.

–A comparison–

A few days ago, I posted the simple question : “How did you do this time?”

Feelings about what we think of our own work aside, we now have the results of the voting to show us how others received our efforts. For my own part, I think the ratings I got for both of these are pretty fair, but with a few surprises. eg: I was sure Innovation would be even higher than it already is in BP, and I felt like I was very much on theme, though not to the level of a game like Fracuum.

The first thing to remember here is that LD23′s contestant base was massive compared to LD22. The rankings don’t map exactly between the two, and when you’re this far from the top 5 (or even top 25) it’s better to consider what percentile you fall into.

The reason I didn’t answer my own question directly in that previous post is because I really don’t know the answer. I generally had more fun making HUGMONSTER and I think it shows in the high Humor and Fun ratings it received, compared to the fun rating of Burning Platform. At the same time, I feel like Burning Platform was much more of an accomplishment regardless of the relative ratings. For example, no part of the actual construction of HUGMONSTER scored higher than 3.02. By contrast, Burning Platform blows it away in Innovation (and really I don’t know how HUGMONSTER got an innovation score above 2.5 in the first place), and the strong soundtrack in Burning Platform gave it a nice boost in general.

I guess the meat of the matter really is the “Overall” rating here. In both cases, it falls onto the happier side of the top 50 percentile of entries. It would seem that the community gave a higher score to BP than to HUGMONSTER and I suppose I can understand why even in light of its gameplay flaws, which had a serious impact on the Fun score. The interesting part of this to me is that HUGMONSTER had its own share of gameplay quirks, but they seemed to just add to the charm.

I suppose my ambivalence about seeing Burning Platform as having a higher Overall score than HUGMONSTER is because of that glaring “Fun” deficit. If I’d just tuned up some of the loose ends more tightly in Burning Platform I feel that both Fun and Overall could have been sitting right at the 3.0 line.

But enough about me

How do you feel about your two games, side by side? Do you agree or disagree with the ratings? Do you think the crowd got it right, or can you not believe that they liked that other game better than the one you like better?

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PLAY BURNING PLATFORM on your ANDROID phone or tablet
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My little green friend and I have been hard at work on a post-compo revision for Burning Platform!

Those of you who downloaded the app from Google Play will very soon see an update available for Burning Platform. I wanted to make sure that I waited until the end of the rating period before pushing the post-compo update, so as not to break any rules. Those of you who left feedback on the original version will notice *several* improvements.

Post-Compo update includes
1. Clearer instruction text.
2. Lines that persist for a second after you lift your finger
3. A new powerup, this one *further* increases the time the walls persist after you lift your finger.
4. A tiny gravity meter in the top corner as a hint that tilting does something
5. Your friends respond a little faster as you tilt the device around

Things that I noticed in the feedback and commentary:

1. Even though the compo-version game explicitly tells you to tilt the device to move your friends around, some players never tilted the device. They simply held it at an angle and let the little friends just fall down. I’ve tried to make it more obvious that the device orientation *is* the main control mechanism.

2. I agree that the lines disappeared too quickly in the compo version. This was priority #1 for me to fix and I did.

3. I want to add even more powerups but I don’t want them to be game-breakingly powerful. Now that the lines/walls persist that led to one other easy powerup. I’m still thinking of some others to add.

4. It won’t be in this update but I do plan to add high score tracking, possibly with an online component.

The people who played the game and got the mechanic seemed to respond very positively to the underlying idea, so I think it’s worthwhile to explore a bit. I hope those of you who played the compo version will also play the update when I push it and let me know if you feel like I addressed the major issues from the compo build.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already played it…

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PLAY BURNING PLATFORM on your ANDROID phone or tablet
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And then when the update appears later tonight let me know how you like the changes!

I see a lot of faces from LD#22 have shown up again for LD#23. That’s awesome! So for those of you who entered a game in a previous LD, I have a question for you:

“How did you do this time compared to last time?”

Do you think you did a better job this time? Worse? How has your current game been received compared to the last one? What do you think accounts for the difference?

EDIT: Feel free to post links to both your LD23 entry *AND* your most recent previous LD entry in your comment.

I’ve decided that for the rest of the rating period that I’m going to wander through two sections of the site to find games to rate:

1. Least Ratings
2. The full gallery of 1400 games, paging through them all

Doing so I found a these things to be true :

1. There are occasionally some really interesting games sitting in the Least Rated pile that are there only because the creator came, built, posted, and abandoned the site.
2. There are some really interesting games sitting in the middle that had just enough Coolness at one point to get attention but that have not been promoted much since

So in honor of the mushy middle, where great ideas get lost in the shuffle, here are a few that you probably won’t ever hear about from anyone else :

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Obsolecense — By quickfingers


The gameplay is very simple. The graphics are hauntingly beautiful. The music is poigniant. Humankind has pillaged all the resource-rich planets in the universe until nothing is left but the small, “worthless” planets that had been overlooked for millenia. Unfortunately, they’re all that’s left now. Colonize these tiny worlds and watch as humanity tears their resources asunder to build up industry and housing, but don’t dally as you have only a short amount of time to find the next planet that might sustain you for a few more centuries.

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Game With a Fantastic Title — batzerk

On a lighter note, this game was sitting on the “Least Rated” page with only 4 votes when I found it. Again, very simple gameplay, but it’s a real gem in the rough. Hit the platforms to compose a tune and watch the happy particles and listen to the happy tunes. It’ll brighten your day.

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HMS Imahara — SLiV

This is the first game I’ve found where there is no audio and yet I still gave the Audio 4 stars. Why? Because the complete and utter silence adds to the tension presented in this minimalist boardgame simulation. The “tiny world” theme was well represented here by making the entirety of the “known” world be just your tiny space ship. The graphics are basic but the story is so well laid out that they let your imagination really take over. Can you get all six crew members to the escape pods? Keep your crew alive amidst the rapidly depleting oxygen supply and the hungry aliens.

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stack::tracer() — nihilocrat

A very short, but very inventive puzzle game with a code-based idiom of pushing and popping stack frames with “functions”. There’s so much potential here. Keep an eye on this space and encourage nihilocrat to keep going post-compo!

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Catamari Meowacy– SethR


From the first comment : “LOL. This might be the Citizen Kane of gaming that we’ve all been waiting for.”

This game is remarkable for having sticky controls, badly drawn graphics, fuzzy voiceovers, an overall feeling of being a bad acid trip, and the single greatest villain I’ve seen in 151 games in this Ludum Dare.

Zorlax is watching you shower.

Zorlax needs to be a recurring character.

Like Android games? Play and Rate Burning Platform

A lot of people have left feedback on what they like and what could be improved in Burning Platform. To that end I’ve been working on some post-compo updates, but I will not push them to Google Play until after the rating period has ended. Since Google is my official compo distro, I have no choice other than to hold off on publishing a post-compo build for public consumption.

That said, here are a few things you can expect the next time the app shows up on your updates list:

• Longer lived lines – The #1 comment people had was that they wished the lines lasted longer on the screen. Your wish is granted! The screenshot above shows a particularly swishy wall. They persist for about half a second after you remove your finger, as well.
• Slightly slower friends – Your friends don’t have quite as much velocity coming out of the gate in the update.
• 1-UPs spawn more frequently – You get many more escape hatches now in this new update.

I’m toying with some other upgrades and improvements, such as a high score board, an on-screen tilt/gravity meter to give players who don’t “get it” that they can tilt the device, and possibly some other powerups.

Thank you all who have left feedback for me in this LD! I hope those of you who play and rate the current version will enjoy the update next week!

Play and Rate Burning Platform

A lot of great games have gotten a lot of attention here on LD but some other games that are equally impressive have received comparatively little buzz. I’m here to help bring some of these less-known gems to the surface:

Dwindling Worlds

A sensory overload of epic proportions, this game is all about sound, color, and moving your mouse in just the right way as to make the worlds grow. The narration offers clues on how to clear each stage. The visual effects are wondrous and magical.

ZUNZANDA

Speaking of excellent narration, the storyteller in ZUNZANDA is an incredible touch. The game may be a bit slow at times, but whether you finish or not you’ll be happy you started. This one really stuck out early and I have remembered it since based on the strength of the script and the narration alone.

Quest^3

While the combat in the game is random and brutal, the game can be beaten. The idea that the world shifts like a rubix cube as you traverse the top plane is a really interesting concept that could have been explored in greater depth, but that still deserves some spotlight regardless.

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– Play Burning Platform –
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:: In the Beginning ::
Before Ludum Dare 23 commenced, I knew that I wanted to make a mobile game. I firmly believe that mobile is going to play a strong role in the future of games, and that the possibilities offered by the devices themselves, given their typical assortment of sensory input and output mechanisms, offer the chance to give gamers experiences beyond those that they’re used to expecting from a “game.” One of my goals was to create an experience that literally would not be possible on a general purposed computer. This means using something like the accellerometer, the magnetrometer, voice input, something really unique.

The question in my mind was whether I was going to use Unity3D as my dev environment, or go native. I’d already used Unity for my last Ludum Dare entry to relatively good effect. At the same time, I felt as though I wanted to broaden my toolset a bit and step out into the world of native code. I chose Android for several reasons.

• I own an Android phone and an Android tablet, so device testing wouldn’t be a problem
• I wanted to actually put the app on an app store as my distribution channel (even though the app is free) and Google has virtually no red tape, and instant availability compared to Apple in this respect.
• I currently know Java better than I know Objective-C

At first I wanted to do something really avant garde, and to do it with the traditional Android interface platform using xml view layouts and a little bit of Java glue to make it all appy-but-yet-not-appy-and-actually-a-game. I still think I’ll do this, as the idea really appeals to me. What pushed me in the direction of Burning Platform though, was my purchase of the Asus Transformer and the discovery that some people who had been stricken by sheer insanity decided to write a Java IDE and compiler for making Android apps on an Android device. The tool, AIDE, is a relatively nice Java environment. It seemed totally usable as a code editor, and the dropbox integration was a nice touch. What it did not have though, was an XML interface gui tool. This put the kibosh on my plans to make a more traditional app, but opened up the way to making a more “traditional” game.

I set about transcribing, page by page, from Mario Zechner’s “Beginning Android Games” book, and seeing just how the compiler would fare with his bare-bones game framework. It turned out that the Transformer and AIDE work fairly well for this. Originally I had planned not to use any framework at all, but the time it took me to transcribe Mario’s framework convinced me otherwise. I decided to just use that (as well as some particle effect code that I played with as my test bed) as my base code as mentioned in my “I’m in” declaration.

I was convinced that while I could make a nice game with just the basic get/set pixel calls and nothing but colors, that aside from the technical achievement of making a game on such an exotic workstation the game itself would be rather bland. Fortunately one of my coworkers found and pointed me towards some of the apps that I ended up using to generate graphics and sound for my game. With art, music, sfx, and sound file editing tools all sitting on the tablet, I felt like I actually had a chance to make something halfway decent!

:: Ideation ::

I have to say that this theme was sort of disappointing to me. It wasn’t very inspirational, and I wasn’t sure the ideas I was generating were particularly novel or good. I thought possibly about making a simulation game where a nobody from a small town tries desperately to escape from his tiny world and get into the big city, but I didn’t really want to write up a full storyline for it. Then, like several others, I thought about making a planetary based game, but after two hours of prototyping I wasn’t happy with the way the idea was shaping up and I wasn’t having any fun with it. That’s when it hit me :: A small “world” that shrinks over time, not that you are trying to escape but that you are desperately trying to stay inside of. A mobile device is perfect for this concept, because these devices have accellerometer input controls that let you tilt and sway the device in order to cause reactions in the game world. It’s a game that literally could not be made for your computer or your laptop, which was one of my big goals in the making of Burning Platform.

My original world design had (what I thought to be) a more “earthy” feel. I wanted to have a sort of geographical landscape that shrank away from under you. Unfortunately, when I showed the prototype around, that wasn’t being conveyed by the art. People didn’t recognize it as being much of anything other than a mass of muddy colors. That’s when I knew I had to change direction and make the “world” nothing more than a “platform”. This then brought to mind that perhaps the platform is shrinking because it is burning away under you, and so I added the glowing red effect to make this apparent.

Further volunteer feedback suggested that simply keeping the people on the platform wasn’t quite compelling enough, so I decided to add some pickup items as well. With items that can stop the burning, rebuild the platform, and let one of your guys escape, this gives you something to do other than just try to keep balance.

In the end, the game seems to have turned out to be rather fun, if a bit insanely hard. On the other hand, I believe in making games that are easy to get into, and easy to start over from, so the cost of dying is small. This encourages creative play and experimentation in strategy.

So, what is it acually like to code and create content on an ASUS Transformer tablet?

• You miss the screen real estate of a dedicated workstation.
• You LOVE the fact that you compile the application and it’s right there, without waiting to push to the device
• You LOVE that it cuts the emulator out of the question entirely.
• You really wish there were a better way to keep tabs on logcat than to exit your app.
• You can’t just watch logcat it scroll by as you play with the application.
• Logcat now has a much more limited number of lines of text that it hangs onto.
• No photoshop obviously, but all I need is a paint equivalent, and Pixelesque is a relatively nice one (but with serious limitations)
• Plasma Sound is FUN to use, and FUN to make sound effects with.
• SPC is FUN to use and FUN to make loops with. Seriously I love my soundtrack on this game.
• One thing I could not do on the Transformer was generate a keystore in order to “sign” my game. It’s a bit of Google-required paperwork that you must do in order to actually distribute your app on their market.

:: What could have been better ::

I mentioned that I used the engine from “Beginning Android Games.” That was serviceable, but it was lacking a few things that I really would have liked to have available. Some of these were things I found before the competition, like the fact that Android devices do not treat accellerometer input consistently, and that one must correct for it if one wishes to use it in a game. Of the remaining issues, most of them I was able to hack in during the competition, though I wished I didn’t have to.

The line drawing mechanic, of putting a wall in front of your friends to bounce them around, didn’t turn out as I’d hoped. The walls don’t live nearly long enough to be very interesting as a mechanic, and I ran out of time to really think about how to solve the problem. Now that the pressure is off I think I have a good solution, but because I am distributing the game solely through Google Play I won’t update the compo build until after judging is over.

:: In Total ::
This experience was great fun. Truly, I did not have any expectations that the game would turn out as nicely as it did even a week before I started on it. The abundance of tools, and the horsepower available to even my older model Transformer were all I needed to make a functional and engaging game. I would definitely do this again.

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– Play Burning Platform –
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Play Burning Platform!

Google Play gives a daily update on how many people download an app, and where they do it from. They have a number of other neat statistics as well. I’m amazed at how many different countries this game has been played in already, in just 3 days!

Have an Android phone or tablet? Play and rate Burning Platform!

Now that we’re in the judging stage, I want to give a shout out to the other developers who decided that like myself they were going to write their game as an Android app! So without further ado, all you Android users should break out your devices and head on over to these submission pages…

Exclusive Android — SDK ONLY

Burning Platform - by dr_soda (That’s me!!!)

– A game for Android devices, written on an Android tablet.

My Wonderful World - by @daniel_sundberg

–Exclusive Android — Non SDK

Save Tiny World - by andrebessa

Android games made with cross-platform tools, available on other platforms

Worlds in Cards - by summaky

tinyConquest – by Galaxy613

There may be a couple of others but this was a cursory sample of the ones I have found thusfar.

Play Burning Platform on your Android device!

So, when I was writing this game I’d completely forgotten that a person using a Nook Color could install the apk and play it. It was only when one of the folks in IRC asked if he could have a direct link to the apk because he lacked access to Google Play did I remember it was even possible. So here it is:

The Nook Color presents challenges for many developers due to its performance profile. So how does Burning Platform fare here? Really well, actually! The framerate and animation was butter smooth even with hundreds of moving objects flying around. The one thing it did not do well however is play my SFX. The music was fine, but the device refused to play any other sound files. Go figure!

If enough people out there are on Nook, or otherwise are unable to access Google Play, I’ll make the apk available publicly on my website. Let me know in the comments if you are on a device without Google access!

Play “Burning Platform” on your Android device

I knew months ago that I wanted to make an Android game for this Ludum Dare competition.  My main question was whether I would do it with Unity, or the native SDK and some library like Cocos2D-java.  However, once I discovered that there were people doing crazy things like writing Android compilers as Android apps, making it theoretically possible to make a game without ever touching a PC/Mac/Linux machine I knew exactly what I had to do:

This choice of tools definitely influenced what I had available to me as reasonable options for content creation.  On the other hand, it wasn’t all limitations.  You can get some seriously nice sfx and music out of Android apps and mix them down with TapeMachine.  A week ago I thought I wouldn’t have any music in this entry.  Today I feel like the music is one of the highlights.

Stay tuned for a full post mortem in the days to come, and maybe even some development videos.

Burning Platform is now on Google Play!

I’ll make sure to include the link in my distribution channel when I create my entry page.

Holy crap!!!

– NO MORE PREVIEW BUILDS – 

I’m now at the point that I’m saving further builds for the compo itself.  I’d like to thank everyone who played the prototypes, both on LD and in my own circles, and by whose experiences I decided what needed to be changed, fixed, and added.

Speaking of additions:

• Stopwatch - Will halt the burnination of the platform for 10 seconds, giving you a little bit of breathing room.
• Escape Hatch - Pick it up and your friend will leave the screen, give you 1000 points, and an extra life
• Repair kit - Rebuild some of the wreckage, expanding the platform back out a little bit.

My little friend, in his “creative director” role, thought the launcher icon I’d made for the game needed a little work.  He said it felt a little unbalanced and “floaty”.  I decided that since the game now officially has a name, “Burning Platform” that there should be an element of this in the launcher icon.  I didn’t feature the platform, but I did feature the burning…

YAWN… Oh man, that was a good sleep. Hey, where’s my little friend?

There he is! Hey little guy, up and at’em! We’ve still got some time left to polish this thing.

Oh, right! Breakfast! You’re such a smart fella.

Umm… hey, come on, we can’t just go back to sleep!

… Hmm… Well that’s a pickle, isn’t it?

If you tried to play the game before and noticed that pressing the home key didn’t shut off the music, that bug should be fixed in the latest build.

My first pickup item for the game is a stopwatch that halts the burnination of the platform for about 10 seconds.

Preview build of “Burning Platform” *title subject to change, apk and app launcher still called “HeardYouLikeAndroid”

This of course leads into the potential of having a “pickup” item that is an escape hatch that takes a friend out of play and rewards you many points for the effort as well. Will I have the time and energy to do it? I’m fading fast… it might have to be tomorrow’s task.

Night LD!

caranha pointed out to me quite correctly that my game is not very self explanatory, so giving it a title that makes it a little clearer what’s going on should help. There’s a small story blurb too, but who reads those?

Preview build of “Burning Platform” *title subject to change, apk and app launcher still called “HeardYouLikeAndroid”

Preview build of “I Heard You Like Android” *title subject to change

I came to terms with the fact that the old background was just not cutting it. I had intended for it to resemble a landscape with grass, dirt, maybe mountains. That just wasn’t being conveyed in the art.

So I went the opposite direction and went abstract and mechanical.

Next thing I should work on is explaining to the player just what in the world this game is about. I realize it’s probably really confusing at first, even though the concept is pretty simple.

Repost because I totally screwed up the link the first time.

Now that I’ve fixed the bug in my line intersection code, and added some nicer bling and a more dramatic game over screen, it’s time to put this up for preview:

Preview build of “I Heard You Like Android” *title subject to change

EDIT: Solved the filesize problem. Now down to a much slimmer 3.7MB size with a .ogg file for the theme song.

In the spirit of recursion…

So, what is it acually like to code and create content on an ASUS Transformer tablet?

• You miss the screen real estate of a dedicated workstation.
• You LOVE the fact that you compile the application and it’s right there, without waiting to push to the device
• You LOVE that it cuts the emulator out of the question entirely.
• You really wish there were a better way to keep tabs on logcat than to exit your app.
• You can’t just watch logcat it scroll by as you play with the application.
• Logcat now has a much more limited number of lines of text that it hangs onto.
• No photoshop obviously, but all I need is a paint equivalent, and Pixelesque is a relatively nice one (but with serious limitations)
• Plasma Sound is FUN to use, and FUN to make sound effects with.
• SPC is FUN to use and FUN to make loops with.  Seriously I love my soundtrack on this game.

And now before I grab dinner, here’s some screenshots.