Here comes my fidget spinner How far can you spin? Now available on AppStore only: https://itunes.apple.com/app/fidget-gyro-bike/id1245543034?ls=1&mt=8 It's based on motorcross template, I've just added the 3rd wheel and did a enviro design. I hope it would be a base project for me to learn more about BB software, kind of case study. I want to improve that game with many updates, to implement next features like different characters, worlds, unlocks etc. Fidget spinner is just to check trending but I'm a little late with it unfortunately Need to ask @volcank what will be trending next I'll probably change that character to non-fidget in the future so if you like it play it now! One atlas in use so a lot more can be done here. If you have any suggestions what to add or change feel free to write it down. Any comments, likes, shares welcome Enjoy!
Thanks @Phoebe It seems to be difficult as I can see on the leaderboard so I'm going to make it a little bit easier with the next update.
OK, as I've mentioned before this thread is not only about released game but I want it to be a kind of case study to learn how to improve my game, share tips and 'how to', to show you what I've learned and learn from you too hopefully. Let's start my first ever CASE STUDY I wish to put this topic in the 'Work in progress' category but there no such category actually, that's why it's in Game Showcase - sorry guys. Here is my Mind Map As you can see it's very easy, based on Motorcross template so there is more to do to polish and finish that game because it sucks. Yes, it sucks. You can play it a bit, have some fun but you will drop it shortly. Physics is quite good but not immersive. I've received some feedback on my social media that people like the visual side of that project so let's assume that Game Design is OK for the time being. Fidget Spinner character as itself is temporary to test current hype, it will be dead soon and I can change it anytime for a bike, motorbike or any other kind of 2 or more wheeled vehicle like Mars Rover because environment comes from other planet So why does it suck? 1. Because is too hard, leaderboard shows max distance around 20 points what is really low. Solution: make it easier, at least at the beginning. So I'll need to add some levels, let's do it! 2. Because players don't know why character dies. I've noticed it while my friends were playing it live in front of me. It's very clear for me cause I spent some time on it but from players perspective it looks like riding, riding, jumping, spinning and boom! It's dead! Why? Solution: it needs to be clear for player, I'm thinking about adding some animation into main body part to show the moment of hitting the rock with that part. Maybe you have some other ideas how to solve this? Any feedback is welcome 3. Because even if mastered to be not so hard it is still boring because of similar environment built of rocks and just 5-6 scenes. Solution: variety. I'm thinking about adding some more scenes with different rocks and improving a gameplay. It needs power-ups, additional elements to engage players. I didn't want to add any enemies here but maybe game without enemies would be boring? How do you think? I wanted to create kind of 'NO VIOLENCE' game, just a nice exploring other planets with nice graphics. No shooting, no fighting, maybe just collecting some fuel to keep riding. But maybe I should add some enemies like falling rocks to avoid. I need to think about it but I'm open to any suggestions I'll work on these points and prepare an update soon. Below you can find first part of what I've learned during production process. STUDY 1 - Atlas optimization Assuming that Buildbox sucks, as for now, with handling reasonable number of Atlases (sorry guys, just trying to push you a bit) then to keep game running smoothly on a device without crashes it needs to keep number of Atlases around 4 to max 6. That's why I need to optimize all assets. I've got already just 1 Atlas but if I want to add some more bitmaps with enviro to build new scenes and add new worlds with different scenography I'll need to keep an eye on it from beginning. Here is my current Atlas 1: As you can see there is some empty space taken by irregular shapes of the rocks. I don't care about bitmap size at the moment, I can probably make them smaller and scale them up in editor but I want to avoid scaling up because of loosing quality. I want to recover wasted, empty space what can give me around 20-30% space. Not so much? Well, it's a lot. Imagine you have 3 atlases like that. 30% is around 1 atlas so you can shrink down number of atlases from 3 to 2. It's huge. How to do it without loosing the quality? First step is to analyze. As you can see I've marked empty, wasted space in red color and put it all together on the left side to show that it takes around 20% of one atlas. It's huge! It can reduce number of atlases from 5 to 4 in following production process. The green area looks empty but it has some faded gradient so I'm going to keep it at the moment. Maybe I'll need to get rid of it in the future but I'll leave it as it is for now. The reason of having wasted area is from using irregular shapes with transparency in my bitmaps. That's why people build their enviros from rectangular blocks. But I want it to be more irregular So how to optimize it? I did it with my largest rock actually as you can see below: I had that large 'crocodile' rock in one bitmap before and I cut it into 3 pieces so I've recovered around 30% of wasted space. It's huge! And as I can see I can still recover more by cutting Bitmap 1B into 2 more pieces horizontally. I'll do it for my next update. Well, this is it for now. I hope you will find it a little useful so any feedback, likes, questions, suggestion are always welcome I'll be aware that I'm not talking to myself. I need your support to give me some motivation and we all can learn from each other. I have more studies on my mind done with that game and will keep writing it here soon.
Thanks @taepovt I didn't know that it is featured there Well, it's performing very bad unfortunately, no more than 100 DL at all. I have no idea how do you guys reach so many downloads like thousands and more, damn it :/
