retro-platformer Bloo Kid 2 soon to be released
Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Projects/retro-platformer Bloo Kid 2 soon to be released
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| Hi there, thanks to monkey x and the awesome community here, my latest game "Bloo Kid 2" will be released on iOS on the 6th of march. The game is a retro-inspired platformer with pixel-art and chiptune soundtrack and will be released for all possible platforms (with foccus on mobile first). Check out the trailer Now I have a favour to ask you: We are preparing the release at the moment, and we have created a campaing with "thunderclap" that needs some support. It would be a great promotion for both my game and the monkeyframework if you could participate. You can check it out here: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/9355-bloo-kid-2-for-ios-out-now You need to give thunderclap access to your facebook wall, so if you are a bit of a "security fanatic" you might not want to participate, which of course is totally OK =) |
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| Nice nice nice, you have my support! :) I'm a fan of Bloo kid 1 already and look forward to your Android release. edit: And you don't need Facebook. Twitter works, too! |
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| looks very impressive, we going to see a PC release? |
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| Since the game is already running on windows thanks to monkey (mac was not tested yet) it is very likely that I will do a PC release. I'll try to release the game via steam. |
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| Big fan of your blog here, lots of great information there. I should probably pick up your ebook one of these days... Do I understand you correctly to say that you are releasing a framework? |
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| my latest game "Bloo Kid 2" will be released on iOS Looks very nicely done... but how are you dealing with the controls on a mobile device? |
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| Very, very nice! I only have one very minor nitpick... that star-collect sound, I dunno why, but it bugs me! Bsfxr was never optimal for that one sound, I guess... |
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| The eBook is very well written and worth the money, I can recommend it. :) |
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| Thanks for all the praise! @zoqfotpik I did not plan to release the "framework" I created around monkey. I will however try to answer every question you have regarding any "techniques" used in the game. @therevills I want to implement "game-controllers" in future updates. Downside is that MFI controllers need iOS 7 if i'm not mistaken. iCade is already implemented but needs some bugfixing. At the moment, all you got are touch-controls. I tried to make them as accurate as possible, so they are "as good as it can get" on a touchscreen, yet some people might still consider them bad because they are no real hardware-buttons. @Nobuyuki It's the first time I hear this, yet the longer I pay attention to the sound, the more annoying it gets! I'lll see if I can create something better :P |
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| I did not plan to release the "framework" I created around monkey. I will however try to answer every question you have regarding any "techniques" used in the game. I'm mainly interested in any speed-up techniques that you found useful or necessary. It looks like my engine does most of what yours does (just finishing up a Meganoid-like game.) Also I'm wondering if you were involved somehow in the demoscene. You're from the right part of the world, you did a Turrican clone, and your work has that Amiga flavor to it... |
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| While I was not really "involved" in the demo scene, I have always been a big fan of demos, cracktros (and of course games) on the C64 and Amiga which totally shaped me when I was a child :) One of the most important things to look out for is to make sure that your game uses as few "new" calls per frame as possible (best would be no "new" at all during gameplay, which I have achieved). I dif this by pooling objects like particles. I also "fixed" small "flaw" in the monkey list code. Everytime you use an "For Each" loop, a new instance of the enumerator object is created which is then garbage collected later. This caused some trouble since I used For Each a lot every frame. I then enhanced the monkey list code so I could get an instance of an enumerator that could be resetted to the first node. Now I have only one single instance of the enumerator for each list. You'll have to be careful a bit when using this, but as long as you have no multithreading and not "loop within a loop" it works. I also made sure that I have ONE "giant" texture that holds all tile-graphics, so the whole level-rendering is done without swapping the texture. Since the game has a pixel look, that texture is only 512x1024 pixel in size, which is totally OK for today's devices. Another improvement is the use of a depth buffer. Its very usefull espacially for the parallax-backgrounds. |
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| You know that Monkey has a pool type, right? It's just like lists except it statically allocates... Another improvement is the use of a depth buffer. Its very usefull espacially for the parallax-backgrounds. A Z-buffer? How exactly are your draws set up? Right now I'm using my own copyrect, it would be pretty easy to do a Z-buffer as well. What benefits do you get from it? I just got my build going on my mobile devices today. I can see that I have a sizable amount of optimization to do, especially on the phone. What do you feel was the greatest FPS boost for you? I was trying 48x48 sprites and I'm not happy with the results-- do you feel that I should go for a still lower resolution? I'm plotting to a lower resolution pixmap and then scaling that. Regarding demos, I'm sure you've seen Coppermaster. I'm completely blown away by this accomplishment on such rudimentary hardware. It's sort of ironic that 25 years later we're still having trouble moving sprites around in a timely manner, of course the machines are 1/100 the size and 1/10 the price... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CUUOlYxlZ8 |
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| Just a note: I highly recommend Winterstein's book. You can see what it's like by reading his reports and there's a ton of information in the book that he doesn't discuss on the blog. Thanks for a good product, Mr. Winterstein. |
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| What book ? |
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| http://www.indie-story.com/ |
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| @zoqfotpik Copper Master is one of my favorite classic demos. You have good taste! |
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| Hey Winterstein who is responsible for the retro style gfx? It's really nice to read about success and you seem to be having quite a bit, from reading your blogs etc. it looks like I give up too quickly on my games if it doesn't show results in first few months. Food for thought. Currently my games earn a rather meagre ~10 cents a day combined (on a good day). |
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| Cool game, great! Just bought it! |
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| Great to hear that you people like it. @Supertino I created the gfx myself. Years of practise (especially in the 90s when there was no internet and you could not just ask in a forum if someone wants to provide art for your game...) |
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| Any details of how the new version is performing? =) |
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| @Wagenheimer There are less downloads for BK2 in comparison to BK1 at the moment. BK1 has 2k-5k a day, BK2 has 500 - 1k a day. But I am confident that this will change over time. It was the same with Bloo Kid 1. Nearly no downloads at first :) |
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| I just bought the ads-unlock, just because this game was written in monkey :). But nonetheless, this is a great game. Runs great on my iPad and none of that weird twitching thing that my games use to do. Cool stuff. |
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| Hi guys, I just wanted to let you know that I have created a Steam Greenlight Page for Bloo Kid 2. Please vote for my game, so that Monkey might get more popular and I get much moneys!!!111 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=310092971 |
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| Voted. The game looks really great! |
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