Working on enemy implementations now. Reused Spine animation, updated the skin settings, and jacked around with the root bone scaling. QED. 
tim
[Game] Dragon Swoopers
Camera operation update video. Shows difference between a camera locked to the player and one that implements a bit smoother operation:
tim
I'm a sucker for detail put into camera movement. Inertia on the camera is very nice, I'd also put in just a tiny tiny bit of rotation on the camera when acceleration changes a lot over a few frames.
Shiu escreveuI'm a sucker for detail put into camera movement. Inertia on the camera is very nice, I'd also put in just a tiny tiny bit of rotation on the camera when acceleration changes a lot over a few frames.
Wow. That's a cool idea! I'll see what I can do.
tim
15 dias depois
The sheep running from the dragon really made me smile! Perhaps they could be a little jumpy as well?
Coming soon: mountain goats and a mØØse.
5 dias depois
I guess sooner than the goats / moose is.... FIREBALLS.
Thanks to Nate for providing insight on the best way to implement pooling operations. 
tim
Got a couple of quick updates:
- puffs of smoke now appear when fireballs impact an object
- animals can now be fireballed into oblivion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv4msyPufJo
tim
17 dias depois
Your game looks awesome!
Since you're doing dev for Android, are you using cocos2d-x? If so, would you be willing to share how you set up your physics on your character animation? I'm trying to follow the Java code but I'm clearly missing something in the translation.
spudworks escreveuYour game looks awesome!
Since you're doing dev for Android, are you using cocos2d-x? If so, would you be willing to share how you set up your physics on your character animation? I'm trying to follow the Java code but I'm clearly missing something in the translation.
Thanks for the comment!
For development, I'm using libgdx for the game's frameworks. Box2D physics is part of that.
Character 'flight' physics is pretty simple. Whenever you hit the 'flap wings' button, it applies an impulse in the up direction... as well as kicks off the 'flap wings' animation.
I've also got a 'ground sensor' that is attached to the bottom of characters. This sensor maintains a count affected by begin and end contacts, and only triggers when it hits the 'surface' contact filter I've defined. When a begin contact occurs, the count is incremented. When an end contact occurs, the count is decremented. If the contact count is non-zero, the character is considered to be on the ground. If the count is zero
the character is airborne.
When you press left or right, it applies one of two different impulse strengths to the character depending on whether the character is airborne or not. A weak impulse is applied for grounded characters giving them slower movement. A strong impulse is applied for airborne characters.
tim
It looks really great and the art is super original. The animation is super smooth and the camera handling is really nice.
Really interested to see new updates.
I didn't see the fire before, but it looks really nice!
Are you using a particle system at run time for it, or a sprite sheet? I would think, depending on how many particles there are, it might run smoother with 3+ frames pre-rendered?
When are you planning on releasing on the market?
I always try to figure which is better- releasing a mostly functional prototype, so people can start playing and contribute to the development of the game, or wait a lot longer and release as complete a first version as possible (since your biggest spike in downloads is from the initial release).
It would be cool to see this one out there! Make even have the dragon fire at stacks of boxes, and light them on fire.
I'm working on a "customize your dragon" screen right now which is taking me forever. I hate doing UI stuff so it's slow going.
Yeah, I'm using a particle system. Framerate isn't that bad. Hiccups you may see on Youtube are pretty much due to the capturing / encoding. It's a lot smoother "live".
Not sure when the release date is. I was hoping August. I still have a lot to do. 
Doesn't help that my artist bailed on me. I'll need to get (hire) someone to help me with the UI elements after I have the baselines for the menus in place.
I've thought about going the "Pudding Monster" route and releasing it with the first several levels done, with more on the way.
Yes, I'd like to have other destructible objects (apart from the sheep / cows) defined. We'll see how it goes.
Thanks for the comments!
tim
I'm in no ways a professional artist, but the way I try to find nice looking UI elements is search istockphoto, and sometimes google images for vector UI - and re-create similar ones using Illustrator/ inkscape.
Not super custom, but it looks nicer than an otherwise flat gray box 
Also if it's your first mobile game- realize you might have to make several before you touch on a good niche market.
My longest game was an angry birds game- in space, started on like 6 months before angry birds space was announced..... I released it early, with some basic levels finished, but didn't get much success with it. A similar game, 'iBlast Moki 2' was featured on the google play market homescreen for about a month- and they got dismal downloads- something like 10k total downloads.
It, just like our game, had more fun gameplay than Angry birds, but for some reason the market at that point, for that game was over saturated, and got really terrible download numbers.
So hopefully your game does well, and it earns enough for you to keep working on it + creating new games.
But it's always depressing to see a "toilet paper dispenser app" earning enough to let the creator create 100 more apps like that, and cool games going unnoticed.
Actually, no, this is not my first game. Take a look at my .sig. I've got several games released on Google Play, the Amazon App Store, and a few ports of these over on the Apple App Store. My earnings are pretty low... but I keep telling myself
all it takes is "one" good one to get on a roll.
But, yeah, I'm hoping the game does well. It's the first one that I decided to hire someone to do custom artwork for. All the other ones I've made were using artwork I either created or purchased from on-line image galleries.
If this one doesn't get any traction, I've got several other ideas I've come up with as I've been developing this that I can work on next. I just can't let myself get discouraged if that turns out to be the case.
tim
Oh right- I remember looking at your DB42 game.
That's good then- yeah, it seems persistence helps with the game, and as you create more games, you can create more advanced ones, so either way your games will always be getting better.
You'll have to keep me updated on how this one does on release! "Dragons" might be a popular area, but if not, you can always change out the dragon for a robot unicorn, or a zombie
Heh. DB42 was my first game. Ever. HUUUUUGE learning curve for me. The dragon game I'm working on now is actually derived from one of the debug modes I had in DB42 for flying the robot around instead of having to use teleporters everywhere.
I'll definitely keep ya posted.
Thanks,
tim
20 dias depois
Things are getting close. I've got a bunch of levels yet to make and have to put time into adding set dressings (grass, rocks, trees, etc.), but it's coming together.
Latest gameplay video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h2qCpmGMNs
tim
6 dias depois
Work on my dragon game continues unabated. Received some animation critiques from a new artist I've hired and the results are shown in this quick 1 minute video update:
tim
7 dias depois
Hi Tescott, I recenty signed up to the forum, and just went through each of your videos. I love the process of your development. I'm looking forward to seeing future updates as you continue to progress.