I guess sooner than the goats / moose is.... FIREBALLS.

Thanks to Nate for providing insight on the best way to implement pooling operations.

http://youtu.be/eP1wLQmZfd8

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

spudworks ：

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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:

http://youtu.be/r1AgtjBaaIM

tim

ElithX,

Thanks for the comment!

Here's this weekend's snapshot:

http://youtu.be/vfb4rliNN4A

The main critique from my artist is that the dragon motion doesn't really follow the "line of action". As he flies about, he really should be looking in the direction of motion and have his body (arms, legs, head) react depending on where he is headed. This was kind of a sticking point for me because I wanted to keep the physics as simple as possible without having to introduce a bunch of "special-case" handling depending on whether he's carrying something or not (which is a key element of the game).

I decided on a compromise. When he's carrying an object (gem, sheep, or whatever), his line of action is minimized and he keeps his feet down to carry the object but still tilts slightly depending on his motion. When he's not carrying something, his body is more fluid and follows the line of action.

Doing this, I was able to nuke a bunch of the directional animations I had created, and just rotate the root bone around. I had two states: body and eyes (for eye blinking), and a bunch of individual animations depending on whether he was walking, flapping his wings, flapping his wings and carrying something, flapping his wings and carrying something and flying up, etc. etc. etc. I opted for a third animation state: wings, and was able to minimize the body state into just a few animations:

• walking
• idle
• idle flapping reaction
• soaring
• soaring flapping reaction

When the user hits the flap wings button, the reaction animation is assigned to the body state, and the wing flapping motion is assigned to the wing state. These are one-shot animations whose beginning and end are identical to the non-reaction animations... so I don't really have to do anything if the player isn't hitting the flap button. The idle / soaring animations are assigned based on how fast the player is flying, or if the player is on the ground. If the player is on the ground, and moving left / right, then walking is assigned to the body.

It took a lot of trial-and-error to get things to "feel" right. I wanted the smallish wyvern to have a lot of quick speed and changes, but wanted the large dragon to have a slower, more lumbering feel. Trying to balance these motions out and at the same time give the player a quick response to input was... time consuming.

Anyhow, I think things are looking a lot better than they were.

tim

Just posted a YouTube video demoing gameplay and new graphics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCkLYmQGf8I

tim

The game finally has a name: Dragon Swoopers!

Looking for beta testers. If you have an Android device and are interested in helping test things out, sign up using this link:

http://tflig.ht/12PaXoq

Thanks!

tim