New Element and Desktop Alpha

Life tends to get in the way of important things like game making. Therefore not much has changed since the last post. A bit more infrastructure work was done to accommodate the addition of a new machine element : Retractable blocks !
The new element can be seen circled in this new screenshot

Retractable blocks work the way their name implies. They can behave like solid blocks, or be retracted to enable pachinguys to pass through them. They are color coded and work with triggers just like triangles and bridges.
Their visuals are currently a little confusing (at least it seems like that to me). But seeing as all the "art" will get upgraded at some future point in time, I decided to settle for the confusing art and focus on mechanical development, for now.

I've now got 8 basic levels up and running so I think its time to upload the current stable desktop version here. Download and play as you like.

Pachinguys desktop alpha

I do have one request, if you download the game, please leave a comment with your general response to the game, the time it took you to finish each level, and your final score for each level. Thanks !

First look video and mechanics explained

hey look I got a first look video up. cool beans for all !

 
so I think its about time I explained how Pachinguys works.

the game is controlled using the touch screen on android and the mouse on desktop.
when you tap on the hole in the top center of the screen a new Pachinguy falls out of it. (represented in the video as a white circle).
you can then drag that pachinguy left or right.
your goal is to get a pachinguy into the central bucket at the bottom center of the screen.

a pachinguy can interact with several elements inside the machine :

pegs : these are the basic elements of the machine (the grey squares). they stop your pachinguy and allow you to push it left or right.
triangles : falling on a triangle pushes the pachinguy to the side.
bridges : when down behave like a peg. when up it may block the pachinguy from being pushed in its direction.
portals (not shown in the video). any pachinguy touching the entry portal will appear at the exit portal.
triggers : behave like pegs. but also, when a pachinguy is on them, they activate all the other parts of the machine that are the same color as them. (i.e. when the first pachinguy in the video lands on the red trigger, all the red triangles flip).

you can, and often have to, drop more then one pachinguy onto the machine to solve a level.

your score is based on the amount of pachinguys you used to solve the level.

and that's pachinguys !
 
technical stuff : lots of infrastructure work this week. created a loading screen and made the game react properly to the android application life cycle (i.e. when the game is paused, resumed, killed etc..).

hopefully next week will focus more on designing new elements and levels.

just a quick recap of Pachinguys's history today.

I'm currently a 3rd year comp. sci. student at BGU. and one of my electives is a video game programming course. for this course we had to develop 3 game prototypes. Pachinguys was my second prototype for that course. the original prototype was developed for the desktop in c# using xna. it showed only a game screen and had 1 level. but it was well received.

having seen its potential I've decided to continue work on it. and move it to some smart phone environment. after some quick research I've decided it would be simpler for me to develop it for the android (in stead of ios). so the first version will be an android exclusive.

technical stuff: I've retaken control of the screens system. creating all my screens at start-up, instantiating no screens at all at run time. and disposing all my assets when the app closes. also an in game "kill" button was added to simplify testing.

First steps with libgdx

Pachinguys is my first android game. and to build it I've decided to use a library called libgdx.

obviously it has been a struggle to get accustomed to a new game library (after years of XNA).

here's what I found so far :

cons :
libgdx uses a bottom left origin point for graphics and a top left origin point for input, this is annoying and confusing. the creator of libgdx stated that this was a choice based on the fact that when we imagine Mario jumping we think of his y value increasing. while this is true, the fact that we have different origins for input and graphics makes it IMHO moot.

libgdx gives you a built in screens system. which is very nice and works well. however the way its implemented means that screens that are not in the foreground continue to run their update and render methods, which to me was very unintuitive and caused unexpected slowdown issues.
there also seems to be no proper way to disable screens. once a screen is created it will exist and run forever. even if no longer in the foreground. while update and render functions can start with an "am I the foreground screen?" check, this is an ugly solution.

pros :
as anyone who has developed for the android without an android device can tell you, the android emulator is dreadful. it is slow to start and runs at a frame-rate of about 5. using it hinders development significantly to the point of rage quitting the entire project.
this is where libgdx shines. libgdx enables you to build two concurrent projects, one for the android and one for the desktop (based on openGL). both projects use the same source and only differ in their entry point. letting me focus on actual game development and testing it normally on my desktop.
graphics, files, input and many other device specific aspects are abstracted by libgdx to a single unified handler. for example input can be read from either a mouse or a touchscreen, accordingly, by libgdx, and delivered to me as an abstracted touch event.

Pachinguys Dev Day 2 - Screenshots !

here are some development stage screen shots. the "art" is placeholder art so there isn't much to look at. for now.

 on the left you can see basic triggers, triangles and bridges.

on the right you can see portals.

below is the basic level menu system.

Pachinguys Dev Blog, Day 1

seems like any and all app developers have a blog these days. and now, so do I.

this blog will be dedicated to my latest android game in progress, known as Pachinguys.
it is currently early in development. screenshots will come with the next posts, along with a few other things:
1) the sordid history of the game.
2)  mechanics overview.
3) concept art
4) future plans
5) ????
6) profit !

see you on the next post.