Just realeased first game, would love feedback

I made this game as a learning exercise for android and game programming in general. It is a clone of the old Atari classic Missile Command, I made it with the help of libGDX.
Screenshots:
http://i.imgur.com/4OSfgfp.png
http://i.imgur.com/hrULcDn.png
Android play store link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.barconr.games.missilealert

I would love if you could download it and give me some feedback! It's free and there are no adds. I particularly interested to see how it performs on different devices

BopNiblets

Nice!
SGS2 here, works great, simple menu (I recognise that background!) nice graphics and retro sounds.
Did you investigate using vibrate when you get hit? :pac:
Could be an option!

padraig_f

Cool, nice presentation.

Quick feedback....starts off way too hard IMO. You want to make it pretty easy at the start. On the first level I was getting a bit overwhelmed with incoming missiles. First few levels, you should be able to clear all incoming missiles fairly easily I think.

Seems to me on the original, your rockets moved a lost faster relative to the incoming missiles. So you'd lead the incoming missile by a small bit. Here they're moving close to the same speed, and you have to estimate lead time both missiles, which is not as much fun (also there's a slightly frustrating delay between when you tap and when your missile fires). I'd slow down the incoming missiles and speed up the players' rockets (so there's very little lead time for your own rockets).

I liked the trails on the original incoming missiles, that was was a very iconic part of the look of the game, I thought. Even if you're going for a more modern look, I'd put some trails in there (kind of a useful visual aid too).

You've done the hard part though, a few tweaks and it'll be fun.

Yeah the trails were ditched early on when I was grappling with the particle emitters. It is something I would like to put back in though now that I've got a handle on them.
The difficulty is definitely something that requires other people to tell me about since I've played it to death in the process of making it. I'm going to look at tweaking that a bit!

DeVore

ronoc wrote: »

Yeah the trails were ditched early on when I was grappling with the particle emitters. It is something I would like to put back in though now that I've got a handle on them.
The difficulty is defiantly something that requires other people to tell me about since I've played it to death in the process of making it. I'm going to look at tweaking that a bit!

Oh man, I know that story!! We played the early versions of The Jump to death and then released it to the wild and couldnt understand why everyone was dying left right and centre

I'll dl this and give it a shot!

DeVore

OK given all the feedback people were kind enough to give me for our game I kinda feel like I should pay it forwards

Firstly, congrats, you made a good game and released it. I know how much work goes into that

Lots of things are good in this game. Ok, the idea isnt original but its well executed and the interface is invisible. I knew exactly what to do the minute I started playing. Thats a good sign.
The little touches like the transitions between screens makes me feel like this is "retro" as opposed to "old". Since you probably dont have the budget or time or inclination to do loads of flashy graphics, thats a nice way to go. Theres a lot to be said for making a game within a confined set of parameters and making that game good, as opposed to shooting for the sun moon and stars and failing.

Its not easy. Thats ok, I think games should be challenging. This might be a bit too challenging
What we did with our game was to record how far players got by posting info to a database online. Then we made small changes and analysed the results in the next round of testing. We also variablised a LOT of parameters and created a build which allowed the game designers to tweak them and play and tweak and play, to try and find that golden point. It was the best thing we did, trust me.
We had like, 50 of them to adjust. from "Car wobble at high speed" to "forward push when accelerating" but you wouldnt need lots.
From what I can see you need only a couple of variables.

1. Speed of your missile.
2. Lag from tap to shoot
3. Size of explosion
4. Speed of enemy bomb
5. Number of enemy bombs created per sec

Try making a build with those as sliders and then play like mad with the combinations of them. I bet you find a game in the mix that feels "better" than your existing one. Plus, its awesome fun to mess with them.

If I would say anything negative, its that you waited till you had it polished and published before asking for feedback. Start asking a *lot* sooner. Allow your testers to mess with those variables too, at the start. (later you will want to lock them in so everyone is playing the same game ). Stick an APK up on dropbox and send all your mates a link. You dont need to be in play store to distribute it.

Well done and nice game, quite impressive for a one-man job!

DeVore

DeVore wrote: »

Oh man, I know that story!! We played the early versions of The Jump to death and then released it to the wild and couldnt understand why everyone was dying left right and centre

I'll dl this and give it a shot!

Hey thanks
The thought process is something along the lines of:
"Is this game too easy or is it the fact I've played this level 50 times already"

DeVore

Here's an idea.... tie the size of the explosion to the length of time the tap is held. So a player chooses between lots of quick taps and consequently lots of small explosions or a longer tap (when time is clearly a factor in the game) which pays off with a bigger boom.

Would introduce a nice bit of extra skill to the game. Just a thought...

DeVore

DeVore wrote: »

OK given all the feedback people were kind enough to give me for our game I kinda feel like I should pay it forwards

Firstly, congrats, you made a good game and released it. I know how much work goes into that

Lots of things are good in this game. Ok, the idea isnt original but its well executed and the interface is invisible. I knew exactly what to do the minute I started playing. Thats a good sign.
The little touches like the transitions between screens makes me feel like this is "retro" as opposed to "old". Since you probably dont have the budget or time or inclination to do loads of flashy graphics, thats a nice way to go. Theres a lot to be said for making a game within a confined set of parameters and making that game good, as opposed to shooting for the sun moon and stars and failing.

Its not easy. Thats ok, I think games should be challenging. This might be a bit too challenging
What we did with our game was to record how far players got by posting info to a database online. Then we made small changes and analysed the results in the next round of testing. We also variablised a LOT of parameters and created a build which allowed the game designers to tweak them and play and tweak and play, to try and find that golden point. It was the best thing we did, trust me.
We had like, 50 of them to adjust. from "Car wobble at high speed" to "forward push when accelerating" but you wouldnt need lots.
From what I can see you need only a couple of variables.

1. Speed of your missile.
2. Lag from tap to shoot
3. Size of explosion
4. Speed of enemy bomb
5. Number of enemy bombs created per sec

Try making a build with those as sliders and then play like mad with the combinations of them. I bet you find a game in the mix that feels "better" than your existing one. Plus, its awesome fun to mess with them.

If I would say anything negative, its that you waited till you had it polished and published before asking for feedback. Start asking a *lot* sooner. Allow your testers to mess with those variables too, at the start. (later you will want to lock them in so everyone is playing the same game ). Stick an APK up on dropbox and send all your mates a link. You dont need to be in play store to distribute it.

Well done and nice game, quite impressive for a one-man job!

Thanks for the input.

All the main variables for speed, missile delay etc are already defined in each level object so I'm tweaking those to see what plays better.

The defense missiles are lagging because they are accelerating from 0 initially and continue to during flight. I thought this might look better on screen but it does introduce another layer of difficulty predicting where they will end up so I think I'm going to scrap it!

DeVore

We found that there was a sweet spot for that sort of "lagged input". When we exceeded it, the game felt sluggish and slow and lagged. A small change suddenly made it feel nice. If it was immediate, it felt weird again, like it was TOO fast for a car (you might not suffer this last point, I think I'd like the shots to fire immediately and to travel at a constant rate... then again, one thing we learned was that what you THINK will be awesome, can turn out to be just.. wrong... for some inexplicable reason.

Here is the latest build. It will be a while before it appears in the play store!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kl5ly6tlgvsu3it/missile-alert-android4b.apk

Made it a bit easier and fixed the defense missiles!

DeVore

I'm up to tonsils testing my own game but caught a second to install and play a game and its a much better game for the changes. More responsive feeling and more fun, plus the difficulty seems better now too.
Thanks for the shout out in the credits too

DeVore

DeVore wrote: »

I'm up to tonsils testing my own game but caught a second to install and play a game and its a much better game for the changes. More responsive feeling and more fun, plus the difficulty seems better now too.
Thanks for the shout out in the credits too

No prob thanks for the input. Give me a shout if you need any android testing done!

keithsfleet

DeVore wrote: »

Here's an idea.... tie the size of the explosion to the length of time the tap is held. So a player chooses between lots of quick taps and consequently lots of small explosions or a longer tap (when time is clearly a factor in the game) which pays off with a bigger boom.

Would introduce a nice bit of extra skill to the game. Just a thought...

I'd second this.
Besides that I think it's awesome and works flawlessly on an S3.
I didn't find it to hard, got to level 7 (34000 or 3400, can't remember which score) on first play and have never played the original.
Very clear game and very self intuitive.
Rated 5*

keithsfleet

keithsfleet wrote: »

I'd second this.
Besides that I think it's awesome and works flawlessly on an S3.
I didn't find it to hard, got to level 7 (34000 or 3400, can't remember which score) on first play and have never played the original.
Very clear game and very self intuitive.
Rated 5*

Thanks for that! I think after the amount of things and new features I found my self adding in over the last few months I'm doing a feature freeze. Just bug fixes and gameplay tweaks for the moment

DeVore

Thats a good idea because feature-creep can be lethal to the UI for a start and your sanity