Wow this is exciting! Glad you guys announced it when you submitted it, way prefer this to hearing about a game months in advance and having to wait slowly...
LOL, so you didn't think to post a pm on here, or on the wesnoth forums? Or if you're not that smart, ask Dave? About 5 other open source projects that were interested in doing iPhone ports had no problems contacting me, so it is quite ridiculous that the "creators of Battle for Wesnoth" couldn't figure it out... I just would have thought if you wanted to market your game better then you could ask me to put a "more games" link right in iWesnoth to link to Frogatto, help promote it on these forums, ask for appstore marketing advice, perhaps have me publish it to get "more apps by..." right in iTunes, etc etc etc
Actually, no - we just started promoting the game right now. Right here, in this thread. So the opportunity to give us advice is still open, it's not like we "went with someone else". We haven't asked anyone for marketing advice, yet, so don't feel snubbed. Anyways, we'd love to do cross-promotion. FYI: We chose to focus first on getting the core game done, and then, once it was saleable, we would enter a phase where we'd simultaneously continue to develop the game, and also market the game. There are arguments for and against, and ... I really don't know if there are enough non-codependent factors to really provably determine when the best time to start widespread promotion is, just that it's somewhere inbetween alpha version (once we've proven it's gonna work), and released game.
Man, I just felt so impatient to play this game, I went ahead and downloaded the Mac version to have a taste. All I can say is, it's really great, and if you guys can pull off a tight control scheme for the iDevice, I'm pretty confident to say that this will be the best platformer on the App store. The graphics are absolutely lovely and beautiful, and I love how the backgrounds look and move in the... well, background. It makes the game look really alive. I also like how there's character interaction, going into houses and buildings, finding items to increase your health and other things like that. With that "adventure" feel to the game, and from the short time I've played it (I actually don't have a lot of time to game on my computer, it's more work-oriented), it kind of reminded me of the famous Cave Story, with a completely different setting of course. I'll wait for the iPod version to go deeper into the game. Overall though, fantastic job on the computer version of the game. From where I stand, the controls are the only thing between this game and the recognition of best platformer on the store (well, that's subjective of course, but as I said, for me, I've never been really satisfied with what's on offer right now). The touch-screen controls can be a pain to get right, but they absolutely need to be, or all the fantastic stuff around it will just be lost.
You can say that again! I hadn't even thought of that game in years. Frogs (and toads) have been so important to gaming, come to think of it. Awesome link, Jetrel. It made me laugh out loud.
Some good news regarding performance and controls: Performance: Performance is comparable or better to similar iPhone games. On my gen 1 iPod Touch, it takes maybe 10-15 seconds to launch the game, and about 1 second pause between levels (2-3 if the level is introducing large bits of new content, such as interior->exterior). Especially, in frogatto, that's more meaningful because the titlescreen is actually live gameplay - it loads the main character and lets you walk to doors to activate options. So we're 2-3x faster than "Plants and Zombies", which I'm using as a benchmark for launch time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGu4h1vP3qM It takes 30 seconds to launch, there. On a 3GS, only Frogatto's launch time should be a noticeable "wait". On an iPhone 4, everything should basically be instantaneous. Actual game performance is really liquid smooth on an original iPhone; there might be a couple non-action sequences (walking on frogatto's front steps comes to mind) that slipped past our radar, or would have delayed 1.0 by quite a bit, but all of the core game runs >40fps, and will basically be always maxed out on the newer devices. The game, on computers, is capped at 50fps, and doesn't try to eat any more processor power (which translates into more battery life on any similarly fast iPhone). Controls: We're using a virtual Dpad as you saw in the first post in this thread. We also have a "compass" for when you're underwater - like an analog stick, you just point it whichever way you want to go. We've gone through about 5 iterations of the DPad, and it feels pretty natural now. I can't give some definitive statement that we know it's perfect, because there's really no "gold standard" that I know of to compare it to, and I know people have different finger sizes. I tend towards the smaller end of the spectrum (think hot dog), so I can't say what it's like with thick "bratwurst" fingers. Down is a little tough to press, but it's optimized to be less important, because it's only used for "hopping down through" a passthrough platform; it's much more important that left and right be really responsive. I personally, unlike the rest of the team, haven't been playing the iPod version much at all*, so I think I'm still judging it from a fresh perspective, and that it plays as naturally as it does seems like a good sign. I'm not having the usual iOS problem where you reach for a button, tap, and you've missed it. That's one of the biggest dangers in game development: when some developer makes an awful control scheme for their game, but they get so used to it they "scar over" the flaws, and end up releasing something terrible. * In fact, I've probably done only one full playthrough on the device. The computer version, on the other hand, I've put in absurd hours on.
Hey guys, any more room in the line? Are we down to camping on the sidewalk and all? Haven't been this impatient about a game since... Well, I can't really remember, but it had to be a platformer too, and it wasn't on the iPhone! Thanks for the additional info, I trust you guys did a good job on the controls.
Looks awesome. Will eventually get it for iPad...if there's a level editor on the ipad version, I'd get it day one.
Out Now.. iTunes Link : http://itunes.apple.com/nz/app/frogatto/id382015046?mt=8 TA Thread : http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=61642
