@Trueaxis is there a slowdown on the iphone 3G? Or is that classed as the old hardware? It annoys me how ive paid twice as much as a 2nd gen itouch owner, yet i have a slower device. Quite annoying. Also, im a little confused, have you opted to reduce the polygons or leave it as it is?
The 3G is the worst out of the whole lot... The phone OS just causes massive spikes in framerate. Ever since the 3.0 OS came out the 3G has been bad for games. The polygons will not be reduced for the first release... The graphics are exactly the same as the PC/Mac version. All the sound effects have been updated from Astro Tripper, so the game sounds better than the original. I'm toying with the idea for an update that will downscale for the older hardware but also upscale for gl 2.0 that will use shaders. Doing this now will cause even more delays on the release. So doing a release for the middle ground is the best option to get the game out for Feb.
I LOVED Space Tripper. It's actually way better than Mutant Storm, at least for me. Really looking forward to this one. How'd you come by doing the port to iphone? What are the proposed controls? Also, speaking of performance and the like, what kind of polygon throughput are you getting? I wouldn't think any of the assets for Space Tripper would need to be reduced. I would love to make a game like it, one day and I'm curious.
I've known Miles Visman for years... I've also worked for Pompom Games in the past (I'm from the UK originally and moved out to Australia to work for Firemint). I had the source code for Space Tripper sitting on a broken harddrive with the intention of porting to another device ages ago, that never happened. I got the drive fixed and at the time I was messing around with the iPhone and thought Space Tripper would work well for it. So I rang Miles up and asked for permission. The problem been with Space Tripper, with the conversion, has been that the AI logic takes a huge amount of time to calculate, collision detection and such... The levels are full of alpha polygons which are not the fastest of things to render. And the later levels have nearly a hundred moving objects at the worst and most of them need skinning. Most of the logic has been converted to assembly language to gain chunks of time back. A pvs system was made just to draw what is on the screen for a level. The model formats were converted to the best data for the iPhone... And still this is not enough. The only way now to gain time is to reduce the polygons. It's sad in a way that the older devices could do this game but the GL drivers that Apple use are not the most optimal. Also, you don't get the full 412 speed of the CPU... Apple need to run the OS in the background. Sure I could reduce the framerate for the game but for this type of game you need high framerate and no slow down to do it justice. Controls are accelerometer based to move the ship (it's very responsive and movable) and touch right to flip the ship and touch left to change weapons. The controls work very natural and seem to suit the game well.
Thanks for the quick response. Yeah, hadn't thought about fillrate being an issue, even though it has been on every platform I've worked on, since the "3D era". Assembly, huh? Here I thought I was the only dinosaur around. Great to hear about the controls. Responsiveness is paramount on a game like this and I was afraid I'd have my fat finger in the way of the action. Even more interested now.
Thanks for the info and i have heard that the 3G is the worst for frame rate, im thinking of upgrading to a 3GS, i do love my games. So do you work for firemint now and are doing these games in your spare time? If so that is impressive because you work fast. Im still hoping for a early feb release. How much will this cost, as i know you have an eye for value, with JCS being priced so low and all.
I left working at Firemint about a year and a half ago... It's a great company to work for, I would say one of the best - I have great respect for Rob Murray. Price wise, probably $3.99 USD or $2.99USD - not sure yet.
Cool, that prices seems fair. And by the quality of your games, id say you did the right thing making your own games.
That game looks pretty awesome, PomPom Games are the ones that developed Poppi. I loved Jet Car Stunts, I loved Poppi, and I will love this upcoming game. Thanks for the heads up.
We will submit in February sometime... The plan was to submit at the end of January but the latest update of Jet Car Stunts got in the way...
Sorry if this is a nube question but i havent played space tripper before. Does the ship fire automatically then? Because i looks that way in the video. Also im glad you didnt impair the action with lots of buttons, not a dig at JCS cus that is my favourite game on the platform. Also, any future plans for games? Youre one of my favourite developers
The original game was button bashing to fire the weapons. With the iPhone version the weapons fire automatically which makes the game play better because touching the screen is to the bare minimum. All you need to do is tap the screen to change weapons and flip the ship direction. We have lots of future plans for games... All we need is more time to make them
Cool, more room to see all the action . Ill definately buy anything you guys make, so far your games have been right up my alley.
Unfortunatly, the latest Jet Car Stunts update has been slowing spacetripper down a bit, but we have just about finished that update now, then hopefully we can finaly do the last push to finish off space tripper.
