'Aight, great job True Axis Good luck with what's rest of Space Tripper. Even though you don't support older devices, you've still got my support.
I don`t know what the relation is, but almost the exact same game is available on PS3 and PC (Steam soon), called Astro Tripper, and released by Pom Pom Games
Anybody interested in Beta testing for Space Tripper? Space Tripper is 10 year old game by Pom Pom originally released on PC. Astro Tripper is basically the Space Tripper HD for PC and PC3 but with a different name. This project started because of Andy Coates who used to be a member of True Axis did some work on Astro Tripper, and thought it might be a good target for the original iPhone and got permission from pom-pom for the port. Not having an iPhone dev environment convient, Andy first a quick test on a nokia N95 running symbian which had a similar chipset to test for speed and concluded it should be a straight forward port. However, the iOs turned out to be much slower then symbian at that point, and thus started a development Hell chasing after every new iOS update which slowed things down more then the last. Eventually, Andy decided he wanted to do other things, and I am trying to find the time to get it finished, which it almost is. We will be only releasing on the 3Gs and up. It will run at 60fps. We could potentially also support most of the older hardware as well running at 30fps, but there is a huge amount of handcoded assembler code needed for the 3G that still has some bugs and with the iPhone 4s coming out now, I'm thinking the numbers of people with a 3G must be getting low. So, in the interest of getting this game out there, we are focused on the 3Gs and up. Also, being a very fast passed game, it runs so much nicer at 60fps.
Oh My Gosh! I've been following this one for quite a while and have been wondering when we would hear more. I would love to beta test it! Just let me know what I have to do and I'll do it
Beta Testers Wanted Any body interested in BETA TESTING for Space Tripper, please PM me. Let me know if your already a Space Tripper or Astro Tripper fan from other platforms. Be good to have some people already familiar. Some personal details would be appreciated, such as year of birth, approximate location, what devices you have access too, and maybe even a really name. The game is basically finished, just want to make sure everything works as it should, plus maybe a few last minute tweaks. Thanks to the reply's so far, you are being considered.
It is basically finished. Just bug fixing now, and minor tweeks. Hopefully wont be long. I just hope it works fine on iOS 5 on all devices.
Wow, you guys are in for a treat. Just started playing the beta and boy is it great. Perhaps the best unanticipated game on the iOS. Controls feel perfect on the iPhone. Better than Astro Tripper on the PC even.
Oh man, this game is so good! I haven't found any bugs just yet, but I'm still only getting familiar with it.
There is a potential problem with the difficulty settings on the Beta. It seems harder then it is should be now. I'm going to get it looked into. [Edit: on second inspection the difficulty might be as it should be] If anybody else is interested in Beta testing, pm me and let me know what device you have and some other details such as name, age, and location and weather or not you have played space tripper or Astro tripper on other platforms. Thanks everybody for the feedback so far.
Wow!! Loved this game on the pc, still play it occasionally from time to time, even though I must admit that most of my gaming time is now spent on my iPad. Can't wait to try it out on iOS. Haven't read this whole thread from the beginning, so maybe this has been asked and answered, but is it gonna be available on iPad too?
I wanted to try and get out another beta build for people but I have come down with a bad case of the flue. There does appear to be something suspicious going on with the space tripper AI atm, and the final bos level can't be completed. We really need to track it down and fix it.
Take your time and recover, we'll wait. I haven't actually got to the final boss yet, been playing during spare time but there's an assignment I need to work on (need to be working on right now, in fact) so I'll be more useful from tomorrow! Actually, I'll send you an email...
I hate to leave things unfinished so I'm giving some of my time to True Axis to get the game finished off. The last day I have improved the rendering on the iPhone 3gs to the point that it now runs at a solid 60fps on practically all the levels. On the higher intense levels it will occasionally drop below 60fps but it's hardly noticeable... so I'm pretty happy with that. It's actually pretty insane that this game is running at this framerate now, especially when you see really simple 2D games struggling with low fps. To give you some idea on how much work went into this conversion, when I first got the game to run on iOS it was running at 8 to 15 fps on first gen hardware. That was optimised to 30fps. When iOS 4.0 came out things went a bit backwards with lagging accelerometer inputs and a drop to 28fps. More optimisations happened to the point where 3rd generation hardware achieved 60fps but the accelerometer was still very laggy. Then Apple fixed the lag problems in iOS then the game became playable again. So I guess this project has had it's problems but all of them have been over come to the point that this game has a really nice fluid feel. Hopefully all the pain was worth it in the end.
