Yup. Obviously I don't mean literally you guys sitting at a keynote scribbling notes, but you guys got wrapped up in philosophy a bit rather than practicality. http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=1622484&postcount=9 You guys are awesome, but had to be begged by members of this forum and others to implement the virtual control scheme. You did so grudgingly, only keeping it when folks commented that people either preferred it out of habit or because it worked better: http://www.touchgen.net/mos-speedrun-review And in the beginning it was relegated to being buried in the options because you wanted Shift style controls front and center. Which is cool, except they just never worked as well as regular controls. Can't exactly have much control over your character if you can't even jump straight up, now can you. And that's for a straightforward speedrun blitz game. You guys made a good game and weren't utterly abysmal as the Chop Chop dev's horrible swipe controls. Still, your Shift style controls are a page one example of what I was talking about. No disrespect intended... just saying.
Hiya Chris, First of all, Wind-Up Knight is looking great and I can't wait to play it! In an answer to one of the earlier questions, you mention that the game will be playable on iPhone 4, iPad 1 & 2 and probably the 3GS. I'm wondering why you're targeting the 3GS as your min spec? Why not target something lower? I've seen your Google IO talk from this year (Building Aggressively Compatible Android Games - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdvaPyq_eBU); in the talk you seem to be a proponent for having your games run on as many devices as possible, this is why I find it curious that Robot Invader is only targeting 3GS and up. Thanks! Jc.
Thanks! It's mostly a cost / benefit calculation. The art that we're pushing will not run on something lower than a 3GS, nor will it run on an old Android device. We could simplify the art to accommodate those users, but that would also lower the quality of the game for everybody else. I suspect that most users buy phones every two years (in accordance with contracts to subsidize the cost of the phone), which means the number of pre-3GS users out there is probably negligible. For Replica Island, I started with the low-end as the target because that was all that was available to me. It worked out really well, but it only worked because I did some serious optimization and because I chose an art style that was technically simple enough to run on even the lowest-end phone. For Wind-up Knight, we've gone the other direction. The art and graphics in this game are high-end--the same kind we'd build for a regular console game. We still have optimization work to do, and I'm confident I can get it to run on the 3GS, but it's going to be work. Anything below that would be a lot more work, and require major changes to our art, which probably isn't worth the cost to us. I think developers should absolutely target as many devices as possible! Especially on Android, that means taking steps to select a collection of devices (it's convenient to think of them as "eras") and target that set. Many developers believe that they'll need to add special-case code for specific devices within that set, but in my experience that's not necessary (Replica Island literally runs on every Android phone ever released, as far as I know). On iOS, there are 4 or 5 potential targets, but they fall into the same "era" categorization. We'll be shipping to phones that are about the same level of power on the Android side too. But yes, this is a conscious decision on our part. A trade-off we made to be able to increase the quality of the art for the majority of users. Whoa I'm famous.
We're not sure yet. The challenge of Wind-up Knight is sort of a personal challenge; it's between you and the game. That said, GameCenter integration for shared leaderboards would be pretty cool. We're thinking about it, but it may not make the first release. Today we finished a build of the game that is going to be shown (and playable!) at Tokyo Game Show. If you happen to be on your way to Chiba in two weeks you should check it out!
Why a *Wind-Up* Knight? Will we need to collect energy? Or wind him up? Or do any other of these types of tasks?
Gotta say, this looks über cool. Plus the suspence is killing me here! These guys know good marketing!
Indeed, the protagonist is a wind-up mechanism himself, and if he were to wind down completely he'd simply stop. In addition to keeping him alive through the (rather insane) levels, you'll also need to ensure that he has enough torque in his spring to keep him going. In practice, players who completely own a level will never find themselves running out of power. Players who are struggling should concentrate on keeping the knight moving first and foremost, and then try to step up their game to deal with the traps, pits, fire jets, enemies, and all the other dangers that make Wind-up Knight's levels so challenging. The master player will not only keep his knight moving, he'll collect all of the coins and uncover each level's special secret. This is a level of achievement that many players will never approach. It requires serious skill.
Yes, the game would be no fun without perfect controls. We've spent quite a lot of time on them. They are pretty freaking awesome now. Rather than explain them, I'd like to show you a trailer that makes the entire system clear. That's something we have in the pipe. Stay tuned.
I will definitely stay tuned. So far apart from the Rolando series the only good iOS platformers have been those with standard virtual controls, and they work well. If you've got something better I'll be first in line. Any ETA on this gameplay video?
I'd rather not commit to a date (we're crunching hard on the game itself at the moment), but we hope to show you more in the next several weeks. Like I said above, our control scheme is nothing revolutionary. It's totally the correct system for this game, though.
Here's a new screen shot we posted today. This wolf is about to eat the knight for breakfast. Wind-up Knight will be playable and at Tokyo Game Show this week! If you happen to be in Chiba, find the SonyEricsson booth and give it your best shot on an Xperia Play. I wrote a post about it: http://robotinvader.com/blog/?p=109
Thanks for the update, that screenshot looks great, and I'm even more excited that game impressions (and possibly video) will be coming from TGS this week.
Here's some shakycam video of Wind-up Knight in action at Tokyo Game Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJYHDjLAQzA http://www.youtube.com/user/SonyEricssonJP#p/u/3/tc0ewq9QP5s This should give you a little more idea of what this game is like.
