Newbie Q: How easy is it to...

Games
#1

I’m a software professional with very little time, due to my day job. I have a game idea and am considering developing using Corona by myself or hiring someone to do it in iOS or Corona.

Question for you guys: how easy is it to create a game similar in functionality to ‘Paper Toss’ or ‘Flick Kick Field Goal’?

The game would actually have more features than those games, but this will give me a basic idea of the capabilities and limitations of the Corona SDK.

Thanks in advance! [import]uid: 55315 topic_id: 9313 reply_id: 309313[/import]

#2

Hi Gamedev3,

You will probably find that the Corona SDK toolkit with certainly meet your needs for this type of game.

In terms of how easy it would be to do, the answer is somewheres between novice-intermediate.

It would be easy in a sense in that the ability to flick an object and make it go someplace is pretty straight forward. A great example of this would be the basketball game that was created by Mobile tuts+ located here http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/corona/corona-sdk_game-development_basketball/.

Take a quick look at that tutorial, you will see that a game of this nature can be created in about 30 minutes. This is a basic version of what your concept would be categorized in terms of how to use the Corona SDK. Your essentially talking about the same sort of game put an object in goal area.

The guts of the game not so bad. The only issue can forsee requiring you to think inside the box but on your own in terms of what you want to do *disclaimer* (this is my opinion here as well and surely someone else can comment on this) is that the difficulty would be in the Depth of field. It might bit a little more challenging to get the game to behave as you would like based on the viewers perspective.

I’m absolutely sure it is possible to do what you want to do. You will be looking at a little trial and error and tweaking to get the correct behaviour you are looking for when you are flicking an object away from you like the Paper Toss game.

Keep in mind I’m speaking mostly from my experiences in regards to this question.

I would also suggest you may want to take a stab at this yourself, you will find the Corona SDK easy to use, very hands on and within a week or 2 I’m sure you will be able to create a working mock version of your game. This is with 1-2 hours maybe 2 or 3 times a week as you mentioned your time was at a premium for you.

Cheers

Shawn
[import]uid: 50045 topic_id: 9313 reply_id: 34186[/import]

#3

Gee, thanks for such a quick response Shawn!

What you said is pretty much what I figured. I’m thinking the difficult part is getting it to look three dimensional (i.e., have some depth). I’ll probably have to resize the object as it’s flicked - making it become smaller and smaller; simulating distance.

Do you know if there are any tutorials on making this 2d engine look more 3d in this way?

Thanks! [import]uid: 55315 topic_id: 9313 reply_id: 34203[/import]

#4

Have a look at this website http://www.learningcorona.com/.

Look for the Ansca Video Tutorials and if you think about it, one of the actions we are talking about is simply a transition that performs a scaling function. Tutorials 2-6 should cover the basics of what you are going to need for starters.

I think that will set you down the right path, the more I think about it, the ball scaling I believe should be fairly straightforward if that is all that is required.

With the right background and goal area I think you can keep the code much simpler than I was originally thinking for a very simple version of the game.

I think if you work through that basketball example you’ll get the core ideas on how you can pull this off.

For me, who is new to Corona (and coding in general) , it can help taking a break and watching a few of those video tutorials from that site while you relax without coding, they can really give you ideas on how you can tackle these challenges even though the videos might not be directly related to your game.

They also put the big picture in perspective. You work through each little snippet of code which as an individual is 1 basic effect , but they combine to create the full effect you wish to achieve.

You’ll pick up something small each video that is applicable to your game, I’ve had a few “Voila” moments when I watched Ricardo Rauber’s video for Director Class on youtube.

Cheers

[import]uid: 50045 topic_id: 9313 reply_id: 34209[/import]

#5

Bump. Was the OP ever able to pull this off? I’m working on a toss/flick style game that was meant to be 2D (left to right), but my artist developed a wonderful 3D scene that I would like to use, and I don’t see a way unless I rework the game to resemble Paper Toss, which I’m assuming was developed using 3D OpenGL. [import]uid: 58455 topic_id: 9313 reply_id: 47362[/import]

#6

More work to do, but I’m on my way. Basically I just set the body.isSensor = true until it is traveling back toward the bottom (velY >= 0). So on the way up, it passes through physics objects, but collides on the way down.
[import]uid: 58455 topic_id: 9313 reply_id: 47400[/import]

#7

Update. I now scale down my ice cube on a timer so that it appears to be traveling into the screen after launch. Works pretty well. The only issue is making the 2D physics work in a 3D rendered scene, but it’s not looking too bad. Hope to post some video before too much longer. [import]uid: 58455 topic_id: 9313 reply_id: 47607[/import]