iPhone and Android are two big tribes in mobile industry and they are so different, obj-c and java, that make crossplatform developing very difficult. Right now the best way is Unity, but I have to say it really a bit expensive for small budget developer(like me . Recently the cocos2d-x attract my attention a lot, it seems like very promising and there’re already many games released with it. But after careful consideration, I resist the temptation. Below are my reasons.

1.It’s not mature enough, for Android, there some phones they don’t support. Maybe it’s best tool for porting iPhone game developed with cocos2d-iPhone to Android, but I don’t have strong sense of security on Android.

2.Learn new technology cost a lot. cocos2d-x use c++ and the API is like cocos2d family, I know c++ but the API is stranger to me.

3.Debug is difficult on Android.

4.Native technology is the best friend of platform, always.

5.The most important things in making game is making a good game. If the game is not a game on a platform, so it’s not neither on the other. Technical complexity would attract more attention than we should paid, means less attention to the game itself.

So, libgdx is still my best friend on Android

Well, I really made it. This is my first Ludum Dare, and actually my second playable game.

Before this competition start, I’m  so exciting and also doubt whether I can finish it. I made a strategy for myself, no collision detection, no physic and no animation. I know they’re important for a game, but I can’t count them in before I really conquer them.

Game Overview

This is an evil game like the title said. You’re a demon, came to our world, because good man protect us you have nothing to do without some buddies. So you go to the wild and hope get some buddies join you. Although it’s wild, still some enemy out there. You can have rest in house and graveyard, but be careful your enemy also rest in some house. After defeat your enemy, you gain exp and may level up. The more buddies and hight level you have, you can kill more people. If you don’t have any buddies, you die.

Developing Tools

I used below great tools.

Libgdx: an open source Java game engine, also supports Android. It’s really good and best game engine on Android in my mind. The texture packer and bitmap font generator tools are very helpful for me in this competition.

Gimp and Inkscape: all graphic assets are made by this two software.  I think Inkscape is a good tool to draw cartoon style graphic.

Bfxr, LMMS and Audacity: The BGM was made by LMMS and other sounds were from Bfxr. Audacity handle the polish work.

Developing Process

Ok, enough background, I want talk about how I made this game. When I knew the theme It’s Dangerous to Go Alone, Take This., the first idea was ant. Tiny ants group a great army to defeat strong army. Based this idea, I split gameplay to two steps, first summon army and second defeat big boss. The bigger army got in step 1, the easier in step 2.

Because I like dead creatures so I replace ants with zombie and skeleton. I’m not expert of complicated control game, so one click control is my choice. Top view, tile map and my cute dead creature, first stage is done.

When I start made second stage, I hesitated. It’s actually a totally different game, did I have enough time to finish it? I give it up at last, instead I made a slot machine mini game, whose digit number is lead by gain points in first stage.  (OK, actually I am just lazy 

After add story board of game background, this game finally done. It’s mini and some kind shabby, but I really love it. So do my girlfriend, though she just like click things and don’t care game content.

Conclution

Cons:

1.Not enough feedback when player made decision.

2.Inside game mechanic is too simple. OK, maybe it’s some kind pro  .

3.Not enough introduction, player would be confused 

Pros :

1.It’s really very easy.

2.My cartoon characters are cute, isn’t it, especially when player lose. I love the skeleton on the cross.

Hope you like this game and my poor English not disturb you. 

After check the forum of Libgdx, I found the method to solve this problem.

by mzechner » Mon Feb 21, 2011 8:05 pm

Ay. Could you do me a favor and add

<activity android:configChanges=”orientation|keyboard|keyboardHidden” … >

to your activity tag?

I’ll try to reproduce this locally with the phones i got.

After add the android:configChanges parameter in my AndroidManifest.xml, everything is OK.

The whole game is nasty right now, I should add real graphic stuff, animation, sound, music, better UI and more funny gameplay. Although there is a lot of things to do and at the same time I learned a lot of things.

The art style in this game is cartoon like, I found a great vector design tool Inkscape. It’s easy to use and have a lot of tutorial, and it’s free and open source, great tool for indie game group with limited budget like us.

In this game, I want some sprites always on the top. However, libgdx can not create multi-layer or set the z-order directly with the Stage class. Update: Different from AndEngine, the multi-layer is implement with groups in libgdx(thx the heroes  behind libgdx, I’ll think twice before post ). All actor in stage drew in the order of adding in stage. Later added actor on the top of before ones. There’s a easier way to implement multi-layer in stage. Create some Groups, each group behalf of one layer, the later added group has bigger z-order, the last group is always on the top. Then just add actors to the  group  instead of adding them to the stage directly. The basic multi-layer function has done.

In this week, I’ll concentrate on the graphic and gameplay.

Designing a game is not as easy as playing it, I know that before, but it’s more difficult than I imagined. I spent some time to learn basic concepts about game design like game, play. I thought I had some ideas of game design.

Game is an interactive system, and also is a complicated system like the reality. The distinction between boring reality and funny game is game has clear rules and targets and always give feedback to player. A good game in my mind should be neat, don’t have too many factors lead to complexity nor few factors lead to boring.

Because my target platform is mobile phone with touch screen, the control system is also my focus.

I simplified the role creation module. Before that I should wrote a create method for every role class. These classes all inherited from a abstract class, they have different name, and I should call corresponding constructor. The classes I would constructed is saved in a XML file with their names. So I use reflection to construct them with their class name in runtime. Although it would affect the efficiency, considered the mess I wrote for the classes, I can sacrifice some efficiency.

Another work I did was making the main game loop, now we can call it a game not a prototype. Karen made some draft of graphic assets, seems like she is already on the way.

This week I add sprite animation function which LibGdx not support it. And some physic manager class to associate Box2D body with my sprite, and because Box2D not support radial gravity so I made my own with apply force to body.

Beside the programming stuff, Karen is watching the Painter tutorial video, beginning pain with her. I made a draft of  the game play and some basic idea of the background music. A lot of stuff need to do, fortunately I enjoy it.

For the game engine, I have three candidate Rokon, Andengine and LibGdx. Rokon is suck of course, I even can’t run the example Hello World. That’s not my fault, at first I thought I messed it up and after check the Google I found a lot of guys confront the same problem, so Rokon is out. and I glad to see this project is canceled, that’s good for the world. Am I so mean?:-)

I developed with Andengine three weeks for a prototype, and I have to say it’s a good game engine. The reason why I transfer from it to LibGdx only because the later one is better for me. The guys in Badlogic Games is so hard working, I like the updating speed of their blog and the code trunk and I got a lot of useful knowledge from them. The running speed on device is another reason I choose LibGdx. Actually the profiling post let me know this awesome engine, and my own profiling test finally let me make the decision.

In the past week, I wrote a XML parser with SAX and implemented some visual related class based on Stage and Actor. Right now, I can load a XML file and create the game scene. Not too much work I have done in this week, I should hard working.

The logo of our studio is done, but I think it need polish. I will show it at the right time.

Dingoo Game is a small mobile game company in the city I live in. It’s small, but not weak. They have won many prize international and national like nominated for the IGF Mobile 2008 of the “Technical Achievement” category. I found an essay says that when IMGA invite they to attend MWC2008, by lack of money, they refused the opportunity. Below is the email they replied to the IMGA.

Hello Jessica,

We are DingooGames.
I did read your mail, very carefully, and my reply was absolutely serious.

DingooGames
Tang

Maybe it’s just a selling strategy to let more Chinese user buy their product because I don’t find the original post. However, it indeed described the embarrassing situation in Chinese game industry. Chinese can get pirated game easily, game company can’t get enough money to develop. Compared with other fallen company, Dingoo is lucky enough. How long can their luck last if things like the mail said, god knows.

What’s the fashion in game industry right now? Yes, free things for indie gamers.

Few days ago, I heared the Unity 2.6 is totally free for personal and commercial use (the pro version still need some charge) . It’s really good news for pool developers, like me. Oh, wait, good things come in pairs. Epic game announced the free Unreal Development Kit.

In my opinion, I will choose UDK, I can find tons of books tutorial and a big community about it. Beside above, the UDK skill is more helpful for finding a job.