Port My Game?

[got_wot]

Good evening all, I'll get straight to the point.

I'm a flash developer of several popular Flash series/iPhone games, and a huge fan of the Open Pandora Project, and would desperately like to see one of my games running on the system.

The game I have in mind for the port is both simple and highly addictive, but alas, I lack the linux programming knowledge required to port it myself.
This leaves me two options,
One, Spend lots of time that I dont' have learning a new environment and making a crappy first attempt at a port which doesnt play very well due to noobness in the necessary languages.
Two, Appeal to experienced programmers to act as my partner in the porting, and provide them with necessary assistance and resources in the port.

These resources include:
All in game Graphics (Complete)
All Music and sound (Complete)
Full game design in the form of the Flash game (Obviously already complete as it exists and has been played millions of times already)
Programming theory in the form of Actionscript source of the originals
Money (initially out of my own pocket, unless I can convince my employers otherwise (though that might take it out of the realms of being free to play))

As to how much money, not much I'm afraid since I'd be paying it out myself for something that will never return a prophet (which I don't mind, it being in the spirit of Open Pandora and all), but we can discuss that later if theres interest and before you do any work on it.

So if you're stuck for what to do on Pandora and would like to help me out, lets get in touch

http://armorgames.com/play/24/indestructotank here is the original flash version - play it to get an idea of what I'm looking for on OP

http://armorgames.com/play/1156/indestructotank-ae here is the latest variation (with likely the graphics to be used)

Hope to hear from you soon!
Antony Lavelle

 

[atomicthumbs]

if the flash runtimes available for the pandora are sufficient porting will require little to no effort

 

[got_wot]

if the flash runtimes available for the pandora are sufficient porting will require little to no effort

If the Flash Runtimes gets ported to Pandora at any point (Hopefully soon with Adobe's lightening up of Player 10) I'll be doing a whole lot more than just IndestructoTank
We can only dream...

 

[Masterfurbix]

INDESTRUCTO TANK?


AHhaha, man, I love that game. My younger brother showed it to me about a week ago, it's pretty fun.

I'd love to see a pandora port, but then again, if we get an efficient flash player, we'll be able to play it in its native .sfw

 

[got_wot]

INDESTRUCTO TANK?


AHhaha, man, I love that game. My younger brother showed it to me about a week ago, it's pretty fun.

I'd love to see a pandora port, but then again, if we get an efficient flash player, we'll be able to play it in its native .sfw

If we got a full efficient Flash player I'd be making an awesome version just for Pandora in my free time

 

[Kramy]

Oh man, I love IndestructoTank! :lol:

I'd be willing to help - but there is one problem. My language is Java (not C), so I could port it to Java, but then it'd be dependant upon LWJGL. LWJGL will hopefully (probably) be ported to the Pandora, but there's no guarantees. Either way, it'd be more cross-platform ready.

Also, I've never done anything with vectors, so all your art would have to be raster or I'm out of the picture.

Let me know. If I'm not able to finish such a project (unlikely), then I'll release everything back to you so someone else can finish it.

 

[skeezix]

Kramy... What, you're afraid of learning another language? That's rather... Terrifying! I mean, as a coder, I've released apps in a dozen languages.. Why fear andnotembrave learninganother. It only makes you better.

OP-- if you've done iPhone games, but not flash how did you do those?

You both have me curious

jeff

edit: on phone, so maybe that came out wrong

 

[Kramy]

I know many languages. It just comes down to what I'm comfortable and most experienced with.

I've done enough C to know it's a pointless waste of time for me to write games in C, and yet that's what everyone seems to code them in. Go figure.

Perhaps I've been jaded by Javascript being my first language ever, and TGF being my first game creation experience. Both are good for very rapid development, but not terribly efficient. C takes magnitudes longer to get something out the door, and Java is in the middle - close enough that I could latch on to it.

I've also noted that the number of errors I make goes up with the needless verbosity of a language. In Javascript, I never make mistakes. In Java I rarely make mistakes. C... well, you don't want me coding C, even though I read it fine.

Python/PyGame would be an option, but Java/LWJGL is just as easy. Since I'm already familiar with it, why not use it?

Anyway, the offer is open.

 

[JayFoxRox]

[ignore=didn't use the second tab with the remake but the original]Just played it, its fun but the looks and sounds should be changed[/ignore]. I think about rewriting it (Possibly in C) once the GuitarsOnFire port I have done works better or if I drop another project

 

[Sofox]

You know, I'd actually like to port your game.
I've got quite a bit of programming experience, especially in C++.
I love game development, though I find it hard to work out my own ideas. Taking your game and developing it in another environment may be just what I need.

For a technology base, I'm thinking C++ and SDL, possibly with OpenGL ES 2.0. That should make it more portable to other platforms if you so desire.

 

[lulzfish]

This is really fun. I'm going to look into what Qt has for drawing vector graphics. There might be an easy way to replicate this without rasterizing it and making it look pixelly in some places.

Can Flash export SVGs of the original artwork?

Edit: I looked into it, Qt could totally do this, probably with hardware acceleration, too. It has SVG loading, and it can paint either through the CPU or possibly with OpenGL ES, which they already have working on the N900.

Of course, there's still all the code that would have to be replicated, but I think it's possible. I would really like to see this game on the Pandora.

 

[got_wot]

Hi all, just to make some things clear

All artwork in the second link (the good looking one) is Raster, at a decent resolution (more than high enough for display on Pandoras Small screen)
The suggestion of porting to Java is much appreciated, but again relies on the platform being succesfully and efficiently ported to Pandora, so for I'll have to decline (but know that I appreciate your offer a whole lot)

My work on iPhone I'm not actually allowed to discuss at present, as I'm under Adobe NDA with regards to it, and my popular iPhone game, Shift, which was in the top 5 paid apps for quite a while was done in collaboration with a third party, who developed tools for converting my Actionscript into an iPhone friendly format, sorry I didnt make that clear

As for the other offers of Porting to native code within Pandora, thank you so so much for your offers, if you would like to PM me with details of your experience etc and how to contact you via IM so we can chat in real time that would be awesome, I plan on keeping the development cycle known via these boards, but as you probably realise organising a whole project via forum is very slow and cumbersome, and some privacy would be nice

Glad that my offer got such a positive response in so short a time,
Tony

 

[skeezix]

I know many languages. It just comes down to what I'm comfortable and most experienced with.

I've done enough C to know it's a pointless waste of time for me to write games in C, and yet that's what everyone seems to code them in. Go figure.

Perhaps I've been jaded by Javascript being my first language ever, and TGF being my first game creation experience. Both are good for very rapid development, but not terribly efficient. C takes magnitudes longer to get something out the door, and Java is in the middle - close enough that I could latch on to it.

I've also noted that the number of errors I make goes up with the needless verbosity of a language. In Javascript, I never make mistakes. In Java I rarely make mistakes. C... well, you don't want me coding C, even though I read it fine.

Python/PyGame would be an option, but Java/LWJGL is just as easy. Since I'm already familiar with it, why not use it?

Anyway, the offer is open.

Well said I also agree that verbosity can be annoying, and can lead to a lot of typos; fwiw, java is one of the most verbose Fortunately, due to being a relatively well defined language with crazy-awesome IDEs, most of that sort of thing is caught instantly

Py is in the firmware; pygame is not yet, but we'll see. I'm not the only python-fan on the team

jeff

 

[Trip]

Shift looks like an awesome game got_wot.
It's great to see unique homebrew being released and getting a lot of attention these days, especially on commercial platforms.
Maybe the big game companies will learn a thing or too

Look forward to playing some of your games on the Pandora.

 

[lulzfish]

Oh, I didn't look at the second link.
So that's all raster graphics..
How are you doing collision detection? Something built into Flash, or a hand-written algorithm? Or Box2d?

 

[got_wot]

Oh, I didn't look at the second link.
So that's all raster graphics..
How are you doing collision detection? Something built into Flash, or a hand-written algorithm? Or Box2d?

Pythagorus

for(var i:uint = 0;i<enemyArray.length;i++){
if(pythag(TANK.x,TANK.y,enemyArray.x,enemyArray.y)<50){
return true
}
}

Where Pythag is just a function that returns the distance between the points, I probably did it in a similar fashion, I'd have to go look back, it was over a year ago.
Nothign too complex or anything

 

[foxblock]

Heh, that is really fun game there, I remember it playing some time ago. Hopefully someone can port it over to the Pandora that would be great (it's really addicting).

But as you were mentioning it, what about Shift? (The even more popular series - http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/422855 - there are another 3...)
That would be a great addition to the puzzle selection, but I guess you have some restrictions made by your publisher (ArmorGames or whoever)...

foxblock out

 

[got_wot]

Heh, that is really fun game there, I remember it playing some time ago. Hopefully someone can port it over to the Pandora that would be great (it's really addicting).

But as you were mentioning it, what about Shift? (The even more popular series - http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/422855 - there are another 3...)
That would be a great addition to the puzzle selection, but I guess you have some restrictions made by your publisher (ArmorGames or whoever)...

foxblock out

Shift is a much much more complex game than IndestructoTank, and one I'd want to oversee all areas of development, so I'm afraid that one will have to wait until a decent implemntation of Flash player (Anything over FP8)

 

[Awakening]

Flash 10.1 should run on Pandora, once it's out. I would hope sometime this year, I have played quite a few really good Flash games lately (been following the Bytejacker show) and it would be great to have these running on Pandora as well as see new games made that supports the Pandora controls.

About the game:
The start is a bit slow, most of the time the choppers pass by without dropping a bomb and when they do there's rarely more then 1 on screen.

The game is quite fun once you have leveled up a few times.

Having to land and end the combo before the fuel runs out was a bit disappointing. I was doing a 30+ combo and then my tank blew up because I ran out of fuel, had I done worse I would have gained the experience to level up and refuel. Personally I think the tank should blow up if you are on the ground with no fuel, that way a last second big combo can save you rather then kill you. More in the spirit of the game if you ask me.

 

[got_wot]

Flash 10.1 should run on Pandora, once it's out. I would hope sometime this year, I have played quite a few really good Flash games lately (been following the Bytejacker show) and it would be great to have these running on Pandora as well as see new games made that supports the Pandora controls.

About the game:
The start is a bit slow, most of the time the choppers pass by without dropping a bomb and when they do there's rarely more then 1 on screen.

The game is quite fun once you have leveled up a few times.

Having to land and end the combo before the fuel runs out was a bit disappointing. I was doing a 30+ combo and then my tank blew up because I ran out of fuel, had I done worse I would have gained the experience to level up and refuel. Personally I think the tank should blow up if you are on the ground with no fuel, that way a last second big combo can save you rather then kill you. More in the spirit of the game if you ask me.

Intentional

My favourite part of the game is when the challenge switches around and your aim is to try and hit the floor before you run out of fuel and judging it right...
The slow start is a pretty big problem with the original, the follow ups all fix the problem by starting faster and having more consistant enemy spawning.
Theres so many FLash games I'd love to play on pandora, I just hope it/Flash player is fast enough to play them well...