Equilibria for iPhone and Android

edited February 2012 in Projects - Tools
“The quest for Harmony of space, time and matter has paved the way for road-less passageways to distant points of our solar system and beyond. We welcome the Era of Equalization.”
-Nicholas H. Orion, Harmonizing Theory Pioneer and Chief Harmonizing Engineer of the Galactic Star Squadron

Utilizing the harmonizing theories of aerospace pioneers, humans were able to manipulate the space-time continuum with the Orbs of Orion to explore the far reaches of the cosmos. Once the powerful but unpredictable energies of these orbs are attuned to the energy of the ship’s holding bays, the ship’s power core is synchronized to the space-time environment of that galaxy. By achieving perfect Harmony with that galaxy, the ship is able to traverse immeasurable distances quickly.

It is your duty as the Harmonizing Energy Specialist aboard the GSS Equilibria to attend to the ship’s energy requirements. Using your own body’s energy, guide the imbalanced Orbs of Orion into the disintegration vortex to balance the holding bays and achieve the next level of Harmony. Once full Harmonization has occurred, the ship can travel through space and time to further explore new planetary locations. Remember, every planet will have its own space-time atmosphere and this will uniquely affect the properties of the Orbs of Orion. May harmony steady your wings.

-Excerpt from The Galactic Star Squadron Harmony Manual

Full Retina Display Graphics and Animations
100+ Original Puzzles
Simple but Challenging Game Play
Special Orbs with Unique Effects
Changing Environmental Effects
Multiple Solutions to Discover
Solve Puzzles in the Fewest Rounds Possible
Finish Quickly for Time Bonuses
High Score Leader Boards and Achievements on Game Center
Updates with New Levels to Master

Comments

  • edited February 2012
    After tinkering for the last year with C++ and SFML, I worked hard late last fall to assemble a small gamedev team and found two great partners.

    The more time I spent programming, the more I discovered I DIDN'T know and I began to look at game engines. The goal was to find an extendable, preferably open source (I am a huge OSS advocate), cross-platform engine that would allow me to develop the best possible product for my team in the least amount of time.

    After doing a fair amount of research on this topic, I found Orx was really the only engine that fit all these criteria. I committed to using it for my team's first 2D project.

    Equilibria is a space travel-themed puzzle game that will mark both mine and my new team's first venture into indie game development.
  • jimjim
    edited February 2012
    Hey acksys, thats awesome. Best of luck for your team and your first ever indie game. And I must say, after a couple of years of searching for good 2D engine and library, my search ended when I found ORX and for this, I thank iarwain :) and all other people who helped building this amazing engine.
  • edited February 2012
    Thanks to both for your appreciation, it's really nice to hear to orx fits the bill for you. :)
    And I hope we'll be able to improve it over time, so don't hesitate to submit your requests.

    As for Equilibria, I'm really looking forward to seeing more. If you're looking for beta testers, I'd be happy to help with that! :)
  • edited February 2012
    Thanks for the comments so far. iarwain, I will send you an invitation for beta testing when we're ready. I'm sure I will give beta access to at least the first few interested people on this thread.

    Here are some teaser images. These are actually Photoshop mockups rather than actually gameplay images, but I'm working hard this weekend to change that.

    Equilibria has you working with energy on different planets. Here's the planet selection screen:

    vkctp.jpg

    And the level selection screen:

    llLV4.jpg

    More info to come soon.
  • edited February 2012
    Here's some basic experimentation with particle effects on the level selection screen:

    (Sorry for the jerky video. I could not make CamStudio record it more smoothly.)
  • edited February 2012
    I like that, those are the kind of small details that make a big difference in the end.
    Looking forward to seeing some blinking stars in the background, maybe with some spawners+FXs? ;)
  • edited February 2012
    Some very early scene transitions:

    Also, I think I've worked out my codec issues. I was able to get this video smoother.

    Anyway, what we wanted was the ability to do transitions from one scene to another. In this example, the doors on the space ship you are commanding close on the current screen. Then the next screen is created and the doors open to reveal it.

    This turned out being a lot easier to implement than I had originally thought, thanks to the config system and Orx's event system. I use Orx config to give the planet object a custom Action list with two items, SetNextScene and AddFX. Then my input manager uses that data to actually do those things.

    Finally, I have a scene event handler that catches orxFX_EVENT_REMOVE on the door closing event and changes screens at that time.
  • edited February 2012
    Nice idea for handling scene transitions!

    I also like the last second of the video which gives us a glimpse of what looks like very clean code. ;)
  • edited February 2012
    Those transitions are nice, and the game concept definitely sounds interesting. If you need anyone to test for you I've got an android phone! :D
  • edited February 2012
    @iarwain: Thank you.. I try to keep it as clean as I can based on what I learned in the Agile book (by Martin).

    @Grey: I will take you up on that offer, thank you. At the moment we plan to release for Android right after iOS. I'll start building for Android when we're a little closer, because I want to have screen resolution and aspect ratio independency even before iOS release.
  • edited March 2012
    I've configured a twitch.tv channel so people can hang out and watch me work on this if they're interested.

  • edited March 2012
    Oh, didn't know twitch.tv
    Logged in but I get a thumbnail instead of a video, which I guess means you're not working right now. What??? Not even 1AM and you're not working anymore?? :P
  • edited March 2012
    Lol! Ya the problem with posting the link is it's totally boring when you're not active.

    Although I was impressed with how easy it is to configure twitch.tv and Xsplit to stream your desktop.
  • edited March 2012
    Our new web site is up at www.AntEyeGames.com. My other team members have introduced themselves there, too. It will be customized as our designer finds time :)

    Any forum members that would like to try the first test version for iPhone/iPod 4 and 3, please send me the UDID of your device. Testing is scheduled to begin in the next week or so if things continue to go well.
  • edited March 2012
    Nice!

    Best of luck for Ant Eye Games then! :)

    I'll send you my iPod 3G UDID soon. Are you going to use something like TestFlight?
  • edited March 2012
    I looked into the test procedures a little bit last night. TestFliht has some nice features, but I think for the first round of testing I will try just to build the .ipa files and deliver them over-the-air ad hoc.
  • edited April 2012
    Twitter is now active @AntEyeGames. For those in the forum who use Twitter, if you would follow us and announce our presence to your followers, we would greatly appreciate that!
  • edited April 2012
    Blog updated as we work to get ready for testing: http://www.anteyegames.com/now-preparing-to-test-with-real-live-players/
  • edited April 2012
    I just realized I completely forgot about the iPod UDID, doh, my bad. I'll try to do that tonight!
  • edited April 2012
    Anyone else who would like to be in the test group, please send me the UDID and model of your iOS device.

    Thanks in advance to the testers.
  • edited June 2012
    Quick update, although we have fallen behind schedule, we are still working hard to get a beta quality build finished.

    I recently implemented a "swipe" or "flick" gesture using a custom Orx event. My Touch input module processes touch start and touch end events. If the user exceeds a threshold distance of finger movement in one direction while the finger is down, the event handler recognizes that as a "swipe" and raises a custom swipe event with the necessary parameters. The custom event is processed by the game code.

    This is used to scroll user interface elements. E.g. for scrolling between pages of levels or scrolling through a list of instructions.
  • edited June 2012
    Hey acksys I dont own an iphone, but I'd be more than willing to beta test on my tablet if you need to test on bigger screens, or just android in general.
  • edited June 2012
    Thanks! iOS will be first (mainly because of the sad state of sales vs. pirate downloads on Android right now) but Android is planned for shortly after iOS. I'll keep everyone updated.
  • edited May 2014
    After a long hiatus, I'm happy to announce this project is active again!
  • edited May 2014
    Welcome back! So many new features to integrate in your game now. ;)
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