A few small games

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

I’ve written a few more small games (aimed at going on a phone). They currently run through the emulator aswell as on the phone. You can find the games here:

http://www.snakis.com

or WAP:

http://wap.snakis.com

which is also full of blurb for showing to distributors/publishers.

Emulator controls:

Cursors - directional keys on phone
Space - fire key on phone

Commands that would appear on phone buttons appear the bottom of the screen as small buttons.

Highscore stuff is on the way. Any feedback on the games, website, concepts would be appreciated.

Kev

PS. Please note only the limited demos are available for online play.

EDIT: Also note, downloaded demos are for installation on to phones. They won’t run against a standard VM.

#2

Hey Kev, did you create a company? Are u working full time on it? I am still curious to see the source code of your emulator

#3

The company is really just me starting up trying to get some folk interested at the moment.

No, its not full time, still just spare time at the moment. Hopefully I can get something going.

I’ll document some source up tonight and you can see the emulator. I’m afraid while it obviously works its still very much intended to support only exactly what I need from it (this means not the whole J2ME spec). On the bright side I have managed to get rid of the teething problems so I can now run the same jar on the phone and the emulator.

Kev

#4

Just some quick notes on the page:
-There is a problem with the layout. It doesn’t resize properbly… eg try 800x600 and look at the takedown page.
-It’s xthml. Everything needs a closing tag. Eg write instead of
-On the games page the screenshots are links… that’s good. However, that kind of links are usually used additionally. On a first glance it looks like there aren’t links. Link the title itself and add a “more info” link below.
-On the game’s info pages the get demo and play online links look misaligned. I mean… yea, it’s rigth align, but it doesn’t really fit… try centered.
-Try png for your screenshots (use pngout). Most likely it will be smaller too… but more important, the colors will look more vibrant (even IE can do png just fine, that is as long as it’s without full alpha).

For this type of layout I would use a fixed width of either 759 or 599px. The benefits are that it makes the layout easier to do and the biggest plus are rather short lines, which are easier to read.

Oh and the logo is neat :slight_smile:

edit: Oh and images requires an alt attribute! :wink:

#5

Thanks for the web tips, I’m afraid the website is a KevGlass creation, hence the lack of artist ability :frowning:

I’ll have it updated tonight,

EDIT: Done, cheers Onyx.

Kev

#6

I’ve just added online high scores for Snakis and TakeDown which should allow submittal from phones (as well as the emulator).

Kev

#7

I got to level 5 of Sokyo and it started me off outside of the level, and I cannot move. (Pressing restart does not fix it.)

Otherwise a very fun game! I don’t know how you came up with those puzzles.

#8

Puzzles were from a resource online. Thanks for the bug report - I’ll take a look tonight. It’ll only happen in the demo version I believe.

Kev

#9

Very nice! Congrats!
Your talent always amazes me, Kev. :slight_smile:

P. S. I think a shoot’m up is still missing, though… :wink:
(Kust kidding. Mobile phone and constant scrolling, ouch?)

#10

Actually I’ve got a missle command based idea next. Then a pattern matcher, then maybe a shooter. You don’t always need masses of scrolling for a shooter I guess… I think I’d rather do an explore based games with balls first tho :slight_smile:

Kev

#11

For those with web-enabled phones you can now download the games direct to the handset from:

http://wap.snakis.com

Let me know if anyone tries it. :slight_smile:

Kev

#12

I tried, but I can’t connect to it. I’m getting an error saying Page not found.

Andy.

#13

Hmm. The screen on my phone might be a bit small anyway - its only 96x54 (without the Nokia FullCanvas). I just tried Sokyo in the Nokia emulator, and what with the level number being displayed at the bottom, I only get to see about 4 squares by 1.5 :frowning:

Andy.

#14

Yeah, I’d considered doing the whole per phone thing but I’m just not ready to set up the infrastructure. At the moment the reason the demos are available is so you can try it and decide whether its right for your phone.

I might be convinced to do a half size graphics version. I’d be interested to know if the other games are possible to play on a screen that size too.

Incidently, did you managed to WAP them down eventually? EDIT: Ah, you used the emulator. Could you maybe try http://wap.snakis.com/index.wml or something instead?

Kev

#15

Oops, user error. I managed to put a space into the url and didn’t notice because it was too big to fit on one line anyway. ::slight_smile:

Well, I just tried Takedown. Although I couldn’t see much of the main screen, the game scaled to the screen size and so was playable if I held it up close. Quite good, once I realised that you can pick several blocks at a time.

Andy.

#16

Excellent news! I’ve just produced a SOKYO (small) which I’ll upload soon.

Thanks for trying it :slight_smile:

Kev

#17

Small version of Sokyo is now available (on web and wap). The new versions of everything have registration code in too!

Kev

#18

The small Sokyo is a bit better - I can see most of a 7x4 area now. But this is far to small to be able to play past level 1. Of course my phone has a minimum resolution for midp, but to make it any good to me I would need to be able to chose my own graphics size, or maybe have a small map of the whole area. Why not have different sized tile-sets that you can swap between?

Andy.

#19

Mostly to do with download size. I can’t take the hit of putting lots of sets of tiles into one “small” jar.

I have considered an overhead map a couple of times, but short of making each square on the map 4 pixels in size I can’t see how it going to fit.

I tried a tileset smaller than the one you’ve got but basically it just becomes a blur.

I’ll try the map thing again when I get back to the computer proper.

Thanks again for the stunning feedback.

Kev

#20

No problem.

I understand about the size constraints. Although in this case you could probably reduce the file size by using images with a 256 color palette without much difference in quality. I only have 12 bit color anyway.

Maybe you’ll just have to ignore the low-end devices. I can’t see the title screen properly, and even at 4 pixels per square a map will take up most of the display.

Andy.