Here’s a ported version of my old game HyperBlazer:
http://www.gagaplay.com/hypblazer/gagaplay.apk
To go faster/slower, tilt the phone forwards/backwards. To steer and jump, push the on-screen buttons.
I’ve only tested in on my HTC Legend, so I was wondering if it works on other phones.
It needs Android 2.1 to run.
I’m only on 1.6, so I can’t test it … but FYI your link is broken.
Hmm, that’s weird, I’m 100% sure it’s there on the server but somehow it can’t be accessed from the browser ???
Anyway, here’s another link which works:
http://www.gagaplay.com/hypblazer/gagaplay.zip
When you’ve downloaded, rename to .apk
It seems like my host has a problem with .apk files or something.
Welcome to the strange world of IIS. Had the same problem a few days ago. Thing is, if IIS doesn’t know the mime type, it will pretend that the file doesn’t exist.
The mime should be “application/octet-stream”, I’d say.
Cool, I just lost the last bit of respect for the microsoft developers.
Thanks, oNyx, I’ve just just added the mime type and IIS seems to have decided it exists :-\
Can’t try it, because my phone is on 1.5. What’s in there that requires 2.1 ???
Multitouch. Ok, so I could have targetted 2.0 for that 
Too bad…no chance of getting a 1.5 compatible version? After all, 1.5 and 1.6 are still pretty common. Supporting the trackball might be an alternative to on screen touch controls, which have a problem especially on slower phones anyway: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=7836
Well, I’ve actually even considered to target 2.2 and up because of the performance benefits :).
On my HTC Legend there’s still a fair amount of slowdown in the more busy scenes (the framerate varies between ~20-45 frames per second). It has been running on the Tattoo running on 1.6 as well (actually most of the porting work has been done using a Tattoo), but the lack of multitouch as well as the lack of performance made it a pain to play so I updated it for multitouch.
I figured I’d rather target a small niche where it runs fine, than a large audience where it runs like crap
I wouldn’t worry too hard
Just tried this on my HTC Desire.
It seemed fast and smooth - there were one or two momentary slowdowns but they didn’t affect the gameplay.
I did find it difficult to steer at first with the on-screen buttons. It got easier after a while, but having two different kinds of input, both tilting and pressing buttons, doesn’t seem very intuitive to me. I would have preferred to be able to steer by tilting the phone. Especially as I usually just accelerate by tilting the phone as far forward as possible.
Overall, nice job 8)
Thanks for testing
I’ve thought about steering by tilting; it was actually how I first implemented it.
The thing was that it didn’t feel quite right to me. The tilting sensors seemed too rough for the game so steering became too difficult and imprecise, which is why I changed it to steer with on-screen buttons.
I also kind of not really like having to tilt my head together with the mobile to still see what’s going on while steering I even tried using the optical trackball, but that seemed quite terrible…
I agree my solution not perfect, but I guess that’s also just a limitation of how you can control a game with such a phone (at least I couldn’t think of a better way to implement the controls).
I’ve just taken it off my site.
The game is now available at the Android market at 2.99 euro (yay my first ever game on sale :))
I don’t have an Android phone, so I played the WebStart game. Maybe things have changed, maybe not, but this is my opinion about the WebStart game:
I noticed there that the ‘lives’ are really annoying. You progress throughout the game, and then it’s ‘game over’ … you have to start all over again, while the game is rather… hard, and timing is critical, so mistakes are easily made.
Wouldn’t it be much better to have infinite lives, so you can keep playing, even though your score might get decimated by ‘death’. Especially if you want your players to pay for your game, it’d be a good idea to minimize the frustration you create by throwing ‘game over’ in their face every few minutes.
My $0.02, based on WebStart!
Thanks again for you feedback, Riven.
The thing is, I am missing the element of unforgiveness of the old era of games, as it makes games more rewarding to become good at. Although making games more forgiving (endless lives, regenerating health, all that kind of thing) makes them more accessible for sure, it also makes them less rewarding. Well, that’s my personal opinion anyway…
Create two game modes
Hmm yes, I could call it ‘training mode’ which has unlimited lives but doesn’t have the leaderboards…
To necro my own thread, I’ve finally managed to get the game working on native 2.2 phones (like the HTC Desire HD, which I now have).
On the previous version, the textures wouldn’t show up on these phones.
It turned out to be a really weird feature of those phones. Long story, and I don’t actually fully understand why it is the way it is, but in case someone has the same problem as me: the solution for me was to rename the res/drawable directory (where my textures are) to res/drawable-nodpi. It has something to do with Android resizing bitmaps when this directory is in res/drawable, and some phones not supporting non-POT textures (which is still strange as my game only uses POT textures).
Anyway, currently this version is only on the Android Market (for 0.79 EUR) but if someone just wants to test without buying, just pm me and I’ll mail the apk.
(It’s still only for Android 2.1 and up)
This effect isn’t limited to 2.2. I had the same problem on a 1.6 based deviced, which is why i don’t store textures in drawable anymore.