TapSplosion – Developer Interview + Review

Hi Again All!

Work is still carrying on, when the free version is released I’ll start updating the game more and more!

For now though, I forgot to mention my Developer Interview, and another review which appeared over the past week, you can find them here:

Review

Developer Interview

Another great review! Things are going well.

TapSplosion – Free Version & Problems

Hello All!

Sorry about the lack of updates recently, but I can assure you I have been working on the game (sometimes even more than 1 hour a day ). I’ve been working on a FREE version of TapSplosion, which will have adverts in it and a smaller playing space because of them. This will act as another source of income, and a promotional tool for the paid version of the game, since the paid version will get all of the new and better features that I may be implementing .

The reason I’ve been quiet is that I didn’t want to announce a free version of TapSplosion so early to release, it may make people think … “Hmmm, I’ll wait for the free version” and then I’ve lost a sale from that person and probably wouldn’t recover the £1 from advertising revenue from that one person =).

I’ve been having problems submitting the game though, I’ve submitted for the 4th time this evening, and it just keeps coming back with problems. Some of the problems are in the Paid version that manage to slip through, and some are new ones which have just appeared randomly =). Others are just bad Testers getting things wrong… I’ll leave that rant for another day =).

So, I thought I’d just update you on what is happening, there has been an update for the paid version of TapSplosion in testing too, which should make it through soon. It only has a few small changes (Double recharge bars to make it more noticeable and small bug fixes) , but I’ll be updating it soon with some better features and maybe some more game modes. Keep an eye out!

Dave.

 

TapSplosion – Windows Phone 7 Game – Update 1.2 Released!

Hi All,

I’ve been a little quiet recently, but rest assured that I have been working on TapSplosion, fixing problems and marketing the game a little. Most of the problems with the game so far have been with the leaderboards, so I’ve been fixing them quite franticly and have already released 2 updated which should get them to work exactly as expected!

I also have an interview lined up with WP7Lab who have also reviewed my game and the review can be found here:

TapSplosion Review

As Always I’ll keep you posted on what is happening, and when I eventually receive a few bits of sales data I shall share them with the world, since I know how helpful they can be to new indie developers!

Thanks Guys.

TapSplosion – Update 1.0.0.1 Already Submitted

Hey All,

Now that the leaderboards have started filling up, I’ve noticed a major problem with them … The problem being that users can only see their own score when they are on the page with their score on, and the leaderboards only allow you to view 2 pages (14 users) which is also very bad. This combination I can see upsetting people quite soon, when they realise the bug, so I’ve submitted an update already to fix these problems!

Lets hope for a speedy submission!

TapSplosion – Windows Phone 7 Game – Now Available!

Hey All, Good News!

TapSplosion is now available in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace!

The best way to get it is to search for it on your device, or here is a direct link through Zune:

http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=1eb7fb49-954c-e011-854c-00237de2db9e

There is a free trial to anyone who wants to try before they buy, but for only $1.29 / £0.99 then you may as well just buy it since it’s AWESOME! =P

Press Release:

20th March 2011, Mansfield, United Kingdom

Student, Dave Leverton from the University of Derby, has today released his first Windows Phone 7 Game, TapSplosion.

TapSplosion is an accelerometer based action game, you tilt your phone to control the player and tap the screen to place explosions in that position. You have to battle an oncoming enemy hoard which is constantly increasing in size and complexity and always tracking your every move. If one of these enemies touches you, you will explode and it’s game over for you! You get points based on combo kills, time alive and number of enemies on the screen and you can submit your score to global leaderboards and compete with other players from around the world!
With excellent graphics, music and sound, TapSplosion is the full package when it comes to addictive mobile gameplay, and this type of game has been in short supply on the Windows Phone 7 marketplace since the launch of the device.
Dave Leverton has been working on TapSplosion one hour per day while he studies his Computer Games Programming course at university, and he has been blogging about each update on his blog: http://1houraday.wordpress.com/.
TapSplosion is priced at £0.99 in the UK market and $1.29 in the US, and is now available worldwide on the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace!

Logo / Icon Available here:

Did you miss the trailer for the game? Check it out here:

Screenshots:

I’ll keep you posted with updates on what is happening! But for now, see you soon!

TapSplosion – Second Submission Failed

Hello Again,

Just a quick update on progress. The 2nd submission of TapSplosion has just come back to me with a fail due to the nature of the music player in my game. If you are listening to your own music when the game starts and you choose to listen to your own music during the game, if you change the volume of the music in game and then exit the game, that music stays the same volume outside of the game as well as inside the game, which is not allowed! If you mute the music in game, and then exit the game the music should no longer be muted since the music volume can’t be change outside of the game. A weird problem, but I’ve fixed it now and I hope it succeeds this time!

I’ll keep you all posted,

Dave.

Submission Failed + Other Information

Hey All,

So this morning I got an email from the Testing team, with a fail stamped on my game =(. The reason for failure I actually thought would happen a couple of days after submission. I realised that pressing the back button on the Windows Phone device didn’t actually do anything in my game, and the requirements are that when ‘back’ is pressed on the title screen that it quits the application and when ‘back’ is pressed on any other screen something expected happens!

These are 2 fails that I got pulled up for, and it was quite a simple fix! Where ever you press ‘back’ now it does something expected, rather than nothing.

The third and final fail that I was pulled up for was that the game crashes on start-up on some mobile devices … At first glance this looked a daunting task since that was the only information I received, but after looking at the tests the game is put through, one of those looked like it would crash the game and it did. The thing that would cause the game to crash was playing the game in “Airplane Mode”, which turns off all connectivity. When trying to load the leaderboards up I had no check for if there was no connectivity to the internet, and it just crashed without a try/catch statement to help it fail gracefully. This was just a case of putting the try/catch statements in, and if an error is caught bring up a message about having no connectivity.

Also while the game was in submission you may have noticed me doing a bit of  marketing and getting the word of TapSplosion out into the wide world! Here are a few of the websites that have picked up TapSplosion so far:

http://www.wpcentral.com/tapsplosion-lookin-good

http://www.wpcentral.com/hands-tapsplosion-video

http://www.smartkeitai.com/tapsplosion-game-for-windows-phone-7-demoed-coming-soon/

http://www.bestwp7games.com/tapsplosion-accelerometer-survival-shooter-coming-soon-to-wp7.html

The response has been EXCELLENT! I’m pretty shell shocked by how well it’s gone down actually, I hope the game sells well at the end of it all now! =D

I’ll keep you updated with what I’m up to in the future, next move may be to start a new game or just keep updating TapSplosion, I’ll have a think about it =).

Thanks everyone! And will post when the game is available on the Marketplace!

TapSplosion – Submitted!

Hey All,

So TapSplosion has finally been submitted to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace! I’ve got a new trailer which I threw together quite quickly, and the screenshots that will be displayed for the Game on the marketplace! Let me know what you think:

TapSplosion – COMPLETE! (Almost) – Hour 70

Hey All,

So over the past few days, as I stated in my last post, I’ve still been working on TapSplosion but just not blogging about it as much. The game is almost complete now, with only a few minor changes and tweaks to polish the game off, but in the next few hours I see the game being sent off to Microsoft to be put onto the marketplace!

So what have I changed since the last blog post? Well, I’ve uploaded a video where I explain the changes which is at the bottom of this post, but here I’ll list them all with a little bit more information. If you would like more information on how I implemented anything then please feel free to ask me!

• I’ve added Trial mode functionality  and a purchase screen so that people can buy the game while in trial mode - This was much simpler than imagined. You can check if the game is in trial mode by calling ‘Guide.IsTrialMode’. I do this when the game loads, and at the change of every state (just to be sure).
• Different Holding positions: The player can now hold their device either Flat ( Looking down at the device) or at an angle (More natural) - This was just another phase in polishing the game and giving the user more freedom.
• User can listen to own music now - Previously, if the user was listening to music while launching the App it would cut off for the games music, but now they are asked if they wish to change to the game music, or use their own!
• Dieing animation for your ship -When the player dies, there is now a 2 second animation of the player dieing. This just helps emphasise why and where you died, and stops any miss taps on the screen
• Sounds used to only play 1 at a time, now more can be played at a time!
• Juggernaughts die more epicly and have been generally polished - Dieing now emits a large shockwave, and when they are hit once but not dead they emit smoke particles

That is all I can remember and all I have noted that has changed since last time! The game is so close to completion now, I think all that needs to change are the tutorial and polishing the trial mode / purchase screen. I’m thinking of adding achievements too, but this may come in a later update to the game rather than the initial release.

Check out the video for visual reference and explanations of the changes!

Hope you like the game, and will see you again soon in the future. Hopefully the game should be ready for submission sooner rather than later!

TapSplosion – Minor Visual Updates – Hour 66

Hey All,

Firstly, I’d like to announce that from now on, the updates on this blog will be a little more sparse. I feel as I’m getting to the polishing stage, the amount of things changing from hour to hour won’t be great enough to blog about. Also I’d quite like to focus  more on my University work … making video’s daily and updating this blog daily takes a lot more time that you’d think, so it ends up being really a 2 hours per day working on this project. As I’m getting towards the finale of my university studies I’d like to focus more and more time on that! (I’ll still be doing an hour per day on the game still, just not blogging so regularly)

So what has changed today?

• Menu Enemies are now in all the menus!
• The player rotates around the center point of inner circle, rather than the images center point (Very small change)
• Fading explosions – Explosions now fade towards the end of the ‘explode’ – Looks nice!
• Fading tutorial text – when the collectible items are collected, the text corresponding to them fades.
• A Skip Tutorial button – You can now skip the tutorial!

The next update probably won’t be tomorrow, but probably towards the middle of the week. I’ll upload a video then and explain all of the new updates!

Dave.