It frankly startled me how much more fun and amusing this was than single player flappy bird. I immediately laughed out loud when I saw the first second or so of animation. Bravo!
I've recently decided that, for me, if a game design can't be reshaped to being shared with multiple people, I'd rather not make it. To me, games are at their best when they help create shared stories and memories for multiple people. This little thing has glints of promise.
> To me, games are at their best when they help created shared stories and memories for multiple people.
Games like Skyrim and Broken Age are still incredible experiences that have thrived as singleplayer experiences. Ask yourself what you want when you talk about shared stories. Both games I mentioned have moments that can be recalled with other players, and while that isn't the same as a shared memory, players still have a shared experience on some level.
On a personal level I certainly lean towards creating shared memories in games I develop, whether with online multiplayer, racing ghosts, or "couch co-op." I think the elements of competition and cooperation are awesome, but I don't think you should dismiss singleplayer content just because of a desire to foster shared experiences.
I think that no game is really "single player" for that reason: there's almost always other people to share the experience with, even through non-electronic means. And of course the game creator is also a player - a metaphorical DM who is just not connected live.
I personally would like something like a "follow the leader" option for people just watching. Then you can root for people getting insanely high scores. That would go viral.
Interesting you say that as its a huge trend in the gaming industry but I feel the complete opposite about it. After having people in my face all the time, playing single player games with a strong immersive narrative or environment are the perfect way to unwind. Its like reading a good book or enjoying a gallery. Can't stand multiplayer, here.
That page is referring to the native Linux binaries that Unity can export (which work great and has been available for a while). It's also quite stable so not sure why they're still calling it a preview.
The parent post is referring to the Unity web plugin for Linux which AFAIK does not exist at all (only Windows and Mac support for the browser plugin).
Might be an idea to allow you to share your score to your timeline - a great way of doing this is via a screenshot, you'll need to write some code in Unity to actually take the screenshot, but the Unity SDK handles the upload of it natively.
You can see an example of this on our game (http://apps.facebook.com/uberstrike) pushing B at any time will post a screenshot to a specially created Facebook photo album and depending on how Facebook's algorithms are feeling will usually create a feed story about it too. (We were lucky enough to be on the early beta for the Facebook/Unity SDK)
Answer appears to be no, unless "stephenhuey" is secretly Asher Vollmer, Greg Wohlmend, or Jimmy Hinson [1], which is unlikely. Not really surprising, though: there's a very good reason why Threes is currently the top paid app on iOS.
Sorry I missed this due to unplugging for some snowboarding in Crested Butte. No, I didn't make Threes, but my friends and I have recently begun playing it.
For the same reason that every other app developer out there works on iOS versions first: you make more money that way. iOS customers spend more money and buy more apps.
And if we're going to talk metrics, at the rate that Google Play spending has been exploding, it will be passing the iOS ecosystem sometime very shortly.
By no stretch am I saying that anyone should target Android instead of iOS, but right now if one hits one or the other it is primarily driven by skillsets and not some objective evaluation. Ideally toolsets and skills cross platforms where possible, and it is leaving money on the table to ignore either.
Maybe the developers assessed the actual state of the market and made the decision they thought would garner higher profits? Just a thought. A much more likely thought than speculating that serious developers are randomly guided towards what platform to code for by what computer they happen to have bought last.
Once Google Play actually passes iOS, feel free to make that point. Not before.
As a recent employee of various startups and established companies in the mobile space, I can tell that you that the only pattern I've witnessed here is:
a) decide what to develop for based on the market
b) hire people that can develop for that platform
People have skill sets and acclimations: If someone is an xcode developer that has cracked out a couple of iOS apps, probability dramatically favors that they will do so again, perhaps even justifying using the hammer again. There is nothing "random" about it, that notion being utterly absurd.
This tendency is as old as time. Humans favor what they know over the unknown.
And do you think this rather trivial app was some venture-capital backed startup that then hired a team with a given skillsets? Yeah, I don't think so. It appears to be something an individual or small group did, using their own manpower.
During 2013, spending on the iOS platform increased some 50%. Spending on the Android platform increased 242%+, to within striking distance of iOS spending. Given the enormous growth rates, it is probable that Google Play spending is equal to or greater than iOS right now.
Both are absolutely huge markets, so someone could apply their skills and knowledge in either to reward, but your tired, obsolete, nonsensical claims need to go back to 2010 where they were relevant.
The phenomenon of this game absolutely boggles my mind. I've read all the articles about this game, and just can't seem to get how it got so popular so quickly. I feel like it's a just a giant troll or something, although I know that's not the case. Also, I still haven't understood the whole "Super Mario World" graphics rip of it?
>I think Flappy Bird is a wonderfully well-tuned game. I've yet to see a clone that implements the finer details which made the original shine.
>Many games introduce difficulty through complexity. Here's a game that's simple to grasp, hard to play, yet not boring or frustrating.
I don't think Flappy Bird is any better tuned or has a better feel than any number of games. I have played many, many games far better on a Ti-85 and they don't even stand out.
And it is boring. There's no escalation or change over time. Once you can get to 50 you can get to 100 or 200. It's like bouncing a ball on a paddle and trying to get the highest score.
Right, to my taste it's a better game (though very differently tuned beyond the puck-through-a-gap idea).
More than anything I was trying to respond to the parent's question about why the game works at all, especially compared to so many bad single-switch games in the app store.
(In writing this I just realized - Maverick Brid is not a single switch game like Flappy Bird. Not that it matters - even without the dive key it's superior).
+1 When I got an iPod Touch (1st gen before the iPhone even came out), I installed a helicopter game on the same principle (itself cloned from some flash game), but easier at the start and with progressive difficulty, me and my classmates were hooked, played this for hours. It was way better than Flappy Bird except for the design IMO.
Flappy Bird is a clone itself. There were a few different flash/java games that features almost identical gameplay. IMO, helicopter game was the best of these.
helicoptergame.net
Flappy bird actually is supposed to be a troll, and that's why its so popular. People found its ridiculous difficulty to be funny, and that's why the game went viral.
I agree with the other commenter that it isn't well-tuned at all. The hit-detection is so bad that it ruins the game.
Every "genre" and gametype you could ever think of has already been done to some extent by someone in the last few decades so to discredit him because it's not a "new genre" is silly.
Also, it doesn't really matter if he did something already done or not. What matters is that he did it in a way that was seen as better by a significant amount of people.
I'm calling you on this one. It might not be obvious to us right now, but new game genres will continue to sprout up. Touch (included pinch, swipe, etc.) as an input mechanism is new enough that many genres have only come into being in the past few years or so. Games like Osmos and Kosmo Spin are pretty much unique, the latter I just can't imagine working on anything other than touch. People have surely been saying that all genres have been covered in every medium for the last 60 years, yet new ideas keep getting created.
I can remember playing what is essentially the same game on an acorn computer in 80s, pretty sure a helicopter. All this talk is just a witch hunt by jealous people, ignoring how rare original ideas actually are.
Thanks. I'll have to check this one out. I guess helicopter game wasn't the first, which makes it even more ridiculous that people are acting like this is something new.
How is this game not frustrating? The hit box on the bird is the size of the moon, making it very hard to determine where you will "collide" with the pipes.
As the commenter you are responding to mentioned, the hit-box is much larger than the bird.
If your hit-boxes aren't the same size as your sprites, players are frequently going to die when they didn't even appear to hit the pipes. So no, it isn't always the user's fault.
I found the hitbox so frustrating I took an airplay video of several games and was surprised when instant replay showed a 1 pixel collision between the bird and the pipe, when I thought I was clear.
The conspiracist in me wanted to believe the pipes had additional gravity or something that caused me to hit, but practically speaking I wonder if we're simply used to games making hitboxes smaller than the avatar. I certainly noticed that in Jetpack Joyride.
> I wonder if we're simply used to games making hitboxes smaller than the avatar.
Yes, it's an often-used trick to enhance the feel of gameplay. Generally you want to make the hitbox of the player, and of the "bad" things smaller, and the hitbox of "good" things (items etc) larger.
This is all (just one) part of the philosophy that the game should behave as the player intends to control it, which is not always equivalent with the literal interpretation of how the player controls it.
Another example is jumping in platform games, if you walk off the edge of a platform, many games will give you a few frames of leeway in which you can still jump, even if the character is actually in mid-air. (alternatively a game can make the platforms' hitbox slightly larger than they appear, but in my experience the leeway approach makes for smoother gameplay)
All of these tricks basically make a game easier to play, but in a way that feels very satisfactory to the player. The idea being, you can always make up for the level of difficulty by making the levels harder, the enemies faster, etc. This shifts the balance from hardness by frustration to challenge.
The fact that Flappy Bird obviously subverts this philosophy, I think is part of its wtf-intrigue. Whether the author of the game did it on purpose or not, is another question.
This is an issue of lack of telegraphing (non-verbal queue/instruction/feedback) the area around the bird that will cause the player to fail. To get "good" at flappy bird the player has to build their own mental model around the bird that represents failure. (In the actual version of the game not this MMO version which has a nice little white bubble)
By making the collision predictable [edit: interestingly, larger than I would have imagined needed], the gamer knows exactly why he/she failed. There's 'honesty' in the directness that most games lack (and therefore gamers crave).
And then - by allowing a quick restart, any frustration is overshadowed with the desire to try again.
There are other interesting fine-details. For example, notice when the bird starts to dive (an experience game developer pointed it out to me). It happens when the bird goes under the last flap-point. This allows for a much deeper control system than the one-switch interaction suggests. This depth is intuitively grasped by the gamer on some level, providing more fuel to try again.
Flappy Bird, and the other apps made by the same developer, are perfectly tuned single mechanism games.
These are not new. Nintendo Game&Watch games were very simple and could keep people playing for hours. Mario Party (in all its many versions) featured similar micro games.
People love the idea of a game that has almost zero controls, with perfect tuning, and a simple to share high score.
Flappy Bird is also hard - I am hopeless at it. I love it for exactly that reason. I'm not great at games so if I can power through some levels I know the devs have just stuffed some easy content in there.
The problem now is in finding these apps. The tuning is tricky to do. The market will be flooded with poor quality clones. It'd be really tempting to allow IAP power ups - "hit one pipe without dying!"
I think in the universe of difficult games, not all frustratingly difficult games would become successful. For example, Mensa puzzle game would not be successful. Its the seemingly simple and stupid nature of it that compels people to try again and again..
As there's more choice, people seem to be more interested in what others are doing, so when something gets some traction it can grow very big very fast. (And this game had some help at the start, it seems).
If it wasn't Flappy Bird, it would be something else. But this game does have the key elements: simple, accessible, shareable.
That's a valid point. I would be a liar if I said I did not love those Yeti mini games back in the day. The Flamingo Drive one always cracked me up. Ha
Please remove the bubble around the players bird - you have to judge distances really carefully in this game, and the bubble makes it even harder.
Also the rotation animation in this version is distracting. The original Flappy Bird only rotated slightly (nose tipping up slightly while flapping) unless really diving fast.
The code for this is impressive. 2131 characters total to establish a connection to a server, send back and forth game state, and then have an actual game on top of it.
As much as I despise trying to engineer large team projects in JS, this is a great example of what JS is good at.
If you look at the source which is only ~200 SLOCs, it's just written in vanilla js for the canvas and Websocket which receives a simple arrayBuffer binaryType.
This seems to be trying live communication with the server, but all you really need is to load a bunch of previous playthroughs and overlay them. This should make gameplay a lot smoother. Then after each death, upload a record of the keypresses and the nickname.
Somewhat unrelated, but does anyone know of a good javascript/HTML5 framework for creating multiplayer games? I posted a similar question on the Godot Engine thread the other day, but there weren't any obvious candidates.
ITS BRILLIANT, anyone had the chance to sneak peak or actually know what kind of websocket server are they using for the mmo implementation on this? would be nice to try it out
What would be really cool is if someone could take all the user keystroke timing data, with the distance calculations and do some ML to build an optimized route.
At least in this version, as far as I got (6 pipes in), the gap between the pipes was always less than the height of a jump, making the game a trivial matter of timing your jump exactly when the bird is nearly touching the bottom pipe.
There is no strategy in positioning yourself and taking alternate gaps. There are no alternate gaps to begin with. The whole game is just an exercise in timing, like a quick-time event of the sort where you need to stop a moving indicator in a given range.
It would fit as a way to grant an attack bonus in e.g. Super Mario RPG or Paper Mario.
1/10 - it's a real-time multiplayer qte in javascript and that's kind of cool
Really? This is what all the flap is about? This is awful. It's almost impossible to get passed the first set of pipes because the a single click makes the bird jump half the height of the screen. Is the mobile app just as unusable?
I've recently decided that, for me, if a game design can't be reshaped to being shared with multiple people, I'd rather not make it. To me, games are at their best when they help create shared stories and memories for multiple people. This little thing has glints of promise.