Lemmings on Android
Do you love Lemmings as much as I love them?
No, not the fluffy rodents of the hamster family, but a great puzzle game released in 1991 and ported to many game consoles later on.
')
Not one evening was spent for this game. And now, after almost 20 years, my friend and I decided to pay tribute to the creation of Rockstar (formerly DMA Design) and make my version of Lemmings for Android with the resounding name Stupid Rabbits .
We didn’t begin to change the concept of the game: you still have to help the group of helpless rabbits to get from point A to point B while keeping them safe and sound. Naturally, we significantly modified the gameplay, adding a lot of their chips related to the physics of movement. Now at the disposal of cute little animals there are rockets, catapults, etc.
At the beginning of each level at your disposal there is a group of lemmings, which you need to bring on a confusing map to the final point in one piece, and objects that will help you overcome all the obstacles in their way. Among such items:
Too easy? Do not hurry. On each card there are a few carrots that are very difficult to get. In addition, with each new level, more and more concentration is required, as the lemmings start moving from different places, and the routes become more and more sophisticated.
Before starting work on the game, our team already had extensive experience in PHP, Ruby, Flash and Java projects. About the Android and Android SDK platform itself, it can be said that, in general, everything is quite convenient, logical and “comfortable” for experienced programmers. If you compare Java with iOS Objective C, then it is much more convenient and gives a higher development speed and a greater choice of IDE.
The AndEngine engine that we used is based on OpenGL ES, and therefore gives very fast graphics even on weak devices (when compared to the standard graphic “drawing tool”).
A significant spoonful of tar in a jar of Java honey adds the fact that despite the obvious expectations from a standardized platform, we are faced with a huge number of compatibility issues.
Some simple bugs in the code are caught very simply, thanks to the mechanism of error reporting built into the Market (if the user did not catch the access and had access to the network, then the error along with the stack goes to your real-time office).
Unfortunately, when working with OpenGL and Box2D engine (which in our case was used in the form of native C-modules) errors often occur that simply endure the game without any kind of event. Even after 10 updates, we still have problems when users unexpectedly turn the screen into black while playing, although the gameplay itself, sounds, etc. continue to work fine. With the “spear” method, we determined that this was caused by the unexpected rewriting of textures by something else in the GPU memory. Why is this happening ... We still have not found the answer. It’s only clear that on different devices this happens for different reasons.
For example, on Droid X and some HTC models there is a problem with support for Vertex Buffer Objects, which is why we had to refuse them (although they gave a certain performance boost). This helped solve the “black screen o'death” problem, but ... only on some devices. A number of users still have a problem after that.
We still encounter some absurd bugs. We personally tested the game on two different Samsung Galaxy S 2.2 / 2.2.1 and the game worked perfectly. A couple of days ago, several users still complained that they had a game with a black screen on the first level on the same devices. It turned out that in different countries the Galaxy S firmwares differ from each other, although formally they have the same version numbering.
In total, we tested the game on 7 different devices , but this is not even close enough. I remember the development times for J2ME, and it seemed that the need to purchase 50 different phones for development had to become a thing of the past when Android smartphones appeared.
Of course, all these problems are associated with complex graphics applications and some simple toys that do not use a lot of GPU memory and some special chips are unlikely to have the same problems.
I would like to share my impressions about the acclaimed Amazon Appstore . Blogs had a lot of publications about how cool it is, that a new platform has appeared where there will be only high-quality content, etc. For users, this is of course cool, but for indie developers this is ... pain.
Suffice it to say that in 12 hours after the release of the free version on the Android Market there were about 3000 downloads, and in the same 12 hours after the release on Amazon, the same free version had ONE download. At the same time on Amazon you need to wait for appruva applications for about 10 days, which is very similar to the policy of Apple.
Download the free version of our Lemmings, which has a time limit for the game, you can from the Android Market.
No, not the fluffy rodents of the hamster family, but a great puzzle game released in 1991 and ported to many game consoles later on.
')
Not one evening was spent for this game. And now, after almost 20 years, my friend and I decided to pay tribute to the creation of Rockstar (formerly DMA Design) and make my version of Lemmings for Android with the resounding name Stupid Rabbits .
We didn’t begin to change the concept of the game: you still have to help the group of helpless rabbits to get from point A to point B while keeping them safe and sound. Naturally, we significantly modified the gameplay, adding a lot of their chips related to the physics of movement. Now at the disposal of cute little animals there are rockets, catapults, etc.
Gameplay
At the beginning of each level at your disposal there is a group of lemmings, which you need to bring on a confusing map to the final point in one piece, and objects that will help you overcome all the obstacles in their way. Among such items:
- Beams . They are used to build bridges from one grassy area to another.
- Catapult . Allow to jump over various objects and holes.
- Signs "Stop" . Strangely enough, they perform their direct duties - they stop Lemmings and force them to go in the opposite direction.
- Rockets Allowed to fly, thereby helping the lemming reach high surfaces.
- Haystacks Since lemming creatures are quite weak and fragile, falling from a great height kills them. Haystacks save our heroes by giving them a soft spot for planting.
Too easy? Do not hurry. On each card there are a few carrots that are very difficult to get. In addition, with each new level, more and more concentration is required, as the lemmings start moving from different places, and the routes become more and more sophisticated.
Technical points
Before starting work on the game, our team already had extensive experience in PHP, Ruby, Flash and Java projects. About the Android and Android SDK platform itself, it can be said that, in general, everything is quite convenient, logical and “comfortable” for experienced programmers. If you compare Java with iOS Objective C, then it is much more convenient and gives a higher development speed and a greater choice of IDE.
The AndEngine engine that we used is based on OpenGL ES, and therefore gives very fast graphics even on weak devices (when compared to the standard graphic “drawing tool”).A significant spoonful of tar in a jar of Java honey adds the fact that despite the obvious expectations from a standardized platform, we are faced with a huge number of compatibility issues.
Some simple bugs in the code are caught very simply, thanks to the mechanism of error reporting built into the Market (if the user did not catch the access and had access to the network, then the error along with the stack goes to your real-time office).
Unfortunately, when working with OpenGL and Box2D engine (which in our case was used in the form of native C-modules) errors often occur that simply endure the game without any kind of event. Even after 10 updates, we still have problems when users unexpectedly turn the screen into black while playing, although the gameplay itself, sounds, etc. continue to work fine. With the “spear” method, we determined that this was caused by the unexpected rewriting of textures by something else in the GPU memory. Why is this happening ... We still have not found the answer. It’s only clear that on different devices this happens for different reasons.
For example, on Droid X and some HTC models there is a problem with support for Vertex Buffer Objects, which is why we had to refuse them (although they gave a certain performance boost). This helped solve the “black screen o'death” problem, but ... only on some devices. A number of users still have a problem after that.
We still encounter some absurd bugs. We personally tested the game on two different Samsung Galaxy S 2.2 / 2.2.1 and the game worked perfectly. A couple of days ago, several users still complained that they had a game with a black screen on the first level on the same devices. It turned out that in different countries the Galaxy S firmwares differ from each other, although formally they have the same version numbering.
In total, we tested the game on 7 different devices , but this is not even close enough. I remember the development times for J2ME, and it seemed that the need to purchase 50 different phones for development had to become a thing of the past when Android smartphones appeared.
Of course, all these problems are associated with complex graphics applications and some simple toys that do not use a lot of GPU memory and some special chips are unlikely to have the same problems.
A few words about the Amazon Appstore
I would like to share my impressions about the acclaimed Amazon Appstore . Blogs had a lot of publications about how cool it is, that a new platform has appeared where there will be only high-quality content, etc. For users, this is of course cool, but for indie developers this is ... pain.Suffice it to say that in 12 hours after the release of the free version on the Android Market there were about 3000 downloads, and in the same 12 hours after the release on Amazon, the same free version had ONE download. At the same time on Amazon you need to wait for appruva applications for about 10 days, which is very similar to the policy of Apple.
How to play?
Download the free version of our Lemmings, which has a time limit for the game, you can from the Android Market.Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/118277/
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