Cops [beta] [Android] [WP8]

[Hypernova]

So I entered a minigame competition from a small community (called MFGG) and I this game (previously Windows PC). Somehow after winning the competition I have managed to get extra motivations and ported/expanding it on Android. I hereby present you:

 
What I have done in this game:
- Some classic GB styled side scrolling shooter game
- Ability to switch between classic black/white mode (like the original Game Boy) or Enhanced Game Boy palettes (default)
- Added vibration (haptic) controls and you can turn them off if you want
- Adjustable on screen controls (by size)
- Google Play Games (leaderboard/achievement) system support (soon available on my next pending update in Google Play)
- And more I am planning to add!!
 
Screenshots:
http://imgur.com/M1OBW1n
http://imgur.com/YDHDLri
http://imgur.com/vvBN4Sq
 
Legacy PC screenshots:
http://imgur.com/oyOV1kY
http://imgur.com/aAF7jNO
http://imgur.com/pck85l6
http://imgur.com/sEOwbDK
 
Downloads:

Yeah it's free and ads free for Android version.

Windows Phone Marketplace

 
Obsolete Windows version for the minigame competition
 
Special thanks to:
MC Jimmy for the music
MFGG for supporting my game
And those who played my game and left some good reviews!

C+C appreciated!

Oh and I am back to VGR, I guess.

PS. I made these crappy tunes for the legacy Windows version until MC Jimmy came into the spot.

[Raccoon Sam]

• The UI is wondrous and the sprites are smooth. I absolutely love the art direction. Keep it up.
• I'm a pedant so when the title screen says click here and all I can do is tap, I get INFURIATED just kidding
• The controls symbols clash too much for my liking. Consider a total overhaul. Are the left/right buttons needed at all? For example, VVVVVV solved this with a unique solution, but since you have two action buttons, you can't just copy and paste that, obviously.
• The controls are very unresponsive. I tap and the action is taken half a second later, unless I'm already holding a button. My device is Samsung GT-N7100. I don't know the technical limitations behind this, but I hope you manage to fix it.
• I can't exit. Pushing the back or menu buttons a billion times solves nothing and pushing the home button returns me to menu, halting the game to the background. A better pause menu will solve this.
• I can't play in portrait mode. This would solve the controls obstruction problem, but you'd have to redo the main menus. No big deal I guess.

I am confident I want to make a game someday. This was very inspiring. Keep it up!!

[Hypernova]

Oh wow, it's Raccoon Sam. (I admire your quality submissions at MFGG ever since I joined that community since 2008.)

Anyways, pointless posts aside. Thank for the feedback RS!

For the back and exit options, I have already added it to the latest update. (I wonder why it takes so long for Google to get my updates rolling to my down loaders).

Considering the controls, thank you very much for the idea! I will figure how the system and perhaps I will add it to my next update. For the unresponsive controls, I believe it's a Game Maker: Studio bug that I have no power to deal with (considering you're using international GSM Galaxy Note II, it's still considering a fast phone with its 1.2 Ghz quad core processor. Heck my Nexus 5 with 2.3 GHz quad core has the same problem.) The best solution to get a better gameplay is to close all of the background apps as for right now until YoYo Games fixed it on the 1.4 stable update.

As for the portrait mode, I'm afraid I don't have much knowledge resizing viewing areas. I still have trouble adjusting for those older devices that have screen ratio of 4 to 3. (E.g. 640x480)

Stay tuned for more updates!

[Raccoon Sam]

Okay. I've now played the game a bit more, and there are a few things I still have to tell you.
• I set the "Touch & hold delay" from 300ms to 80ms(minimum) on my system settings, which made playing the game much, much easier. It seems that Game Maker thinks that "holding down a button" works the same way as dragging things in Android normally. Still though, the feedback upon pressing the menu buttons is instant, so I'm sure that you can circumvent the issue by programming a some kind of a listener that starts moving the player immediately as it detects a press, not a hold.
• When I open the game, it first connects to Google servers. Then it forces me to either sign in or cancel. I cancel, and I must then choose an account. I cancel that too, and it greets me with a "Sign-in error". THEN I get the title screen. I don't know what the Google thing is, but I (and many others) do not want to "connect" or any shit like that. I just want to play. This same sign-in issue happens again and again when the level changes. Is the whole Google integration mandatory?
• The music could loop better.
• The title screen's options-cog animation could be a lot better.

I also made a suggestion on Twitter how the highway level should end. Thought you'd like it.

[Hypernova]

Alright, I just updated my game to Google Play. Somehow I need to find a way to replace the GML virtual_key_add to something else, plus I need to find a third party Music system for Android version of Game Maker: Studio since GM is really bad looping tracks. Game Maker's multitouch function is weak as well, I have added an option to switch on/off the swipe movement controls (like VVVVVV for iOS) but it somehow runs kind of unresponsive.

For the Google Plays Games, I changed it to optional. (It's no longer mandatory.)

I also fixed the options-cog was kinda fixed on this update. The game should be updated to users in about a day from now. Anyways thaqnks for the suggestions RS!

[Raccoon Sam]

Well, removing the Google Play integration was a wise choice. With no useless tutorials or Google Play integration dialogs, I feel like I'm sucked right into the game as soon as I hit play. So a bonus point there. Quick start = awesome.

I can't say much about the new control scheme. The overlays still clash with your style, and as you said, it's a bit unresponsive. Work on it, I'm sure you'll nail it down.

What format is your music in? There's a 'flaw' in the MP3 file format which causes a very small pause at the beginning of the audio data. I'm not sure if this is the case of it, or just GM bad looping, or both, but if your music is in a tracker format (think IT, MOD, XM, MID) then find a method of playing the music natively. NEVER convert tracker songs to WAV/MP3. It bloats the size and loses quality.
Now, I don't know the whole truth – it might be that you truly use a tracker song and I'm just barking at the wrong tree here, but the game's file size is just suspiciously large. Why's that?

And finally, the cog. This is even worse! You broke the pixel resolution on every non-256x144-resolution device. Here's a screenshot:

Here, every single pixel is 1:1 except the cog, which is 0,5:1 every frame it's spinning. This breaks the old-school vibe illusion completely.

When you make a game that's style is old-timey pixely-graphicy, you choose a pixel resolution and you stick with it. Here are three examples:

• The first is the worst because the fish breaks the pixel resolution. Just like your cog.
• The second, although it might seem counter-intuitive, is better. Sure it looks ugly, but it sticks with the resolution. Think about the flowers in Yoshi's Island; they rotated too and sticked with the pixel resolution. Homework: play Yoshi's Island and find out why the rotation looks great there, but bad in this example.
• The third is hands-down the best, but only because it was drawn pixel-by-pixel from scratch. It takes more time, but it's worth it. You might want to look into RotSprite. It rotates pixel art but with a custom algorithm, so it's bound to look better than simply rotating a sprite in Photoshop.

Keep it up! You'll know when the cog looks right. You just will.


EDIT: i re-read my post. i didn't mean to sound offensive or picky. it might seem like i'm making a way too big of a deal out of this but in my opinion it's the many little things that make the one huge difference

[MC Jimmy]

What format is your music in? There's a 'flaw' in the MP3 file format which causes a very small pause at the beginning of the audio data. I'm not sure if this is the case of it, or just GM bad looping, or both, but if your music is in a tracker format (think IT, MOD, XM, MID) then find a method of playing the music natively. NEVER convert tracker songs to WAV/MP3. It bloats the size and loses quality.
Now, I don't know the whole truth – it might be that you truly use a tracker song and I'm just barking at the wrong tree here, but the game's file size is just suspiciously large. Why's that?

I was asked to make them in famitracker, which natively makes them any sort of nes file or raw waves basically. I always thought gamemaker had some sort of .ogg compatibility or some kind of third party plugin that allowed the use of .oggs, which would at least help with the looping and possibly the size if he is using the .wavs famitracker outputs.

[puggsoy]

WAVs are bad for size because they're completely lossless and are usually huge. They're OK for sound effects, but for songs it's highly advised that you use OGG. It's lossy, yes, but it greatly saves on size and nobody's going to notice the quality loss unless they hook up their phone to a huge surround-sound system (and even then they'd be very picky if they cared). I would be legitimately surprised if Game Maker didn't support OGGs as it's one of the most popular game music formats.
MP3 is OK too, but unless your platform or creation tools handle the licensing fees (like Flash does, maybe GM does), you'd have to pay $2,500 per game.

But as Sam said, if it's possible then it'd be recommended to have the game play your music from the tracker file directly, since it saves (a lot of) space and retains all the quality. There might be plugins for some of the more popular formats, and if you were really determined you could probably code it yourself. Otherwise, OGG is a fine choice.

[Hypernova]

Alright, I just uploaded a new version to Google Play with a new boss (sorry I was busy the last couple of weeks).

As for the musics, I tried to modify them a little bit trying to make it as seamless as possible (Game Maker can ONLY play background musics as mp3 format and yet their music system sucks). As for the cogs, I am terrible at rotational sprites. The program you (RS) provided, thanks but Windows 8.1 (damn you Microsoft) don't want me to run this executable. So the only solution is to keep the cog stationary as for right now.

For the game controls, I have set slide (swipe) controls not as a default control scheme. I got users complaining (often 1-2 stars rating complaints) about the slide controls and they are more used to the original controls.

[Hypernova]

Sorry for the multipost but I have something worthy to show:

I have successfully ported Cops to WP8 (Yes, I have multiple smartphones: Nexus 5, Nokie Lumia 521, iPhone 4S), now I am waiting for the review so it can be listed in WP store:
WARNING: Large images

Spoiler

If there's a BBCode that shrinks large images on the go that would be appreciated!

[Vipershark]

I'm curious about how this works on android.

How do things like screen resolution factor into it and how do you keep pixels at their native size considering that android phones come in all shapes and sizes and screen resolutions?
Does the game scale up on bigger phones? Down on smaller ones? Does it letterbox on resolutions bigger than your viewport (this was made in GM, right?)?

How do you keep a native 1:1 pixel resolution when not every screen is the same size?

[Hypernova]

I have kept my game screen ratio as 16:9 since most of the Android have that kind of resolution. (Any other 4: 3 ancient android devices would be a bit stretched since I set the display to full scale rather than keep the aspect ratio.) And just to polish it up, I have disabled interpolate colors between pixels to remove these ugly blurred pixel edge.

[Vipershark]

So basically you just pick a 16:9 resolution and the phone scales that itself?

[Hypernova]

Yep. That's pretty much it! GM: Studio for mobile devices automatically does the resizing work for you!

[Vipershark]

Oh, cool
so basically you can just work at the native 1px level with no issues then
good to know