the sprimp blog

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2010-04-28T08:33:00.001+02:00

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Art from the Sprimp game Denizen

2010-04-20T19:20:00.010+02:00

get hi-res

get hi-res

Denizen for iPhone and iPod Touch Update 1.1

2010-04-20T14:37:00.010+02:00

This new update is now live on the App Store and you can get it here now!

You will find a new chapter ("The Locality") with 9 new hard levels to the ongoing story of Xio. You can also play the survival mode. Fight against endless waves of enemies to get the highest score possible.

Screenshots

Denizen for iPhone and iPod Touch trailer #1

2010-01-03T12:57:00.018+01:00

About Denizen

Denizen is a 3D arcade shooter. As a player you navigate through surreal and colourful environments and visuals. We like to call it a "neoretro" style. It features over 20 different enemies all with their own abilities and weapons. Denizen also features a licensed soundtrack. Hope you like beats!

The game will initially be released with one campaign, titled "The Domain", composed of 5 worlds containing a total of 15 levels, with a least 2 free updates planned at this stage. All levels contain a boss fight at the end. At the start of each level some story elements are revealed to you about this unique world.

Gameplay

You navigate by using the v-pad (virtual pad :) on the bottom left which is actually designed to simulate an analog stick, so momentum and speed could be easily controlled. You can attack single enemies by tapping on them, or multiple enemies by swiping your finger across them. In turn, enemies will rush in waves and will either shoot at you, or try to collide with you. "Nodes" are scattered throughout the levels for you to collect.

Thanks and enjoy!

Denizen, newest screenshots

2009-12-30T14:03:00.009+01:00

Here is the most recent batch of Denizen screenshots. They were initially published here on the touchArcade forums, accompanied with some positive feedback. Anyway, in case you missed them, here they are on the sprimp blog. As usual thank you and enjoy!

... and remember to check back towards the end of the week to watch the Denizen debut gameplay video along with our first comprehensive description of our game.

Dimitris

Denizen, our upcoming game for iPhone and iPod Touch

2009-10-18T10:09:00.040+02:00

Denizen is our latest game. It's coming to the iPhone and the iPod Touch later this year; pretty soon indeed! For now please enjoy these screenshots of the game's Elysium chapter and let us know what you think. Cheers!

We'll be releasing more details, such as story and gameplay videos about Denizen over the next couple of weeks. To find out more, subscribe to this blog.

Got any questions? Want to find out more about Denizen? Follow us on twitter and keep up to date.

Glide Factor 1.1 "Kappa Lamda" update screenshots

2009-05-15T10:13:00.007+02:00

We submitted the first major update to Glide Factor this week so expect it to pop up on iTunes in a few days. We call it the "Kappa Lamda" update and it includes

2 new worlds, Kappa and Lamda, with new background art.
10 new levels.
New enemies and obstacles.
New background beats!

Make sure you get it when it comes out!

Glide Factor for iPhone accelerometer controls

2009-05-01T11:49:00.012+02:00

Below is the Glide Factor design document. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Actually, it's just the instructions screen that you can access from the main menu. We wanted to be able to convey the full use of the game without using a single word, just a few nice looking icons.

The tilt

The top part of the instructions screen explains the controls. The fact that the only movement instructions are the direction towards which you have to tilt the device has some implications. It does not specify how the device is held or its angle towards the ground, which means that from a usage standpoint, the player would be correct to assume that they can play Glide Factor in whatever position they are comfortable in; whether that is sitting in the Metro or lying on the couch. For us to be able to accommodate this correct assumption meant that we had to do some extra work behind the scenes.

No manual calibration

Many tilt based apps get around this "player position" problem by adding a calibration screen. This places an extra usage burden to the player by requesting them to perform an additional action, possibly multiple times. Nonetheless we tried it, and early play tests, my girlfriend and my friends, hated it! So we decided to automate the calibration process in the background, and at the start of each level. The lack of a visible calibration process makes things faster, easier and invisible. As far as the player is concerned it just works.

The shake bomb

While gliding through a level, oftentimes power ups will pop up to help you out. One of them is the shake bomb. Upon collection of the shake bomb, a player has five seconds to shake the device in order to make all on screen obstacles disappear. I can imagine the shake bomb being quite useful in the situation below:

In this case, the code must be able to differentiate between regular gliding movement, and shaking; all from the same signal input. It could be tricky but it was actually one of the easier problems to solve during development.

The technical stuff

If you are a developer, I hope you will find this useful.

Glide movement using the accelerometer

The work below is located in the accelerometer callback function. Set the frequency of the callback to whatever is most suitable to your application. Glide Factor runs this at 20Hz.

On entry gather the raw x, y and z acceleration values. Because Glide Factor is a left oriented landscape application, we assigned the value of x to y and vice versa, as the accelerometer does not adjust, and rightly so, to changes in the screens orientation.

Check if the direction towards which we are accelerating to has changed. For axes x and y get their direction, which is the sign of the raw accelerometer value, and the acceleration direction which is the opposite sign of the velocity of the axis. For each axis x and y if the signs of the direction and the acceleration direction match, then the acceleration value for each axis will be the sum of its previous value, plus a constant, multiplied by the sign of its previous value. Adjust the value of this constant in order to increase viscosity.

Apply the change in acceleration to the current velocity of each axis. The velocity for each axis will be the product of the acceleration, the raw axis value and a constant. Adjust the value of this constant in order to increase/decrease velocity. Once we have the velocity, for our implementation, we add it to a pair of screen coordinates we maintain for the glider, and draw the glider.

If you apply the above methodology to your own code, you will get fluid accelerometer control on a 2D plane albeit on a fixed angle to the ground, depending on the values that have been assigned to the constants. This means that the z axis movement has not been calibrated to a comfortable user position/angle as mentioned above. I will, of course, be talking about auto calibration in a future post.

The shake bomb

In order to detect that the device has been shaken apply a high pass filter to the raw acceleration values. Then take the square root of the sum of the squares of the filtered values to compute the intensity of the current acceleration. If the intensity is above a certain threshold then the device has been shaken!

Hopefully, I will be able to post some code soon. If you would like to follow up on this, just leave a comment here or on twitter, or drop us a line at developers@sprimp.com.

The future

We are hard at work on our next game; All I can say for the moment is that we will attempt to augment the methodology described in this post, and apply it to 3D space, instead of a 2D plane. This has its challenges, but early testing has given us some valuable feedback. In short, to make tilt work in 3D space forget about mapping specific tilt actions to specific on screen behaviour. In this case it's all about context and the players preceding tilt action.

Thanks for reading! Soon, we'll be working on a post that focuses on the graphics of Glide Factor, the graphical style and how we used OpenGL. Hope to see you then and enjoy playing Glide Factor!

Glide Factor for iPhone and iPod Touch

2009-04-09T11:08:00.006+02:00

Glide Factor will be available in this month.

In Glide Factor, the player glides through twenty challenging and thrilling courses over four fantastic worlds. Each level is filled with challenging obstacles that tests the player’s abilities in control, speed and reaction time. The game features unique motion controls and smooth gliding physics. Badges are awarded for the completion of challenges, such as beating levels or winning flawlessly without hitting any obstacles. Collect all fifteen badges to truly master the game. Glide Factor also supports online high score leader boards for its players.

Glide Factor for java phones

2008-11-18T11:57:00.002+01:00

Glide Factor is the latest racing game by Sprimp.

Glide your way to victory in style! Race through the unique and colourful world of Glide Factor as fast as you can. Glide Factor's levels are filled with challenging obstacles that test your abilities in control, speed and reaction time! Pick up the crazy bonus items that replenish your health, protect you and even knock a second or two off your time!

Glide Factor features:

Support for the Zeemote JS1 controller on Nokia and SonyEricsson phones.
8 challenging and thrilling courses!
Four difficulty levels. "Easy", "Normal", "Hard" and "Core".
The ability to save your best scores and view your improvement over time.
One simple game objective. Just achieve the best time possible!

Check out the gameplay video.
Buy it here.
Demo Version here.

Zeemote Ready Sprimp games coming this autumn!

2008-09-07T14:03:00.005+02:00

We're happy to say that we are hard at work to bring Zeemote JS1 support
to our games. Check back here at the end of the month to have a look at
screenshots and gameplay videos for our first Zeemote Ready game!

Introducing the Sprimp launch lineup

2008-07-17T09:41:00.011+02:00

As part of our launch, we are proud to present the Sprimp 2008 summer lineup!
There is something for everyone!

The titles launching today are:

Bloxy

Sprimp's first game! Swap blocks of the same colour anywhere from a horizontal or vertical line on the board. Make matches of three or more to get more points. Make continuous chains to get combo multiplier points. Featuring super addictive and unlimited gameplay. Start playing now and perfect your skills!

Check out the gameplay video.
Buy it here.
Demo Version here.

Targax

You are in control of the super weapon. Eliminate all the intruders as they appear on the screen, and collect powerups for extra points and energy. With amazing celestial backgrounds and sprites, once you start playing Targax you won't stop!
Be quick, and become a Targax master!

Check out the gameplay video.
Buy it here.
Demo Version here.

Zalastar

You are the chosen one. Only you can pilot the ship that will save your planet. The stars must not reach the surface! Destroy them by shooting them with your colour bullets! Fast and addictive gameplay keeps the action rolling. With 29 fun levels, bonus items and powerups, fly your way to victory.
Can you become the hero of Zalastar?

Check out the gameplay video.
Buy it here.
Demo Version here.

Robotaki

Welcome to Robotaki's first adventure! In this fast paced and incredibly fun platformer, you must guide the hero Robotaki through 8 challenging levels. Release the valves on the tanks containing the green goo to weaken the Big Eye. But watch out, he will do anything to stop you!

Check out the gameplay video.
Buy it here.
Demo Version here.

Welcome to Sprimp!

2008-07-01T11:55:00.000+02:00

Today we are pleased to launch Sprimp! We are looking forward to having all of you play our games. Right now our catalog has four games, but we intend to add a new game every two months. It took a lot of work to develop our games, but we are pleased to announce that they look and play great!

Why don't you take a moment and browse our catalog and try our demos?

We launched the Sprimp blog so that it would be easier for us to communicate and share information with you, the people that love and play our games. This blog is the official source for information, updates and news about Sprimp. We also thought that our launch is the right time to start interacting with the web community about what is happening here at Sprimp.

Finally, we want to hear from you. What do you think about Sprimp? Do you like our games? What kind of games would you like to see from Sprimp in the future? We would love to hear what you have to say.

Cheers