Thursday, July 30, 2009

Demo of Relativia

Here's a short video of my progress on my entry to the Android Developer Challenge II, a casual mobile puzzle role-playing game called Relativia:



The hard deadline is the end of August. I'm not sure how many more features I'm going to be able to get into the game by then, but we'll see. I just got most of the map stuff working this week using Philip's open-sourced code.

7 comments:

Kenny Wyland said...

That's a very cool demo! FYI, I'm not sure if it's me, but the audio seemed to cut out about 20 seconds from the end.

Forgive me if I've missed the answers to this question in the past... Do you have to physically go the market or dungeon to enter? In other words, are my GPS coordinates requires to be within a certain range of the dungeon's location for me to go in? Or are you just using this has a clever way of generating maps?

Derek said...

Hm, well I used Windows Movie Maker to do the voice over...first time. I probably wasn't saying anything very interesting those last 20 seconds anyway.

And yeah, you have to physically go the market or dungeon to enter. Or at least get within 100 meters. I thought this might be a clever way to design a game that is not just a port to the mobile platform, but a truly mobile game. Turns out others have had similar ideas, but I'm still hoping it's interesting enough to do well in the challenge.

People seem to either think it's a great idea or a horrible one. I originally thought that compelling players to physically visit points of interest would lead to a greater sense of questing, and that it could be used as a novel way to monetize the game (e.g. charge particular franchises to be put on the top of search lists). But some people I've described the game to think it sounds wasteful, inconvenient, and environmentally unsound.

I guess we'll see.

Kenny Wyland said...

Yeah, I totally see the love it or hate it mentality. I'm with the love it. I think it's a great idea!

Derek said...

Thanks! Now let's just hope all the players and judges think so too. :)

Anonymous said...

Sound also cut out for me near the very end.

Really like the strategy game approach to combat -- it's amusing without being too complicated. Like the bejeweled addon for Warcraft took over graphic combat.

Also enjoyed the real-world mapping of fantasy elements -- a subversive concept that appears in fantasy lit but often doesn't make it into games. This mapping doesn't yet quite fit with the medieval game concept for me, though, unless there are some other altered universe elements added to reframe the experience. That is, either the sense that this is a radically transformed real (not current-day Lafayette but a fantasy Lafayette where history and material / scientific reality took a strange turn) or that fantasy creatures / magic elements have bled into it. In the case of the bleeding through, you might have wizards fighting cops and etc. instead of other fantasy elements only.

I also wanted the wolven race to look a little tougher and the font to be simpler (too frilly, esp. over the google mapping). Although I'm already wanting to play a rabbit.

Derek said...

The plot of the game is that there are parallel worlds, and there are bad guys who have minions that munch through the barriers of worlds and collapse them. The bad guys have collapsed and conquered hundreds of worlds, and our is next. So you have to assume the role of your parallel self in the parallel world of Relativia to fight the bad guys and keep them from collapsing our world into theirs and taking everything over.

Also, it's not strictly a medieval fantasy setting. It's a SF/Fantasy blend, somewhat like WoW...there are cyborgs, lasers, and so on.

Anonymous said...

Well that is cool on both points -- the parallel worlds and the mixture of fantasy / sci fi. I will get outfitted for a bunny costume as soon as it's on the market.