[Game Development] Hoop Flick #7–Nearing Alpha

I’ll skip this week’s TBT post since I’m very much in the zone in my app-making.

After focusing on visual effects, such as shadows, splash screens, and icons, in the last iteration, I decided to go one step further.

In the latest and last APK, 0.0.9 alpha, Hoop Flick had a nice little graphics overhaul.

There’s also new mechanics involving the Teammate, button animations, major optimizations, and Google Play Games integration, all in preparation for the game’s first real version for Alpha testing.
Read more after the jump.




Graphics Overhaul
I never failed to mention that the previous character models were temporary. And now I finally decided to focus on it and have come up with new models for the player, the defenders, and the teammate.

All three will be customizable eventually, but for now, I’m hoping the current models would be good enough for the gaming public (Please? I spent a whole day each on each model >_<).

As I mentioned, down the road, these avatars would be customizable. Whether they’d be included in the game outright, be unlockables, or in-app purchases, have yet to be determined, but plans for would-be custom avatars are ongoing and I already have a few good ideas.

New Teamwork Mechanics
In the last version, I overhauled the teammate’s mechanics, giving a chance for a ball bump not to count, thereby increasing Perfect Shots.

This time around, I made the teammate an even better baller. There is now a chance equal to five times the Team Work Attribute (50% at max level) for the teammate to reset the Bump counter!

This means you can throw the ball towards the backboard, making it bounce off it towards the teammate, and once he puts it back, you still get a Perfect Shot!

This implementation makes the most sense actually. Regardless of your shot, his shot can be Perfect Shots on their own rights.

Buttons
All game buttons now move when held down and are activated on release, as opposed to before when they were activated on touch.

This gives them more a button-y feel. I will still have to continue to work on their design, though.

Optimizations
In the last version, once you reach 1210 points, the fourth defender (the one with an AI) is unlocked. This causes the game’s framerate to drop significantly (sub-20s).

Because of this, I started work on some major optimizations, reducing the number of function calls per frame, as well as reducing collider vertices significantly (seriously, by a factor of like 100 to 5).

This caused the game to run much smoother (58-60 fps average on my phone) even past the 1210 point mark. The framerate still drops to as low as 30+ at isolated instances, though, but not enough to drag the overall average down.

Finally, I reduced all sprite sizes (by factors of 4-5) in an effort to also reduce the overall apk size. The quality should be the same, though, since before, they were reduced at runtime anyway.

Leaderboards
The biggest update is the addition of the Google Play Games integration and Leaderboards system.

It is included in the latest APK, called 0.1a, which will be uploaded to Google Play as an Alpha test version soon. Right now, the game signs in and out properly, and registers the high score correctly, but cannot display the high score on itself. I should fix this in the next day or two.

I’ve already set up the Hoop Flick testers’ community in Google+ and invited some close friends for the first closed Alpha testing. I’m really excited and will definitely post more updates in the coming weeks.