Chicks Ahead - Cartoon style game for iOS

[DannyB]

Hello fellow TK2D fans,

I would like to share my first and latest iOS game developed with 2D Toolkit.

The design intention behind Chicks Ahead was to provide an easy going and uplifting game play experience.

We have invested a lot of effort in animating the characters just right, choosing the right music and sound effects and adding many little things that we hope creates a more complete you-are-in-a-cartoon feeling.

Hope you like it.

ChicksAhead.com | On iTunes | @ChicksAhead

[youtube]http://youtu.be/fI7CH5-GU5E[/youtube]

[roc_hgh]

So cool！！！！

[DannyB]

Thanks buddy appreciate it.

We are all lucky that we have 2D Toolkit, otherwise this would have been much harder...

[m4ko]

Nice work on the animations parallax backgrounds. I like the "gliding" part of the bird. Makes you feel the air resistance a bit. Everything seems to fit in very well. Even though it rides on the Angry Birds train a bit (birds, lemon-as-button in the corner, comic intros - pretty much the Angry Birds formula) it doesn't feel like a cheap copy but rather a direct sequel / off-spin. Well done.

[DannyB]

Everything seems to fit in very well. Even though it rides on the Angry Birds train a bit

Heh.... so any game that has birds is a copy of Angry Birds?

I am not a big Angry Birds fan, and I did not know they have an orange at the corner... it just made sense to us, because it is a known, squeezable fruit that produces a drink with a lot of energy. Our first thought was to have a "Juice Box" there, then we said "no, let's avoid human items - let's put a fruit with a straw in it".

Eventually - as you noticed - we ended up with that half orange.

But Angry Birds did not invent "birds" or comic openings to trailers....
Padding the trailer with a short story animation is just common sense, if you want to / need to add a background story to your game.

[werzar]

Hey man awesome work!!!

Could you tell me some tutorials about parallax scrolling?? Did you use parallax or thinkscroller??. Very well use this...

Great !!

Regards

[DannyB]

Could you tell me some tutorials about parallax scrolling?? Did you use parallax or thinkscroller??. Very well use this...

Why do you need a parallax plugin?
I did not use any.

[m4ko]

You are right of course. Angry Birds is merely the "super star" in a common genre - it didn't invent anything. And if anyone should be called copycat its Rovio themselves with their many versions of the same game. I was probably rather referring (in my mind) about the target audience. My guess is the Angry Birds user profile would probably fit very well onto yours. The game formula is pretty much the same and you even use common assets. But that doesn't make your game any worse and was not meant as an insult. I am looking forward to try it out myself.

[DannyB]

I was probably rather referring (in my mind) about the target audience. My guess is the Angry Birds user profile would probably fit very well onto yours. The game formula is pretty much the same and you even use common assets. But that doesn't make your game any worse and was not meant as an insult. I am looking forward to try it out myself.

Of course, agreed, and none taken
I guess most of us aim at the wider, more casual audience, rather than the hardcore gamers. We all wish that every man, woman and child could enjoy our game no? This is more suitable for mobile games I guess.

[hachibei]

I like how the bird tilts itself a bit while flying in the air. It evokes a natural feel to its flight.

Btw, what tool did you use for the bird animations? It seems pretty smooth from the video you posted.

[DannyB]

I like how the bird tilts itself a bit while flying in the air. It evokes a natural feel to its flight.
Btw, what tool did you use for the bird animations? It seems pretty smooth from the video you posted.

You mean when she is gliding? Yes, she is tilting slightly as she enjoys the lift...

For the animations we have used Flash which then exported frame by frame and then of course, plugged it into a spritesheet.
Most animated sprites are at 30 FPS, with the exception of the ones that are slower and more subtle.

[werzar]

Could you tell me some tutorials about parallax scrolling?? Did you use parallax or thinkscroller??. Very well use this...

Why do you need a parallax plugin?
I did not use any.

Not using parallax scrolling? Have various backgrounds and inserting it one after another?...

[DannyB]

I mean, I am using parallax scrolling technique of course, I just asked why do you need a plugin for that?

The action itself at its base is quite simple right? Moving sprites to the left at a different speed.
Now, depending on your game, you might want to adjust Y position based on some global (or otherwise public) variable (in my case, the height of the bird) and you would have to define a simple mechanism to recycle objects (when the leftmost image has left the screen, bring it back to the right, and apply a new sprite to it if needed).

Why do you feel you need a plugin rather than just go ahead and implement on your own? Let me know if I can help.

[m4ko]

I got to try it out yesterday. Like it even more now. But I am interested  in the technical limitations. It seems to me that some sprites are pixel perfect on my iPhone 5 and some are not. For example: At the end of the level in the first non-tutorial area you can see multiple backgrounds. Some of them are crisp and some show artifacts. And on the chicks that you collected: The ones jumping/standing are pixel perfect and the ones running seem to use half the resolution.

Is there any particular reason for this? Computing power on iOS? Limitation of Unity/tk2d engines?

[DannyB]

It seems to me that some sprites are pixel perfect on my iPhone 5 and some are not.

Well, that is interesting.
Everything should be pixel perfect, with some small exceptions - like the background of the sky which is half size.
Some of the textures are stored compressed (backgrounds) and some uncompressed (chicks, bird).

The primary limitation that forced us to do things at a certain way, is the fact that you are stuck with either a low quality compressed texture or a too large uncompressed texture. There is no good middle ground.
One of the features of 2D Toolkit that saved the day for me, was the ability to dice sprites.

If you see artifacts or a blurry chick, that is not intended at all. So if you have a screenshot of what you mean, it would help me understand if its by design or a bug.

EDIT: I see the difference in quality for the running chick and happy chick, I am investigating the cause. All sprite settings seem the same, will look deeper...

Here is a small screenshot of the problem.