Monday, May 30, 2016

Marblesared (Alpha build) - 2017/03/15


 
Hey there to Readers & Players,
Welcome to 15 March 2017 edition final
alpha build of "Marblesared" (Marbles Are Red) for PC and Android.
Beta build is planned for when this final Alpha round has been approved by testers.
Animated Tutorials
(18 sections) are complete & integrated into Game Level new item detection.
Two recent Playtest videos have been added, thanks Mum! (links below)

What is "Marblesared" ?

It is a new take on the old hand-held "marble-in-a maze" type games commonly available many decades before electronic hand held games existed,
where you had to get a marble from one corner of the maze to the other, or variations on the theme.


While Marblesared can be played on PC with keyboard (or gamepad), it is designed to make the most of Android device built-in accelerometers,

enabling you to play simply by tilting your Android mobile device as if it were a physical container holding a marble.

Getting your red marble to roll into its opposite red corner target is only part of the story - the actual idea is to help a little yellow bean get to its yellow goal.

The yellow bean can negotiate any navigable maze itself, and it even has a jetpack for speeding to the yellow goal after your red marble unlocks it,

but only your marble can help the bean reach that yellow goal.
How? By lowering obstacles, by NOT tripping hazards, by NOT directly running over the bean and Smooshing it,
and ideally, by doing it in as little time as possible if you are competitive and want to brag a bit :-)

The target audience is early teens and older, due to the bean character being "smooshed", and vaguely crude humour content
(very bad puns),
but there is no skill barrier - anyone capable of using a PC or Android tablet can play.


The current Alpha build has:

- Animated intro/splash screen with sound effects.
- Help/Instructions (Please read this first as an introduction on How to Play).

- Basic Tutorial text framework, plus some introductory animations,
    s
ynced to 1st appearance of each new bad/bonus item so players learn how to use them
    (+option to disable in game settings)
- A number of simple hand-designed levels (currently 33 for each of 3 skills) for Play testing:

        - "BabyBall" skill (No Bonuses or Bad Items),
        - "Normball" skill (Bonus/Bad Items - e.g. Actuator/Triggers with Drop-down walls)
        - "Maballs" skill with Bonus/Bad Items & harsher penalties e.g. (planned electrified goal for yellow bean requiring disabling)
- Bonus items (Green), include: Actuator Pad, Wall, Bean Shield, Extra Time, Bean Powerup, PortalEntry, PortalExit,
- Reset Actuator (Purple) to clear Bad Items in MaBalls! skill (All Bonus actuators clear Bad Items in Babyball, Normball skill.)
- Bad items (Red), include: Actuator Pad, Wall, Compactor, Slicer, Spike Plate, Lava Pit, Weight , Bomb, SmartMine
- SoundFX for bad/bonus items
- Player setup/name/skill for New games (New Player games start by default at Level 1 on BabyBall skill)
- Continued games option to start at any level up to highest played for current player

- Score/countdown per level & local saved high score table for each player & top 10 player total scores (planned addition to enable global high score save/load to internet with top 1000 player scores worldwide)

- Game settings including Debug on/off, Sound on/off, Controller input selection for both PC & Android using inbuilt default/keyboard/accelerometer/gamepad

Next on the todo list:

- Beta build on sale as "Early Release"
- Adding more levels manually
- Finish Patreon Site and ongoing publishing of game build notes
- Additional "Settings" for improved graphics quality (shaders, shadows, reflections, transparency), Gameplay, Audio (SoundFX On/Off only so far),

- Algorithm for auto-generation of levels,
- Make it a bit more "pretty", add in music, etc...

The [expanded] app size is currently about 40Mb for Android, 30Mb for PC version,  (
20Mb for the Android .APK, ~11Mb for the self-unzipping exe ).

Here is the link to my indie dev "PCAndVR" Google Drive shared directory if you want to run it on your own PC,

MortePCAndVR Google Drive shared directory "Marblesared"

The shared directory contains self-extracting Setup executable for PC, Release Notes,
and an Install-README text file with more detail on PC & Android version install/uninstall.
The PC version is a generic Windows 32bit .exe so it works on WinXP through to Windows 10 (AMD/Intel x86/x64 only)
No Windows 10 "Universal" build for ARM/Atom yet - coming soon as I get Win10+Universal SDK.
Here's a link to a playtest on youtube from an earlier alpha version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv0PL0rcTek

Two recent Playtest video links from 20170101:
Marblesared Android tablet PlayTest 20170101 Maballs! Skill - Level 20 - Try try try again, Mum!
Marblesared Android tablet PlayTest 20170101 Maballs! Skill - Level 21,22 - Well done for 21, Mum!

Google Play Alpha store link for direct Android install & pretty screenshots

https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.pcandvr.marblesared

QR code:

QR Code - PCAndVR.Marblesared
I am building a Patreon site, still figuring out patron levels & rewards :-)


Have fun, and Play Ball!

-Morte
 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.