Thursday, August 3, 2017

Marblesared Beta build - 2017/08/04 - Desco Birthday Month edition

Marblesared (Marbles Are Red) Marblesared Splash
image blog link

Hey Players,
Here is the Desco Birthday Month edition 04/08/2017 beta build of "Marblesared" (Marbles Are Red) for PC and Android.
Not my birthday though...  Just four other family members.

Thanks & praise be to the beta testers yet again, for discovering numerous bugs in Tutoriballs,
caused by the NPC bean AI navigation now being too 'smart' to follow instructions.

I have re-enabled tutoriballs preview by default, due to those same un-named beta testers
complaining about not knowing how to do something
while pooh-poohing suggestions to view Tutoriballs...
The feedback I seem to get so far is that 'No-one uses tutorials' and 'No-one reads help/manuals'.
If a certain 'leader of the free world' president's literacy level is any indication
then I guess we devs may as well give up since that book learnin' is just for 'elites' anyway...

TL;DR
- tuts fixed & enabled.
- usual blurb 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.

Marblesared 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.
It can also be played on PC with keyboard (or gamepad) controlling the marble.

How to play ?
- Roll your red marble to the red goal, through mazes, obstacles & bonuses.
- Help a little yellow bean get to the yellow goal.
The yellow bean can auto-navigate, and even has a jetpack for speeding to the yellow goal after your red marble unlocks it.
HOWEVER
Only your marble can help the bean reach that yellow goal.
How? By lowering obstacles, by NOT tripping bad items, 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 humour content (very bad puns),
There is no elite skill barrier - anyone capable of using a PC or Android tablet can play - albeit some better than others :-)


Current Features:
- Animated intro/splash screen with sound effects.
- Help/Instructions (Please read first as introduction on How to Play).
- Tutoriballs (Animated Tutorials) - preview on by default, appearing as a zoomable PIP inset image
    synced to 1st appearance of each new bad/bonus item so players learn how to use them
- 33 hand-designed levels for each of 3 skills for Play testing:
        - "BabyBall" skill (No Bonuses or Bad Items),
        - "Normball" skill (Bonus Items - e.g. Actuator/Triggers with Drop-down walls)
        - "Hardball" skill (Bonus/Bad Items - e.g. lava pit, spiky balls, bomb, smartmine)
        - "Maballs!" skill (Bonus/Bad Items AND electrified goal for yellow bean requiring player goal entry to disable)
- Bonus items (Green), include: Actuator Pad, Wall, Bean Shield, Extra Time, Bean Powerup, PortalEntry, PortalExit,
- Bad items (Red), include: Actuator Pad, Wall, Compactor, Slicer, Spike Plate, Lava Pit, Weight , Bomb, SmartMine
- Bad/Bonus actuators exist primarily to activate the other bad/bonus items.
- Reset Actuator (Purple) clear Bad Items in Hardball, MaBalls! skill
- Player setup/name/skill/Score reset 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 scores
- Auto Next Level countdown on each level completion.
- Game settings including Debug on/off, Sound on/off, Controller input selection for both PC & Android using inbuilt default/keyboard/accelerometer/gamepad
- SoundFX setting enable/disable
- Additional "Settings" for improved graphics quality (shaders, reflections, transparency) - use Vertex Material & disable texture for fastest performance

Next on Todo list:
- Beta build on sale as "Early Release"
- Adding more levels manually
- Marketing/Promotion
- option to upload player total scores to internet with top 1000 player scores worldwide
- 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, 
Download size is 23Mb for the Android .APK, 11Mb for the PC version executable installer ).

Link to my "PCAndVR" Google Drive shared directory for Windows PC download :
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.

Once the game goes into early release for sale,
The link for PC will only be available to patrons & registered beta testers (see patreon link below).
Android users who install now will get a free ride on beta updates
until the game is converted into Google Play Store release mode :D

If your Android alpha version is not auto-updating past the old v20170511 or v20170512 version to the new Beta build,
try uninstalling, then reinstalling from the Google Play Store link.
If you are getting game hangs, clear the Marblesared application data/cache in Android application manager
If that doesn't work, drop me a line on one of my new social media channels.

Play Hard & Roll Ball!
-Morte