Android, cross-platform development and touch controls

Lately I've been working on getting my 2D game engine running in Android. I had been planning on giving Android a try for a while now, so when Unity released a free version for Android and iOS it got me to finally take the plunge.

I picked up a Kindle Fire, and had things mostly working after about a day. It helped a lot that I had already ported my engine to Unity. I did this mostly to use their web browser deployment for Ludum Dare releases - people are much more likely to play a game if they can run it in a browser rather than downloading an XNA binary. It also really helped that I had already done touch controls for Windows Phone versions of my games. Aside from getting the build and deployment process set up, porting to Android didn't really add many platform-specific development challenges.

"Quiet, Please!" is now running pretty well on the Kindle Fire. I have a few more little things to do, and then I'll release it on the Amazon Marketplace and Google Play.



I've also been working on a mobile version of "Ascent of Kings", a little platformer I made for Ludum Dare a while back. Good platforming touch controls are notoriously difficult to do. While I wouldn't say my controls are great, I now have a touch D-Pad that feels pretty good to use. The gameplay in "Ascent of Kings" isn't very twitch, so I think it will work well enough.

 Overall, I'm pretty happy right now with the state of my 2D game engine. With virtually no platform-specific game code, I can now deploy for Xbox, Windows Phone and Android. iOS should be an easy next step - except for the fact that I need to buy a Mac...

"Quiet, Please!" now available for Windows Phone

"Quiet, Please!" is now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Everything in the house is so noisy! You just want to be alone and go to bed.

Explore, interact with your environment and solve puzzles.

3 kittens included with every purchase!

Kung Fu FIGHT! now on WP7

The Windows Phone 7 version of Kung Fu FIGHT! is now available!

I was worried about how it would translate to the phone, but it runs really well - even with the downgrade to 30fps.

I was also concerned about the touch controls, but that ended up not being a problem.

If anything, I think I might prefer the phone version to the Xbox one - it works really well with the "pick up and play for a bit" affordance that the handheld device offers.

If you have a Windows phone, you can grab it here:

Kung Fu FIGHT! for Windows Phone

Kung Fu FIGHT! on WP7

The past few days I've been working on getting Kung Fu FIGHT! working on WP7. When creating the game, I was very careful to keep portability in mind. That has paid off, since it is already mostly done.

I just need to do some more tweaking on the UI and tighten up my touch controls.

OpenStreetMap Slippy Map in WP7

I'm procrastinating putting the final touches on Kung Fu FIGHT! and have been messing around more with WP7.

I've pretty quickly been able to put together a simple draggable map using OpenStreetMap tile data. It is definitely cool to have such a high quality source of map data freely available. Fun stuff.