LD2012 October $1 Challenge: Battleship Islands

Hi Guys,

We're putting together our first ever app store game in preparation for the Win8 Integrated Store Launch. The game is partially done, and still requires placeholder art & sound to be swapped out, however most of the core gameplay is there now (first 7 draft levels ready).

We need lots of feedback to help improve the game prior to launch so please, please, please give us a hand! <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle">

<img src="http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/compo2/thumb/ff7ce55eb9ad427a6f7be3b013fddc97.jpg" border="0">

<img src="http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/wp-content/compo2/184339/15255-shot2.jpg" border="0">

It's mostly a tablet game, so if you have an ipad, you can use cocoonjs viewer to go to the link (www.learnrec.com/cjs/bi.zip). Otherwise, you can have a look at the browser version.

LD Oct Challenge Game Links

Hey EyeHawk,

Once you get passed stage 2 the game is a lot of fun. It was cool moving and shooting on the run. The sounds and graphics are good as well. Good job.

Constructive feedback : It would be nice to have a minimap show you where the enemies are (or) be able to zoom out as to see the whole map. Also if you hit some rocks your movement speed becomes a little too slow for my liking (which is fine as long as you dont have a long ways to move).

Keep up the good work.

Many thanks for the feedback GenkiGenga and True Valhalla!

Great ideas Genki - originally I wanted to be able to zoom out, but didn't have the ability to do it properly, but with the most recent release (r106), touch has much more functionality so I'll try it :)

The game's graphics look good.

Looks like something people would play on a Facebook game.

Pretty good. I lost and won at the same time. I made it to the X when the clock hit 1:09. It said "You Lost" and then "You Won". Both menus were visible. Other than that, it held my interest.

Wow, looks really nice! One little thing - I feel like the water could use a bit more texture.

Awesome thanks for the feedback guys! :)

Rory - that's a great idea - I'd like to get it on to FB as a promotion for the win8 store.

ParCutz - good spotting! Did that happen just on the cusp of time-over? I noticed it once but I wasn't able to recreate it. Do you remember which level that was?

sqiddster - thanks for the recommendation, it does look a little bland at the moment. I'll look at putting some waves on top to break up the look a bit.

Update - I just released to the Win8 store, yesterday so hopefully that goes through ok.

Massive thanks to iunkn for helping me out with the Win8 integration through excellent blogs, tutorials and directly - wouldn't have been able to do it without him (or her?)!

Now, my next mission is to try to figure out how to release it on iOS with CocoonJS...

True Valhalla - Overall it was reasonably straightforward. There were basically 2 main parts to it:

1. Integrating the Win8/Metro Plugin into the games. Iunkn has an excellent blog which documents everything you need to take advantage of the many features of using Win8, e.g. In-Game Purchases, Trial Mode, using the Live Tiles, etc

c2metro.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/support-for-live-tiles

2. Deploying to the store - This part was quite easy - Microsoft will take you through step by step during the deployment process.

It helps to have a little development experience, as you'll need to make your way around Visual Studio 2012 exp.

The game itself still needs to go through MS's review process, but hopefully it will be in there by Oct 26 if all goes well. Normally it should be a 5 day process, but a ton of apps are going in at the moment.

It was level two. The time stopped at 1 minute and nine seconds. It said I lost and then won. Good luck re-creating it. It will only occur when one does not try at all. At least that is how my life works.

ParCutz - Great thanks for the heads up :)

Update - I just released to the Win8 store, yesterday so hopefully that goes through ok.

Massive thanks to iunkn for helping me out with the Win8 integration through excellent blogs, tutorials and directly - wouldn't have been able to do it without him (or her?)!

Now, my next mission is to try to figure out how to release it on iOS with CocoonJS...

It is a "him" <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Great to find the plugin being useful! Is the game already available in the Store?

iunkn - haha! just wanted to cover all bases <img src="smileys/smiley16.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

It's still going through certification at the moment. My local Tech Evangalist said I needed to push it through asap if I wanted it to be ready for Oct 26, even though it wasn't 100% ready yet - ah well...

As soon as it is available in the store, I'll copy the link to your other thread too <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Hi Guys, Battleship Islands is up and running now, and the trial feature should be enabled now. If anyone hasn't already downloaded it, would you mind checking if the "Try Buy" option appears at the link, and if the first 5 levels are indeed locked in the trial mode? Thanks that would be so awesome 8)

http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/app/battleship-islands/5e25ffd2-2cb0-4708-b88a-4bdc61f19107

<img src="smileys/smiley16.gif" border="0" align="middle">

I will definitively be downloading and upvoting the game tonight in support of a fellow C2 dev.

My game is just entering the certification process and i was interested in knowing how is your game doing statically/downloads during this windows 8 launch phase?