Droppin' Bombs - IPhone Game by Engaging Games - BOMBTASTIC !

Update: New gameplay video !

Sooooooo, we once started a thread in here for the project but since then it got bigger and bigger and so we're back with some new stuff to show
As you might have guessed this game is made with Unity3d aimed at IPhone and IPod devices for now.

I’m 1/2 of the development team from Droppin’ Bombs, our first yet to be released game. We started working on it in February 2011 and we feel that now is a good moment to finally get out of our dark batcaves (I’m Robin btw) and show some actual information and pictures of our little game.

After having posted a thread about the choice of our app icon we felt so great and accepted that we just had to take the next step, even though being sweaty and chicken-hearted as ever
We hope to gather many thoughts and helpful feedback within this thread and try to keep the thread updated with interesting material.

The goal of our game:
Tap all the bombs that drop down from the sky, before they begin to flash and inevitably explode ! There will be special items and combos to boost and achieve even higher scores.
It can’t get any more logical than that, in terms of a rich background story, right ?

Early Screenshots so far:





Gameplay Videos:

Planned Featureswe really hope to put as much of this in the first release as possible - *fingerscrossed*

• 2 Game Modes: Classic and Timed
• Crisp and polished graphics in cell-shading inspired style
• Intuitive one-tap gameplay makes it a no-brainer to get started
• Game Center support for leaderboards and achievements
• 25 Bombastic Achievements to be found within the game, including the infamous 1 Mio Score Points Achievement
• Including background music and sound effects by award-winning composer

We hope you like what you see, share it with all the nice people you know and check back often in this thread, our blog and website and of course the infamous twitter universe.

Here’s some basic contact information you definitely might wanna bookmark

http://www.engaginggames.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/EngagingGames
fabian@engaginggames.com – the Artguy
blake@engaginggames.com - the Codeguy

Also we are huge fans of giving insight in the development of games and therefore constantly try to keep our blogobody in shape. So here's our recent blogposts we managed to publish so far

July 3, 2011 - Bombtastic style decisions
June 29, 2011 - Pulsating bombs
June 26, 2011 - First game drafts

Aaaaaaaand, that's a wrap
We're so looking forward to a first round of feedback by you awesome folks !

 

Update time - woohoo !!
Actually I squeezed out 2 blogposts about the forumposts
July 8, 2011 - BlogPost about ForumPost – Part 2
July 7, 2011 - BlogPost about ForumPost – Part 1

Alright game update time
I received my new camera today that I especially ordered for taking pictures and videos of any game we develop in the future ! So without further ado, I present you a picture of our options menu - what you think ?

 

Hey everyone, I updated the blog once more with an indepth article about our HUD creation process - might interest to a couple of people
Basically I explain how we went through several iterations until we found something that complemented the background and the game items nicely. Transformation from left to right:

 

Heyheyhello guys
I managed to upload another gameplay video in a better resolution than the other 2 !
Guess you can see everything much better now !

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I've read all the articles on your blog and it seems that you've really polished the game visual aspect. It's looking great. Congratulations.
BTW. Why don't you record the video directly from Unity?

 

Hey thanks a ton for being the first to reply @matiashmoro and for having so positive feedback for us
My heart melt !

I kinda thought, if we made development a bit transparent instead of a simple link the appstore we might get some honest replies, but guessed wrong

I'm extremely glad you enjoyed reading the blogposts, I always need soooo many hours to gather all the old information and assets and put the iamges together that I ask myself whether it's worth it

We will definitely record the video from Unity for the hopefully soon to come trailer but for now we don't want to get all indepth since we have quite a bit work to do.
And apart from that we can show how the game is played on an actual device, that normally is very interesting to possible users.

 

Hi everyone,

Blake here. I would like to take a moment to formally introduce myself as the other half of the brain behind Droppin' Bombs. I've been in hiding my face programming away while letting Acumen spread the word about our great little upcoming title. While I haven't been speaking publicly at all, I have been closely following our thread here, and our twitter activity, and would like to thank everyone for the positive feedback you have given us. I think I can speak for the both of us when I say it was a bit nerve wrecking leading up to releasing information as we didn't quite know what to expect and how we would be received, but it has definitely been a positive experience so far, and we look to continue that well into the future. I don't want to get in to too many details yet(I could talk for days and days...just ask Acumen , so I'll save all that for a blog post(or two, or three, or four...)), but I would also like to formally introduce the new company that has been formed as part of this game making dream. With that, let me introduce our company logo which is obviously tied in with Droppin' Bombs. We hope you like it as much as we do(although that would probably be extremely hard for you to do ). Anyways, let us know what you think about it(and of course the game itself if you haven't already done so!):





Well, before I continue on forever, I'd just like to say thanks to everyone again, and any and all feedback you give us is truly greatly appreciated. I'll get back to my code cave now in hopes of getting to the point where we can release some new information that some people have been waiting on...

 

Hey everyone, hope you lean towards liking our logo

Got some news to spare !

Blake made awesome progress on the game:
- The gameover screen is almost done
- Fonts and calculation work
- Gameover and Time Up Prompt works
- Statistics and Leaderboards are also functional

Expect a new video showing these off soon

My bigboss Blake Johnson has started up our facebook site for the newformed company EngagingGames !
Since we’re two coolcats we created a personal account for the two of us as well !

EngagingGames @ Facebook
Blake @ Facebook
Fabian @ Facebook

Also incase you haven't checked out the newest blogposts, we talked about our HUD creation process and some innocent font tests
First fabulous fonts – made my monday
HUD creation process

Kinda sad, you're so cautious on replying. We'd love to answer any possible question you might have
We're really digging the way unity3d ties our work together so far !! Sweet tool that it is

 

Hurry up so I can get the game either that or put me on the UDID haha. Keep it up guys love the new graphics

 

You're back !
I think we can work something out for a soon to be announced Betatest

 

Just to proof we actually progressed as much as was stated, here's a handful of new screenshots for you to have a look at !

1) We finally were able to trigger the gameover/time up messages and have these animated within Unity3d. Thanks to prime31 uitoolkit [/B]
2) The stats window actually works !!! It adds up all these nice statistics about your game statistical statistics !
I'm actually really bad at our own game 4 games and 466 is not really good
3) You can switch between the two different gamemodes leaderboards and the leaderboards themselve work !




Also our facebook account still has a lot of love to give and receive
Check us out over @Facebook

 

Looking beautiful keep it up!

 

Thank you so much, charles !

Alright, after we were having the most brilliant idea for our game ever (out of all the ideas we have had for our game of course) we decided to use a prerendered background for the game from now on. That will save texture/mesh/memory/whatever space. And it removes the kinda heavy aliasing effect on the fence aaaaand we get to bake in some supercool bloomy lighting, too !

There we go: our new game background !

 

Hey hello you good girls and boys. Update time again.

Blake was so excited that he accidentally already implemented the new prerendered background. Can't explain how much better it already feels and looks without all the ugly aliasing lines all around. So distracting. Aaaand we managed to have a first working achievement triggering the animation of an achievement badge. See for yourself:



Also we are working very hard on getting this one last cool idea into the game. Could be a win-win-win thing on our end

 

looks pretty polish, you added sound effect yet? Cuz you better, and the more the merrier... Right now it just looks a bit boring...

 

Thanks for the comment Jake! Yeah, we've added a few sfx so far and actually just submitted a new list for additional sfx to be made a few days ago. We also have a great track composed by Sean Beeson that we're still waiting to release. Video Sounds/Music should be coming in the near future. Hopefully the addition of the sfx/music combined with what we've been up to behind closed doors, it won't look as boring the next time you see it.

 

Hellohelllo-ohohohoh !
Many many good news on our side. We implemented Murtaugh in the game (super cool but announced later) and we decided to implement more environments than only 1 to the game
Here's the latest addition !

 

I'm so exciiiiited - betatest on friday - wuaaaaaaaa

Over the last 3 days we constantly added stuff to not let people down in the test !
Murtaugh is feeling good as ever, throwing stupid quotes at players !
And we have the new environment going ingame.
Also we will use custom main menu images since that looked so cool to us
We already have implemented the unlock mechanism for the new environment. You need to tap 1000 bombs to have it available

 

Woohooo !
What a blast and exciting ride we're having right now. )Only one day later as planned) we finally released the beta version to 20 people all over the world and so far are getting very nice responses to the game we put so much work in lately.

Here's my highscore for the beta build so far - 4065 points

 

Since the betatest went so well and we got great feedback so far, I thought I shall upload a video showcasing the new environment in the game. It also shows that the main menu changes its appearance according to the environment choice. Kinda neat effect
Hope the authorities like it !

New game environment in video:

 

Still, no one shall be my high score.

Greatgame! keep it coming boys.

 

So, after a succesful first betatest we got much feedback that we should add more content
We tried various ideas for new environments and came up with the beach world as another unlockable world:



Also we went totally bananas and thought about alternative game areas - a round one. This is not final but just shows one of the ideas we had. This should turn out quite nicely with some new gameplay mechanisms and whatnot ! We present you: the log



Hope you guys stay with us for a while longer

 

The new areas look great!

 

Thanks, man !
Was such a milestone to have this out of the way and even have one additional one with a potential new gamemode

 

Areas are looking great guys! cant wait for official release still enjoying the beta.

 

Yeh, we might have had 1-2 cool new ideas for gamemodes that we'll work on !
Then we can finally move to the most important phase - getting the word out

This is how the new beach environment ties into the main menu.
As mentioned the main menu will change its appearance according to the used game environment

 

UPDATE TIME - we're just gonna continue to bug you people - no remorse !

It's been a heck of fun lately, to finetune the ingame messages.
Something that was added quite thoughtless now starts to shine quite a bit. Obviously we
are huge fans of Fruit Ninja

We added a couple of variations to the multiplier messages




And also reworked the critical defuse design:

 

How did you do the score counter? did you used GUItext? if you're using GUItext how did you get you text to have font efx? example your score text have outline, shadow, and gradient inside it.

 

Hey there
We used Prime31-UIToolkit which is a free tool and did great job for our game
Basically you'll feed it with png and txt file that was output by a tool named TexturePacker and then the magic happens.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/87...on-GUI-Solution-Ready-for-Use...and-it-s-free

Obviously I can't really tell you details since I don't know nothing about programming, but I can tell you what gfx I provided to Blake. I included one image that included all numbers/digits and he cut it up via code and created the working font with the cool effects. Note that only the timer and score are dynamic text effects, the combo and bonus messages just uses combined of base pictures.

 

Thanks for the info, will look into it.

 

Man, we were really struggling to get back on track. Pretty weird, each and every mistake that one plans to avoid because others already made it, we just did these, as well
You can read and try to learn from as many articles and blogposts as you want. In the end, we're all human and are bound to fail.
Anyways, we're finally getting back on the right track and finalizing the game. We decided to put a lot more of Murtaugh in the game, since that little guy can be our one chance to stand out from the rest of games. He'll treat you just right

Arrrhh, what could be in that tresure chest ?

 

Hope to see Murtaugh behaving in the naughtiest possible way

I'm loving how's it going so far, the graphics and the menu system are awesome: both fascinating than very professional.

 

Looks really great!
I will look you up in some months for my next project.
Best of lucks with Dropping Bombs!

 

Ack, can you believe it. This game is still not released. Considering my history of projects not being released, I think you can
3 new gameplay videos were added to the internet today:

Our Bombard Mode:

Timed Mode:

Awesome Menu action:

 

oh wow,..I remember seeing this here on the forums so long ago!

What is the hold up, if I may ask? Is the market being very strict? making you change things?

good luck!

-Welby

 

Release it!!! It's ready!!! And awesome!!! ;P

 

@welby: I guess being human, constantly reading about others' sucess and then changing and polishing the game was the main reason. And still its far from being done

@Izitmee: I AGREE