Roku Developer Program

[Romans_I_XVI]

Hey everyone, so I've been working on a game called Tiles.


https://my.roku.com/add/CLZP5T

It's sort of a puzzle game and sort of a game about having quick fingers and well timed movement. But the really unique part of it is that all of the puzzles are user created. In this regard, the game is sort of like Super Mario Maker. You either play puzzles created by other players, or create your own and publish them for everyone to play!

As you can imagine there's a fair amount of backend server work going on here, and so far I've only had a few people other than myself play the game. So like the title says... play it and see if you can break it! Please report any bugs or crashes here as I hope to have things as polished as possible when I finally release.

As far as the game itself, it's still missing sound effects and there are a lot of junk levels and such from the testing I've done, so sorry about that. If you happen to make a level that you think is especially cool feel free to post the ID here, I'll check it out and maybe put it in the featured section when the game is actually released. Other than the levels I specifically decide to keep for the launch of the game, everything will be cleared when the game is released.

Thanks to anyone willing to help, I'm open to any feedback.

[knuckle]

does it require a game remote? will it work on all models?

[Romans_I_XVI]

No it doesn't require a game remote, and yes it should work with all models. I still have some quirks to work out in SD mode and older/lower powered devices in general might not play so smooth, but officially all Roku devices are supported.

[Komag]

- Nice work on the name input screen - pause, then slide when holding direction, or hit one at a time, perfect. Nice handling of the space bar and Done button navigation too. I would like it scroll around to the other side though.
- Hurray for SFX volume! and Music toggle. I have the same in my game
- The level select page works well. I don't like the blink that happens though, hurts my eyes. Can it just change instead of clear then change? Aww man, doing it some more (scrolling up and down the list) just really kills my eyes!
- It looks like a genious auto-sizing preview of the level, well done!
- Looks like the preview is actually drawing each sprite? Interesting. The levels with a lot of tiles take longer to draw.
- What's the Level ID? I tried "12", didn't work.
- Wow, nice mini replay after finishing a level (or failing)!
- Would be nice if Resize Mode allowed for press-and-hold
- I had to pay attention to figure out the controls, but it only took a couple seconds. Good job with on-screen cues and graphics.
- Good work making the player finish a level before it's publishable, and cancelling the publishableness if any changes are made!
- I made a level, ID 1126, but it's not listed in my levels or on the main list, but putting in the ID worked. Oops, I had it still on Featured - putting on Browse and there it is, the one level from the past 24 hours
- I'm impressed, overall everything seems pretty professional and clean, well done, nice presentation, smooth, playable, pretty fun trying to get the best time in a few levels.
(I played on Roku 3 4200)

[Romans_I_XVI]

Thank you Komag for the detailed feedback!

On point number 3, what do you mean by blinking? Are you talking about the level preview and details along the right hand side?

And yes the level preview is drawing the sprite, the level is just a two dimensional array of integers. The game is what handles actually drawing everything.

And did you say the level you published isn't listed under "my levels", because it should be. Or did you end up getting that figured out?

I'm glad you enjoyed the game, and again, thanks for the detailed feedback. Always good to get feedback from other developers who really pay attention to details.

[joetesta]

I concur, this is really fun (and challenging!)  May I ask, did you build this using SceneGraph?
I played around with it for a while and the only issue I came across was that after I created a couple levels (1127 & 1128) they didn't show up on the "published in the past 24 hours" list (nothing did) although I was able to find them at the bottom of the "Published - Any Time" list.
Great job!

[Romans_I_XVI]

@joetesta

Great, glad you enjoy it!

And I see your two levels under published in the past 24 hours, are you sure you had it on the browse tab? And that you didn't have any other filters active. Maybe I should switch back to defaulting to the "browse" list instead of "featured". Because I've done it a couple times myself where I am looking for something and am momentarily confused why I can't find it, only to remember I'm looking at the featured section.

No, I didn't use scene graph. I used BrightScript, but I also recently created a game engine of sorts for the Roku. So that made making this game easier. You can find it here if you're interested...
https://github.com/Romans-I-XVI/Roku-gameEngine

Please note though, I'm still coming across bugs occasionally with the engine, there are some core elements I'm thinking of changing, and after working with it I realize there are some things I need to cut out and put in separate helper objects instead (such as the "camera" following an object feature).

[Romans_I_XVI]

@Komag

So the level details were in fact an object that I was deleting and recreating with new details when the user scrolls through the list, and I guess there might have been a frame in between where nothing was getting drawn? Either way, I switched it to just update the details in the existing object so it won't flicker like it was. If you're experiencing flickering on the rest of the screen though (I do on lower powered devices such as Roku stick) that is the Roku being quirky and tearing. I think it's mad that I'm creating bitmaps for the preview image. But it doesn't happen on my Roku 3.

And by the way, I like your level. I'm glad to see you had no problem figuring out how to utilize the different tile types to make an interesting level.

Also, I pushed an update with the changes mentioned as well as fixing SD mode issues.

[Komag]

"Romans_I_XVI" wrote:
And did you say the level you published isn't listed under "my levels", because it should be. Or did you end up getting that figured out?

I see it in "My Levels", but not on the main build screen - the big blue box just says "No Levels"
Hmm, just trying again now - I see that that space seems to hold temporary levels that haven't been published yet. Maybe add a title bar to the top "Unpublished".
Now when fast-scrolling up and down in the choose level menu, no more blinking of all the white letters/words, good! The actual level design preview still blinks, but that part makes sense. Actually, when the scrolling happens really fast, it ends up just black, no time to draw each one!
The level editor is pretty intuitive, good choice of controls I think, and good idea to have the timed tiles work by adding up multiple clicks 1-10, very simple and straightforward.

[Komag]

Wishlist:
- Preview info shows fastest time and who holds it
- Somewhere shows how many levels I've played, how many I've rated, how many I've ranked difficulty on, how many I've favorited.
- Some sort of incentive to play more levels and rate them, and rank difficulty (there shouldn't be any incentive to favorite more levels). Maybe a user rank system, where I try to earn badges or ranks or achievements or something.
- Some ranking or recognition of who has the fastest times overall, top leaderboards, highest percentage of fastest times, speedy user titles, or something like that. Only the player's best time for any given level should count as well, all the slower times should be ignored (and maybe even have that rule for the top ten listings, so one person can't fill up half or all of it)