Something new and something old

I've finally bought a new phone! One that actually works and let's me install stuff, and only crashes when there's a bug in the code. With an Xperia Play I also have an excuse to make more traditional games that uses a DPAD, though I might be limiting my market somewhat as the games won't work nearly as well with an onscreen gamepad.

As for the something old; the game in the picture is my old game Helium Boy that I've started porting to Android. I originally made it over 5 years ago when I was studying, and dear lord the code is a mess! It was originally made in Ogre3D, then when I started coding my engine a few years ago I ported it to this engine and released a version for Wii homebrew; however I barely touched the code back then and the engine has changed so much that it was almost as much work to update it to the current version, and even more work to try to clean it up.

I'm not really sure what to do with it. I think the game is pretty nice and works decently for mobiles, even with an onscreen gamepad, but I'll probably want to redo most of the graphics before I release it. And of course I have to make more levels and stuff, which I'm already supposed to be doing for Project GMC, so it'll have to wait.

Summer Edition

I've just released Trouser Trouble Summer Edition for Android. Woho. It turned out rather shitty though and is really just a shameless attempt of milking more money from the game; there is very few new features and little new content... I was planning to do a bit more but I got really bored with the project. In total it just took about two very slow weeks, but considering how little work I actually did I probably could have finished it in half the time. There are some new features though; you can now pull up skirts, but it didn't turn out very well so it's just available on some levels, and you can also pull off bikini tops on the beach-levels.

I'm also starting to realise that I really need to get a new phone. Whenever a game is bigger than a couple of megabytes it constantly fails to install on my phone, and the phone crashes randomly every now then; not exactly an ideal development platform...

I just realized that I hadn't updated my blog in ages, so I thought I might as well wright something. Basically I've just been playing games and watching TV for the last two months and enjoyed my unemployment, but I've finally started doing some creative stuff again.

About two weeks ago I started moving over an old half finished game, Project GMC, to Android. It works decently with an onscreen gamepad, and quite awesomely on an Xperia Play, though I probably need to optimise it a bit to get it running with a decent framerate on older phones. I'm not really sure what to do with the game now though; I'm pretty much done with the porting, and the android version of the engine now has almost all the features from the windows version. However the game itself is a half finnished mess, and I'd have to make lot's of content before I can release it, and I don't really have a vision for the game.

So instead I've started working on Trouser Trouble Summer Edition; basically I'm just going to milk the franchise by releasing an almost identical game with some different graphics, and watch the money roll in. I'm working on some small gameplay additions, but mostly I'll just be making new textures. Hopefully I'll be able to push it out in a week or two.

Finally

Trouser Trouble is now available for iPhone!

At first I got rejected on my fourth submission with the exact same motivation as the last time. "Specifically, we noticed your app's main concept is to pull down people's pants." even though I had changed so it wasn't even possible to pull down pants anymore. So I figured they hadn't even played the new version or read my messages. So I tried to contact them and complain that the latest version didn't get a fair review and say it wasn't possible to pull down pants and there was no nudity and that frankly it wasn't more sexual than an average 1920's comedy. After a few days The games status was in review again and shortly after it was available on sale on the iTunes. It still has a 17+ rating though which is rather silly, but I don't dare try to change it...

Now it will be interesting to see if the sales will be worth all the trouble.

Happy No Pants Day

Today is the international No Pants Day; a perfect time to play Trouser Trouble.

Anyway, I've just submitted a fourth version to Apple, and completly changed the game this time. You can no longer pull down pants at all. Instead people are walking by and their pants are falling off randomly, and the player has to pull them up again. This also removes any variety I had in the gameplay because none of the different level types I had fits with this concept and I haven't bothered to think up any new ones. But whatever. I've stopped caring about quality or sales a long time ago; I just want to see if it gets approved.

I kind of like the new description I wrote for the game though:
"A severe shortage of belts is plaguing the land and everybody's trousers are falling off. Use the touch screen to help pull them up again!"
And the message to the review people
"The game no longer let's you pull down pants. Instead the player provides a valuable service to society by helping to pull up people's pants and cover up the mild nudity."

So I guess it's back to waiting for another ten days or so... though I really should be starting a new project soon.

Rejection and Pornography

For the last few weeks I've been trying to get Trouser Trouble on the iTunes AppStore and just recieved my third rejection. When I first got the idea for Trouser Trouble I was certain that it would be impossible to get Apple to approve it for release on Iphone, and I only focused on the android version. However once the game was done it was a lot more harmless than I had originaly imagined and after reading Apple's Review Guidelines they actually seemed fairly reasonable I didn't see anything that would really conflict with Trouser Trouble. There's nothing in the guidelines that completely forbids nudity, and the game doesn't really show anything. So I decided to port it straight off and submitted it.

After ten days I got the following feedback:
We've completed the review of your app, but cannot post this version to the App Store because it did not comply with the App Store Review Guidelines, as detailed below:

18.1: Apps containing pornographic material, defined by Webster's Dictionary as "explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings", will be rejected

I wasn't really that surprised it got rejected and I had considered censoring it from the start, but never whould I have imagined that it would be classified as pornographic. I'm not really sure who is eroticly stimulated by the lowpoly characters, whose sexual organs, that are a few pixels in size, are sometimes visible for a frame or two. And of course the definition is silly, because it's based on what's "intended", and I should just be able to say that erotic stimluation was not my intention. But it wasn't all bad as it started a lot of funny jokes about me being in the porn industry.



Anyway for my next submission I added a pixelation filter as soon as the player pulls down any underwear. After another ten days I recieved the feedback; the game was no longer pornographic. However, now it violated the following rule : 16.1: Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected. I tried to ask some questions via the resolution center and also made sure that it had the highest possible age rating. But the only response I got was a generic reply saying "We encourage you to review your app content and evaluate whether you can modify the content to bring it into compliance with the Guidelines". Crude and objectionable are pretty vague terms butI did my best to modify the content. I removed the ability to pull down underwear and resubmitted the game.

And so today I have recieved the third rejection. Same rule violation; crude or objectionable content, but this time they have specified a bit more: "Specifically, we noticed your app's main concept is to pull down people's pants.". It only took them three times to notice that... They're still encouraging me to evaluate if I can modify the content to bring it into compliance with the Guidelines though; but I'd think that's pretty hard if their issue is with the main concept.

I'm considering if I should submit another version; where you pull up people's pants instead.

The Making of Trouser Trouble

The game has already been out on Android Market for two months now but I figured I might as well do little write-up about the project, since I've taken up the blog again.

It all started back in january. I was having lunch with a friend and we were talking about work and stuff and how nice it would be to make money without working. He casually suggested that I should start making games for Android. Having just returned to work at M&D and being generally uninterested in mobile phones I was rather dismissive of the idea and jokingly said that I would much rather keep working on my 3d pants removal technology. The words had hardly left my mouth before a brilliant idea struck me; to my combine pants removal tech with Androids touch screen interface and make game were you pull down people's pants.

That very same evening I downloaded the Android SDK and set to work, convinced this idea would make me rich (well maybe not really). I started porting my engine to Java, rewriting it file by file. It wasn't until a week later that someone told me about the ndk, and that it was actually possible to code in C++ for Android. By that time I had nearly gotten it running, and the official documentation pretty much advised against using the NDK anyway so I kept at it. I was willing to give Java the benefit of the doubt despite my extreme prejudice gainst all interpreted languages. After another week I had everything running in java on the platform. However, it was ridiculously slow. I installed the NDK, tried moving some of he most expensive functions to c++, and the difference in speed was almost silly. So then I started from scatch, and after a few days I had everything running smoothly in c++ and my hatred of java confirmed.

Then it was onto making the actual game. I didn't really have much of a plan for the gameplay but I figured it didn't meed much gameplay. A lot of people were weighing in and having a lot of different ideas, about different gamemodes and different types of clothes to remove and different thing to do to people once their clothes were off, but I wanted something fairly simple. I felt it was best to keep it to just pulling down pants. Partly because it was easier make that look good (as detailed in the post about the cloting deformations), but also because pulling down someones pants is less violent than forcibly tearing of their shirt in the middle of a street. It feels more like a simple practical joke, rather than attempted rape; and regardless what you might think I didn't really want to make a very offensive game. Also there is something inherently silly about people walking around with their pants around their ankles. As I realised that I wouldn't be able to make very sexy people with the hardware limitations and with my limited artistic skills, I though it better to aim for some mild sillyness than for sexual arousal.

In the end the gameplay wasn't really that interesting. I realized from the start that there would be a risk of the game becoming more of a onetime joke than something you play over and over, and therefore wouldn't be spread very much or get a high rating. I added a few different types of challenges and a combo system to encourage people to get a good highscore, but nothing really groundberaking. At this point I was getting a bit tired of spending all my free time working on the game and just wanted to get it over with. So I made a handful of characters, clothes and background, whipped up some rather ugly menues and released it as fast as possible.

The total development time was about two months. It was released on Android Market on the 2nd of March 2011. It has not made me rich... yet...