Android PatFute
While reading my past blog posts due to its anniversary, I found in one of my posts from 10 years ago (mid-year 2005!) that International PatFute day is July 7th.
For some context, about 11 or 12 years ago, when first learning programming, I was teaching myself by writing a game for windows (in Visual Basic, no less). Having way more maths skills than artistic ones, it ended up being a physics simulator thinly veiled as a soccer game - the edges of the pitch are fixed solid lines, and the ball plus all the players are circles, bouncing off everything else.
Then, as you can see in my blog, I wrote it again when learning C++ and 3D graphics - this time the players were cylinders, and the ball gained height on kick, but everything else worked the same way. Little did I know, that this foreshadowed the real sport of Bubble ball many years later.
When first learning web development, I then re-wrote a javascript version using web canvas, but sadly the code for that has been lost. I later tried adapting the 2D game to touch screen, coding an iOS version (now learning Objective C) but never got it to a stage I'd put it on the app store - plus I didn't like having to borrow apple stuff to write and test it, so that version never saw the light of day, although I did end up trying to work around that with a PlayN version (old code on github) however that setup proved more painful than first hoped, and the PlayN project itself lost popularity. side-note: it seems to still be in active development though, so perhaps I should take another look.
Anyway, this leads me to International PatFute day 2015: finding some spare time over the last week, I decided to give it a proper shot, this time brushing up my Android development.
It's now available to test in the play store, so I'm looking for people with Android phones or tablets to try it out. Just to set expectations at the right level: I'm a coder, in no way artistically inclined - so don't expect anything from the graphics side of things. I'm keen to get playability feedback though: did anything crash? does the physics work ok? are the controls as expected? was it fun?
In addition: how it works on other devices (I only have access to my Nexus 5 right now, and an N7 tablet in a few weeks, but more screen sizes and aspect ratios would be good. Plus of course, any features you'd want (more teams? different game options? scoreboards / achievements / stats?), or suggestions on what graphics are actually worth trying to put an effort into.
For those happy to test: more details are available in the "Touch Footy" Google+ community (that's how they control test app access). I plan to keep working on this a few times before uni starts, and I'm assuming some time after that too - so for the non-testers, hopefully this will eventually come to the proper play store, available for everyone! I renamed the app too, PatFute is a bit non-obvious, and I felt I had to capitalize on the 'touch' pun...
And to the coders: I have a private github repo with all the code - I plan to publish it shortly after the app reaches the public play store, but I can add you to it before as well if you're interested.
Happy International PatFute day!
For some context, about 11 or 12 years ago, when first learning programming, I was teaching myself by writing a game for windows (in Visual Basic, no less). Having way more maths skills than artistic ones, it ended up being a physics simulator thinly veiled as a soccer game - the edges of the pitch are fixed solid lines, and the ball plus all the players are circles, bouncing off everything else.
Then, as you can see in my blog, I wrote it again when learning C++ and 3D graphics - this time the players were cylinders, and the ball gained height on kick, but everything else worked the same way. Little did I know, that this foreshadowed the real sport of Bubble ball many years later.
When first learning web development, I then re-wrote a javascript version using web canvas, but sadly the code for that has been lost. I later tried adapting the 2D game to touch screen, coding an iOS version (now learning Objective C) but never got it to a stage I'd put it on the app store - plus I didn't like having to borrow apple stuff to write and test it, so that version never saw the light of day, although I did end up trying to work around that with a PlayN version (old code on github) however that setup proved more painful than first hoped, and the PlayN project itself lost popularity. side-note: it seems to still be in active development though, so perhaps I should take another look.
Anyway, this leads me to International PatFute day 2015: finding some spare time over the last week, I decided to give it a proper shot, this time brushing up my Android development.
It's now available to test in the play store, so I'm looking for people with Android phones or tablets to try it out. Just to set expectations at the right level: I'm a coder, in no way artistically inclined - so don't expect anything from the graphics side of things. I'm keen to get playability feedback though: did anything crash? does the physics work ok? are the controls as expected? was it fun?
In addition: how it works on other devices (I only have access to my Nexus 5 right now, and an N7 tablet in a few weeks, but more screen sizes and aspect ratios would be good. Plus of course, any features you'd want (more teams? different game options? scoreboards / achievements / stats?), or suggestions on what graphics are actually worth trying to put an effort into.
For those happy to test: more details are available in the "Touch Footy" Google+ community (that's how they control test app access). I plan to keep working on this a few times before uni starts, and I'm assuming some time after that too - so for the non-testers, hopefully this will eventually come to the proper play store, available for everyone! I renamed the app too, PatFute is a bit non-obvious, and I felt I had to capitalize on the 'touch' pun...
And to the coders: I have a private github repo with all the code - I plan to publish it shortly after the app reaches the public play store, but I can add you to it before as well if you're interested.
Happy International PatFute day!
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