Saint Feint City aka RetroVillage

July 4, 2010 Martin 38 comments

I just released my first application to the market.

The app is called “Saint Feint City” (aka RetroVillage) and is a study project with some friends. Feel free to test the game, its still early beta so please be nice

If you find bugs, feel free to send me the logcat output to saintfeintcity[at]gmail[dot]com.
If you wanna know how we have done something in the game, just ask and maybe I make a tutorial/post about it

Thank you!

[UPDATE]
We had to rename the application, which will take effect in the next update.
Anyway, we have now a new project page for the game.
I hope to see you there: http://www.saintfeintcity.org

tutorial none

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Written by Ian G. Clifton on July 4, 2010.

Awesome! I was just talking with my brother about the need for this type of game on Android. I considered starting on one, but it’s a *huge* undertaking, and I already have enough projects, haha.
Written by Malgon on July 4, 2010.

Hi,
Nice Game !

Why not thinking about adding it on YAAM Alternative Market : http://yaam.mobi ?
Written by Daz on July 6, 2010.

Why do you need access to read my phone state and identity?
Written by Martin on July 6, 2010.

Hi,
we store your village online (we export the game database). We need a unique identifier, so we use the IMEI, thats the unqiue device number. We just need that unique string so we know who stored the game and who is allowed to load the game.

We don’t know your name, we don’t know your email, so we respect your privacy!
Written by Sephy on July 9, 2010.

Hey guys,
Nice app, i’m getting through it as thouroughly as I can.
For now, I detected a bug if you do “Load town” without having saving one (yeah I know, stupid move, but I had to try it). Then I get a 0% loading, and finally black screen and stays like that for ever until I do back key. Stays black too when I relaunch the app if I haven’t done back key but left the app with home button.
The logcat gave me that :
W/System.err( 5071): org.json.JSONException: Value [] of type org.json.JSONArray cannot be converted to JSONObject
W/System.err( 5071): at org.json.JSON.typeMismatch(JSON.java:107)
W/System.err( 5071): at org.json.JSONObject.(JSONObject.java:158)
W/System.err( 5071): at org.json.JSONObject.(JSONObject.java:171)
W/System.err( 5071): at org.retrovillage.tasks.LoadSavedGamesTask.doInBackground(LoadSavedGamesTask.java:53)
W/System.err( 5071): at org.retrovillage.tasks.LoadSavedGamesTask.doInBackground(LoadSavedGamesTask.java:1)
W/System.err( 5071): at android.os.AsyncTask$2.call(AsyncTask.java:185)
W/System.err( 5071): at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:305)
W/System.err( 5071): at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:137)
W/System.err( 5071): at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1068)
W/System.err( 5071): at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:561)
W/System.err( 5071): at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1096)

Hope this will help. I’ll continue testing
Written by Eric on July 9, 2010.

Hello! I wonder how you have done your background when the game has start? You have done so you can move at any direction and still will the background be there.

I searching for a solution for me there I can move the background to the left or right; like Angry Birds.
Written by Martin on July 9, 2010.

@Sephy Thanks you for posting that. Its not realy a bug, its more the thing, that we forgot to display a text, if you have no city to load its a list without content. Anyway, I am lucky for every bug you report! Thank you!

@Eric: The “background” is a map with 30×30 cells. I wrote a tutorial about it: http://www.droidnova.com/create-a-scrollable-map-with-cells-part-i,654.html
Written by Eric on July 10, 2010.

Does it work well with big backgrounds for my game? My game would be something like the Flight Of The Hamsters.
Written by Sephy on July 10, 2010.

Now I testing the game. Even if it’s not a bug, I think of 2 improvements :
- a kind of mini-map, either in a corner of the screen, or inside a sliding drawer maybe, to know where we are on the map. ( a brown map with a green rectangle moving on it would be a good start)
- Your menu is quite nice!! I would have add a 2nd element in the main menu however, like an “help” to explain a bit about what you have to do in the game.
Written by Sephy on July 10, 2010.

You could improve your Toasts, because when it says “enable to build”, it doesn’t say why…
I’ve also had a crash but I can’t reproduce it…
(I’m testing on a Nexus One)
Written by sam on July 11, 2010.

Good job!
Works fine on N1 here… just one thing, logic is spelt with a “C” unless you are trying to be funky on the android market:)
Written by cybor on July 20, 2010.

Can I download the apk file somewhere, have no access to market with archos Android home tablet ?
Written by Martin on July 20, 2010.

Androidpit.com has an own market app where you can download RetroVillage and other apps, too.
The only thing is, that the market app is in the app store. Maybe there is an alternative download, but I cant find it at the moment.
Written by Martin on July 22, 2010.

We have released the new 0.3.1 version.

We have added a lot of things and we will continue working on new stuff.

Feel free to post ideas and erros or send a mail to the address mentioned in the post.

Greetings
Martin
Written by Sephy on July 25, 2010.

Hi Martin,
I will be happy to test this new version next week. Will our started town be available and upgraded or do we have to restart?
Written by Christian on July 25, 2010.

Hello! Really nice tutorials here.

I’m coding a game on my own with nearly no experience at all.
I wonder if you know how to move the background-image for example in x-direction or y-direction; depending on where my sprite-object is going. For example Hamster Climb (a app on market) has a background that changes upwards. Also the same with Abduction..

Thanks for the tip of this app and I hope you will help me. I have done my own version of RockScissorsPaper with no features at all, just a background and a sprite, just for your knowledge.
Written by Martin on July 25, 2010.

Well, you can treat the background image as a normal image. A related topoc is the scrollable map tutorial i have written here. There you can scroll above the map. Replace the map with the background and you are done.
Written by coreation on July 26, 2010.

so hej martin , didnt really found a place to ask but, here goes . did you ever tried Flixel . It’s kind of a platform to make games, started out as a flash platform, then ported to silverlight, but now apparently also available n ready for android ….. any taughts ?
Written by Martin on July 26, 2010.

Its not native, right? Its still flash. So its nothing whats really interesting for me
Written by coreation on July 26, 2010.

ow , so it’s just ported to the android platform ?
alright , anyway , kinda getting along with my ( modest tiny ) game, to understand the basics of the android apps n games. are there any sites on how to , once finished, launching your app to the market , n not dazzle into ” unknowing of existence – app” ? =D
Written by Martin on July 26, 2010.

A tutorial on how to publish an app?
Well, just create a developer account and you can start. Its just one form to fill out to publish your app. Nothing really worth to write a tutorial about.
Written by Sephy on July 26, 2010.

Hi Martin,
First comment about the new version :
Is it normal that when an update of the status of the power lines happens, all lines appears will a yellow lightning bolt on them…?
Written by Martin on July 26, 2010.

Hi,

it should only appear for a split second. Its not perfect this way, but we are working on that
Written by Sephy on July 27, 2010.

great. Yep, it just appear for maybe a third of a second.
Written by Martin on July 27, 2010.

We had to rename the application, which will take effect in the next update.
Anyway, we have now a new project page for the game.
I hope to see you there: http://www.saintfeintcity.org
Written by Sephy on July 28, 2010.

Great news, I’ll be following that. Would you be interested by a french translation of your application? If so, send me the english version of your strings.xml and i’ll do the french for you
If you’re ever interested in the application I wrote, look here : http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-mobile-zenika-jxzqA.aspx
I’m now thinking more about graphic applications, so you’re posts are most useful.
Written by Lee Fisher on August 11, 2010.

Nice game. I see it’s free. Does that mean you make no money from it? I know you can get money from free applications by adding advertising to them. Do you know can advertising can be added to a free app so you’ll get some money back?
Written by Johannes on August 12, 2010.

Great you managed to publish your first app!
Am I right that you or one of your team made a presentation about this game on the droidcamp in Berlin in may?
Kind regards
Johannes
Written by Martin on August 12, 2010.

A presentation… well if you wanna call the 2 minutes a presentation
And the guy was actually me
Written by Christian on August 12, 2010.

Hello again Martin! I trying to do a game myself, but Im totally stuck in OpenGL and all that (I really want OpenGL into my game). I have tested to code your RockScissorsPaper-tutorial into OpenGL, but I don’t have a clue how to code this, at all, I don’t even know what vectors and all OpenGL-functions are doing.

Is it possible that you can do a tutorial (or explain) there you code some similiar game, but in OpenGL.
Written by Martin on August 12, 2010.

You have no idea about OpenGL but still want to do that?
Than you should at least start with my OpenGL ES tutorial!
Written by Christian on August 12, 2010.

Oh nice! That one had I missed! Thank you and this great website!
Written by Fredrik on August 16, 2010.

Wow! Really nice web site I found here!
I have read the mini-game tutorial you wrote and I have a question that probably will be answered more quickly here.

In the RockScissorPaper you created so the objects moving around. For my own project I need it to “bouncing” like so it have a JumpHeight or something. Let’s say the object is expected to jump 1/4 of the views height, and then it sinking to the ground again, with increased/decreased speed.
Do you have any ideas how I can achieve this?

Thanks in advance!
Written by coreation on August 22, 2010.

you should do what the normal physics would do , which decrease the maxheight with each bounce ( simulating energyloss of hitting the ground ) and if you want you can also increase, or decrease your speed. you make the variables such as xVelocity , … so you have full control over them
Written by Fredrik on August 24, 2010.

Thanks coreation! I’m implementing this now.. Any other useful tip during this, for maximum effect?
Written by coreation on August 25, 2010.

well you could look at normal physics equations (which you prolly did) and then fill in the constants, and then playing with the variables. You should also look out for “eternal bounce” make sure the bounce stops when a certain treshold is reached ie : you dont have to perform a bounce if it’ll only bring you object 2 pixels higher, that effect wont hardly be noticed. so you can save cpu time
Written by Fredrik on August 25, 2010.

Okey, thank you coreation, and again to Martin! Awesome web site.
Written by Brando on December 6, 2010.

Congratulations on submitting your app, I just downloaded it and played for awhile and it’s surprisingly well done!

My one frustration with it is the size of the touch area when placing/stretching buildings, I have an old HTC Magic and maybe I have fat fingers but I just can’t seem to move the building square without involuntarily scrolling the map a couple times. My humble suggestion would be to enlarge the touchable area while keeping the graphic size the same, perhaps offsetting the arrows a little further as well. You can safely assume the user doesn’t want to scroll the map with such precision, and if they do they could use another part of the screen to scroll. Just my thoughts, great work.

Kudos again on your great game and great website!