It took almost 9 month but finally the project was finished. I proud to announce Spin - A Minimal Art Memory Game based on the great Openframework Library. Enclosed please find some free promo codes. The first can try it out
I hope you enjoy it! Feedback is always appreciated
Thank you for the support and help!
Thanks for sharing, Iām very curious! If you have any stories to share regarding game development with openFrameworks, Iād be very interested as Iām working on something myself (in a very early pre-embryonic stage).
Thanks for trying out the game :D! Well openframework is suitable to create a game but its maybe more time consuming. The plus is that you get to know a lot of stuff. During the development I made a Prototype based on Threejs which can also be found under http://spin-gmdev.rhcloud.com after this step I started the development of the mobile version. For me it was clear to use open frameworks. I developed on Mac but used the desktop version initial to make sure the core/common part is portable. The full GUI stack was developed native but I even tried initial to create my own GUI stack. The problem was mostly related to animation thats why I removed it and replaced it with the OS-specific GUI elements. But the core parts of the game was cross platform. It includes all the parts with color placement/picking, level generation game logic, input/output and file handling. The newest OF version supports web as well via emscripten so you even can run the project now in the browser (v 0.9). Challenging was the 3d Orientation part and the 3d picking especially the math background. The project incl. prototype took ~580 hours and was developed in spare times in 9 month.
Would I use OF again for a game? Yeah but it depends on the style. If I would need heavy physics I probably would use unreal engine. For smaller scaled games like Spin i would go with it again but this time make the GUI stack portable as well to support more platforms. This would increase the work time of course but probably pays off later.
All in all experience was fun, community very helpful. For CPU & performance consider to reduce the draw calls as much as possible and use VBO & FBO to improve performance. Depending on the success I probably will put the cross platform part on github. I will post it than here but I donāt know the exactly dateā¦
Thanks for the ellaborate response!
I havenāt had time yet to try out the game longer than 2 mins. but once Iāve played it longer Iāll share my thoughts on it!
It sounds like thereās quite a steep learning curve in order to develop games in openframeworks. One step at a time . Did you have a lot of experience 9 months ago (either with c++ or openframeworks) or was this sort of your batism by fire?
Inwork as a software developer and on my daily based i program mostly in javascript, swift, objc, now c#ā¦ C++ was always little alien to me but after leaging and returning again there was the point and it made click in my headā¦ Depending on how feature rich you are using c++ e.g i mostly try to avoid templates currentlyā¦ But modt gain in c++ i got within this 9 months; of gourse inknow several software pattern and the concept of object oriented programming so this helps a lotā¦ I like c++ because it makes you feel like an engineer, at the beginning stage i recomment you to use an ide line xcode or visual studio which supports an debugger out of the box. For c++ programming i recomment you to understand variable differences between pointer, references and values as well as memory managment and so on, important for graphic applications are always the reduction of draw calls. If you are creating an project and it takes some time you get better and better ā¦ As usual it just needs time! Ithe reason why i used openframework was beacause of the way how to use itā¦ Its s minimal library somehow whith a lot of great functions. That minimalized drives me for that frameworkā¦ For big project as a solo developer i probably would go with an total engine in case of an game but like spin fits totaly for an3d project. For 2d things are even easierā¦ If dou never developed something with it try first a 2d application and moce than to 3d - i mostly create games so thats my personal opinionā¦ Time is always an factor! You can archieve everything! Its just a matter of time!!!
At first glance, it looks nice, I like my puzzles minimal and light. Itās a real nice touch to the regular āmemoryā games. I donāt think I have ever seen it before, so you scored on originality.
The tutorial is a bit odd, I think this is because I can already do everything before I clicked next. So I already removed and replaced colors while fiddling around, but still needed to click next and read the stuff I already figured out. In terms of game-design, maybe this can be a bit more fun than reading instructions and doing afterwards.
The starting cube is a bit small, it feels a bit off. I think you used the same size for every cube, maybe itās an idea to scale the individual cubes to make the final cube the same size every time.
All in all I really like it, donāt get me wrong. I may sound negative but i am just shooting the things that popped up in my mind. You did something I still need to get of my bucketlist - finishing an actual game! I will report back after I played longer than 10 mins and got to the more difficult levels.
Thanks a lot for your feedback! You are right the tutorial is not a step by step experience. I was thinking its should be suitable for people who prefer to skip it somehow without an additional buttonā¦
Levels get harder as soon as you pass the first 3 levelsā¦
. Did you have a lot of experience 9 months ago (either with c++ or openframeworks) or was this sort of your batism by fire?