So, Lone Pong, the project that I’ve been working on for months finally released on GooglePlay, made it my first mobile game I personally released on the platform. From the last DevLog post to now, the game has been through many polishing, visual redesign, some rewrites, and publication deadlock by not knowing how release procedure works nowadays in GooglePlay.
But it’s done, all done. I don’t think it will be totally fun, but still, I’m confident that the gameplay is unique enough to attract people to try. So I’ll try to share it on a few social media groups or channels I can get into.
The biggest take from this project is to make a plan beforehand and stick to it, if you don’t want to suffer.
Anyway, here’s the links:
Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google LLC.
itch.io and the itch.io logo are trademarks of itch corp
And here’s a gameplay video:
Too lazy to cut it into a shorter video…
What’s next? I’m considering experimenting on making 3D games in Unity, or writing new interactive story with Twine, or perhaps getting back to RPG Maker and make my purchase of the software worth it. But I think, I should learn some basics of Unity 3D and story writing first before deciding on my next portfolio project.
I’m also applying to several companies and job offerings for financial stability and proper hand-on experience in game industry, but so far, nothing conclusive. I think I’ll keep planning for self-learning and solo-developing, while also finding a way to make some money. Keep moving forward.
So I’m working on this project I call ‘Lone Pong’ I’ve been working on for months. The idea comes from a lesson from a game programming online course by DiLO Academy on creating a pong game with the Unity engine. I didn’t finish the course by the way. Every time I tested the project, I found myself playing pong alone.
So I thought that I could modify the script, make it a mobile game controlled by touch, single-player, add a chat-like mechanism every time the ball bounce, and monetize it with an ad. That seemed easy. Just a few more things to learn, right?
Ha-ha.
Read the title.
Over months of frustration, distraction, and low motivation, I learned these kinds of stuff (most I’ll forget in days):
How to implement effective and responsive multi-touch control on mobile devices. It’s the hardest thing in the project, I think, because many of its concepts are still beyond my comprehension. And when I asked a friend to test the touch control, he said it wasn’t responsive enough. Another reason why touch-screen is a terrible controller; It’s technically difficult.
How to develop for mobile, especially Android. I learned stuff like SDK requirements, device screen resolution, orientation rotation, the difference between screen coordinate with world coordinate (ask me that, and I’ll still be confused), and the best way to test your game for mobile. Unity Remote app is quite convenient if you know the right setup, and your game doesn’t mind the dropped down frame-rate. Really, it’s just projecting display to the mobile device. But for this project, Unity Remote couldn’t simulate the responsiveness of the touch control I wanted to implement, so I stopped using it. Instead, I save the APK file on OneDrive, access the file from the OneDrive mobile app, download, and install. A little bit complicated, but it works for me.
To make chatboxes appear every time the ball bounces to a racket, I learned layout components so the chatboxes could show aesthetically correct. There’s a lot of things to think about the mechanism as to how and when a chatbox appears. After a lot of trials, it’s still imperfect.
To show a scripted chat conversation, I learned how to read from a text file (a concept I learned the hard-dysfunctional way before finding the easier-better way) and store the data from the file to a List (a data format I’ve just learned).
To show a log of the conversation, I had to learn about scroll rect/scroll view. It needed a long time until I get it working properly.
I have to re-learn how to implement audio and manage UI in the game. As simple as it may sound, a toggle button is a damn-difficult problem.
Initial ball placement need readjustment
Of course, there’s a million little things I had to learn and re-learn. Not to mention a bunch of stuff I have to learn to add to this project, like social media sharing, tutorial, mobile-ad implementation, animation, polishing, etc. Sure the best practice is to learn only one thing per project. But if we just want to learn a feature or technique, isn’t it better to implement it to a halfway project than start from scratch? Well, sometimes it is. Next time, I’ll try to limit new things I want to implement.
I’ve been trying to always have a non-zero percent progress per day for this project. But I think it’s still unproductive. I feel that there’s a lot of impediment to my progress that makes me vulnerable to distraction and procrastination.
Lack of technical skill to make this game visually fancy should not be one of them. Sure, my design skill is limited, but the project never intended to showcase its visual beauty, rather its gameplay and writing. Still, I feel the game will impress fewer people with its current visual style.
I also lost some motivation to give 100% in this project throughout the writing process for the conversation. I thought that I can’t make an engaging and compelling dialog to showcase. From there on, I started to think that this game is a project that only need to be finished; not promoted. Still, I want to try share and ad features. However, I have some idea that may could improve the writing.
But the largest hurdle in this project (besides Genshin Impact and Mobile Legend), is my own laptop. I’ve met blue screen twice! On Windows 10! It makes me rethink my game-dev learning plan. Should I hold off from using Unity until I have enough money to buy a more suitable PC? Should I just focusing more on using lighter game engine like Twine or Construct?
The answer lies after I finish this darn project.
Anyway, this devlog has become too long and whiny. But with this, I can see the progress I’ve been going through and the things I need to fix. Also, I think I have a grasp idea now on what part of my game-dev journey needs help.
Untuk tool yang mengklaim bisa bikin banyak hal, menambahkan audio dan menata visual, bahkan styling yang cukup sederhana, dalam Twine cukup menyiksa.
Styling sederhana seperti alignment dan heading malah mengganggu transisi teks. Untuk menambahkan audio tidak ada macro-nya! Efek transisi passage tidak mudah untuk diubah-ubah. Setidaknya, ini yang terjadi saat saya menggunakan format Harlowe 2.0.1 dalam Twine 2.
Memang sih bisa pakai CSS dan Javascript karena Twine ini web/HTML based. Tapi implementasinya berdasarkan kerangka Twine (dan format Harlowe) yang membuat kode CSS dan Javascript yang dibuat tidak berjalan sesuai harapan (memang sih ngatur CSS biar sesuai harapan biasanya repot, tapi ini jadi lebih repot lagi). Saya baca sekilas di forum-forum, banyak yang mengeluhkan soal ini, terutama soal audio.
Karena saya tidak ingin terlalu berlama-lama di proyek ini, saya memutuskan untuk menjadikan ini text based saja. Rencana menambahkan audio dan efek-efek visual di-scrap. Mungkin saya perlu pindah belajar engine atau tool lain, tapi saya akan coba sekali lagi pakai Twine. Just one more push. Sepertinya memang perlu belajar dari basic principle lewat tutorial-tutorial. Mungkin juga perlu belajar format lain dalam Twine selain Harlowe 2.
Anyway, saya sudah memperlihatkan cerita interaktif ini ke beberapa teman, dan mendapatkan beberapa respon. Kebanyakan akan saya tampung untuk membuat karya selanjutnya yang lebih baik.
Beberapa pilihan kurang ada suspense-nya, jadi tidak merasakan resiko apa-apa saat memilih.
Tone cerita kurang konsisten. Tengahnya komedi tapi endingnya serius. Mungkin perlu dijaga agar konsisten komedi terus atau serius terus.
Tidak ada audio yang mendukung mood. Masalah teknis sih.
Banyak yang tidak bisa menemukan pilihan menujugood better ending. Kebanyakan dapat ending mati dibegal. Sepertinya pilihan menuju ending yang saya harapkan terlalu sempit dan saya rasanya bisa menduga bagian mana yang membuat hal ini.
Kurang panjang. Mungkin kalau nulisnya udah lebih ahli atau lebih rajin.
Pada halaman ‘live’, banyak yang merasa perpindahan halaman terlalu cepat. Sepertinya saya bisa segera tangani ini.
Menurut saya, penting untuk fokus dalam satu aspek saja saat belajar membuat sesuatu. Terlepas kritik dan masukan yang akan kita terima. Saya tadinya ingin memberikan banyak efek visual dan audio yang saya anggap sederhana dalam proyek ini. Tapi setelah menemukan kebuntuan teknis, saya anggap proyek ini hanya untuk latihan membuat cerita dan membangun percabangannya. Yaitu dengan membuat cerita utama, kemudian mengembangkan pilihan-pilihan percabangan yang memperkaya cerita.
Dari fokus tersebut, yang saya pelajari adalah: bener kata orang, bikin cerita percabangan itu berat! Selanjutnya aku akan coba bikin percabangan yang sedikit, tidak sporadis, teratur, tapi konsekuensial, atau kerasa ‘beda’-nya dan nambah pengalaman pembacanya.
Untuk proyek selanjutnya, saya akan belajar beberapa basic terlebih dahulu.
Entah kenapa saya merasa harus mengasah skill membuat cerita terlebih dahulu. Jadi saya pakai Twine 2 untuk membuat cerita interaktif berbasis HTML.
Saya niatnya membuat cerita bercabang yang sederhana. Kata internet (atau entah tahu dari mana), bikin cerita yang linier dulu, baru dibikin cabang.
Cukup simple sih. Idenya sebagian besar sudah ada dikepala, tinggal dituangkan. Saya ingin menceritakan tentang masyarakat yang penuh ketakutan, sekalipun hal-hal supranatural yang biasanya menakutkan sudah tidak lagi dianggap menakutkan.
Ini sedikit banyak dipengaruhi oleh pandangan saya terhadap situasi perpolitikan di negeri ini. Namanya pengangguran. Karena ga fokus di kerjaan, jadinya banyak nyerap berita-berita negatif dalam negeri. Apalagi di situasi pandemi dan post-pemilu 2019 yang menyibakkan banyak realita miris dari NKRI ini.
Langsung aja cerita challengenya:
Belum bisa fokus dan mengelola prioritas. Masih suka stunned kalau overwhelmed. Padahal udah bikin post tentang warcry bulan lalu -_-.
Keep it simple itu susah! Selalu saja ada ide branching yang bikin tulisannya jadi banyak. Awalnya saya mencoba untuk mendokumentasikan branching di dokumen naskah utama. Di tengah-tengah, jadi nyerah. Langsung ketik aja di Twine.
Karya ini saya buat sebebas mungkin sebenarnya. Jadi, masih banyak kekurangan. Misalnya, saya biarkan sudut pandang pilihan berpindah-pindah. Harusnya cerita interaktif itu pakai narasi sudut pandang kedua. Pakai sudut pandang orang ketiga agak kurang personal. Ini udah sudut pandang ketiga, pindah-pindah lagi :p
Saya coba meminta teman untuk melakukan tes dan menguji ceritanya. Saat ini pun saya sedang dibantai 😀 Saya belum tahu bagaimana nanti menerapkan masukan-masukannya.
Sementara sudah saya publish di itch.io untuk dites teman-teman dekat, sambil saya perbaiki dan kembangkan lagi terutama di sisi audio dan visual.
