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[Ioncannon]

So I have been practicing Programming/Java ME and developing a game for cell phones (May have heard me talk about it in the Programming forum). Its been an "on and off" project for about a year now. I am contemplating if I should contact a distributer and see if I could actually sell the game.

It's called Cave Runner, you are a gem hunter in search of... well... gems! Dig through the blocks while avoiding the indestructible ones. Careful though, because the level is always moving down, and if you get pushed too far, the spikes will kill you. Collect gems to increase your score. The level moves faster as you near completion, and more indestructible blocks appear as you progress.

I know there are a few bugs that I have yet to fix; the character can get stuck and dig at nothing, sometimes items do not pick up, and the game can crash if you try to return to the main menu (I think this is due to my phone not having enough RAM cause it doesn't happen on my friend's).

I want to know what people think of this game before I try doing something big with it. Also I want to know how the screen size is scaling with other phones, and how it runs.

Anyway try it out and tell me what you think of this little game!

SCREEN SHOTS (Running in an Emulator)
Title Screen


In-Game


Ouch... Dieing



Download Here for Sony/Nokia Phones! Plus most phones since they use the proper standard.

Download Here for Motorola Phones! (They use different key codes for their shoulder buttons, one of the annoying thing's about developing for cell phones.)

(NOTE: Levels are capped at level 3. Game may act strangely or crash because it isn't a finished copy!)

[_r.u.s.s.]

mmm will check =)

[Blood-Pigggy]

That guy is hilarious.

[Scatty]

He looks almost like a mad killer with a chainsaw, judging by his spiteful grin

[Ioncannon]

Originally Posted by Scatty

He looks almost like a mad killer with a chainsaw, judging by his spiteful grin

:laugh: that made me laugh. Originally when I was jotting down ideas, the player used a "Disintegration Gun" to cut through the blocks. The first sprites looked silly because I didn't have enough room to fit both character and gun in 16*16 sprite, so I removed it from the final sprite.

[_r.u.s.s.]

ok, my phone is w710i

the text is too big, for example on the main screen i can see the image like you showed us but the text is so big that you can only see RESS ANY BUTTON TO C, but maybe my resolution was too small (176x220). this also occurs with text when you finish the level, want to leave to menu, etc. btw it freezed when i wanted to go to menu like on your phone as well. what i really disliked is that you can't turn off the music. sometimes happened that i couldn't pick up some ithems, like you wrote too. and i think that the difficulty very unbalanced, making the game really boring on beginning. and levels are pretty much the same, except for the color of the bricks. maybe you could add some more stuff to make it more interesting than digging up there and collecting items, like i dunno, monsters or such?

and btw, it ended on level 4 and not 3 o_O

[Ioncannon]

Originally Posted by _r.u.s.s.

ok, my phone is w710i

the text is too big, for example on the main screen i can see the image like you showed us but the text is so big that you can only see RESS ANY BUTTON TO C, but maybe my resolution was too small (176x220). this also occurs with text when you finish the level, want to leave to menu, etc. btw it freezed when i wanted to go to menu like on your phone as well. what i really disliked is that you can't turn off the music. sometimes happened that i couldn't pick up some ithems, like you wrote too. and i think that the difficulty very unbalanced, making the game really boring on beginning. and levels are pretty much the same, except for the color of the bricks. maybe you could add some more stuff to make it more interesting than digging up there and collecting items, like i dunno, monsters or such?

and btw, it ended on level 4 and not 3 o_O

Ok thanks for the info !

1. The reason for the text being so big is because I am using your phones "system font". This is the problem with cell phones, there is no standard. On some phones it may fit, on others it won't. I am thinking about converting all the system font stuff into bitmapped font and scale it to the screen at startup.

2. I see, so it wasn't just my phone. Well I got to figure out what is causing the crash.

3. Will probably do what most games do, ask if you would like sounds on at startup.

4. What do you mean by difficulty unbalanced? I understand the beginning is slow, so I will increase the starting speed of the level.

5. Technically the number of indestructible blocks "SHOULD" increase. I'll think of something to add to spice up the levels.

6. lol error on my part since the first level is level 0, and I set the cap at 3, so 4 levels in total: 0, 1, 2, 3.

Questions though: Was the game field displaying as it should? Was it a rectangle, and was width/height ratio the same as the one in the screen shot? I have noticed on some phones the game field get squished to like 5 blocks vertically. Also, was the score and lives labels overlapping the game field?

[_r.u.s.s.]

here are photos of the scaling (and character cannot go beyond the screen)

btw by unbalanced i mean it was too easy at the beginning but later on when it got better it was too random, i mean if it's gonna be a game for score, it will really depend where will the bonuses spawn. and wouldn't differ much=/

[Kugerfang]

Is the guy holding an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device?