[Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

A very early version of my new game Ghosts Overboard is now available in the extras-devel repository. It is playable but has currently only one level.

The story: A group of ghosts was sailing with their ghost ship when a storm hit them. The ghosts fell overboard and were scattered across the nearby waters. It is now your task to rescue them. The ghost ship is controlled by tilting the device. Pick up the ghosts and avoid the rocks. If the ship hits a rock, all ghosts in it will fall overboard again.

http://ghostsoverboard.garage.maemo....618-200606.png

As usual for extras-devel this game cannot yet be fully trusted to be safe. I have not ran any battery drain tests, but the battery usage may be a bit heavy when the game is active. It is paused automatically, though, when going to background. I would not recommend to leave it to foreground for long when not playing, unless pausing it.

More levels, with octopuses, and high score (time) are planned for future versions. I'll let you know in this thread and the game's homepage when they arrive.

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome in the bugtracker.

Re: [Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

Looks interesting... :)

Re: [Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

Had a play...... nice concept I hope it gets fleshed out more, one thing it is slightly annoying to have to have the n900 completely flat... a flat level of 45 degrees would seem more natural rather than having to bend right over.

Re: [Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

Thanks for the idea. It would indeed be more comfortable that way. Perhaps a bit less intuitive, though. I'll experiment with it someday to see how it feels.

Re: [Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

Well, you could recalibrate the accelerometers when paused or game started (IIRC Mokomaze does it)

Re: [Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

Version 0.2.1 is now in extras-devel

New features:
four new levels with octopuses (moving obstacles)
vibration effects (from menu, off by default)

http://ghostsoverboard.garage.maemo....712-034400.png

The vibration settings are not saved yet. (But they survive changing or restarting level, unlike in the version 0.2.0 that I released to extras-devel earlier today...)

No calibration of accelometers yet. My first attempt to add calibration when returning from pause failed miserably, either I'm not doing it right or I just hate the effect... I'll look into it (or "calibrate" button) later, though. May take a while, as I'm working on porting this game to N950/N9 now.

Re: [Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

Version 0.3.0 is now in extras-devel

The game is now fullscreen. Tap the screen to pause and show the new menu. The victory screen and "about" information are integrated into the game view too. Vibration settings are now saved. To save battery when idle, the game autopauses after 15 min has passed since level start or return from paused state.

http://ghostsoverboard.garage.maemo....728-212813.png


I didn't manage to create a working "go to background" button. I got around it by adding a "show status bar" button that reveals the system Task button...



http://ghostsoverboard.garage.maemo....728-210640.png

The Harmattan version will be available soon.

Re: [Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

The Harmattan version is now available from the game's entry page on the Meego Coding Competition 2011 as a binary package. The game's web pages have links to the source code. (The code is not identical to that of the maemo version.)

The Harmattan version discussion thread at Meego forums.

Re: [Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

The Maemo version of Ghosts Overboard is now in the extras-testing repository. If anyone is interested in testing it, here's its thumbs up/down page.

Re: [Announce] Ghosts overboard (beta)
 

Version 0.4.0 for Maemo is finally available from extras-devel. It has highscore and another levelset with 5 levels.

I'll wait a while before moving it to extras-testing, to give time for bugs to be found. (And to see if the ongoing discussion on maemo-developers list about testers will result in me being able to promote the previous version to extras...)

The N9/N950 version is available from the Nokia Store.