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Hey HN! Thanks for the feedback! I studied graphic design, played/made music as a hobby, and became passionate about coding (mostly self taught), so much that I

by phest 13y ago

Hey HN! Thanks for the feedback! I studied graphic design, played/made music as a hobby, and became passionate about coding (mostly self taught), so much that I tend to integrate code into everything I do, including in the design process. The idea for the game happened while coding, all the art in the game is procedural (except the wiggly lines in the center of the planets, that's the only in-game texture), and the trailer is generated in one swoop by code (by automating the game engine and outputting every frame as a png file). Eliss Infinity is a reboot of Eliss which was an early iPhone game (2009) which took me 5 months of work (+2 months to learn and build libraries in OpenGL and Objective-C). I polished it, made it more accessible, added a tutorial, added new modes, new music, a text-free interface... made it universal (there was only one resolution when Eliss came out), added Game Center, sync ... All this work took me more than twice the work I put into the original game. Let me know if you have any questions.

woebtz 13y ago
Hey phest! Great looking game! It has got a really unique style. Is the music/sound procedurally generated too? What is the process like for creating the soundtrack for the trailer or effects for the game? What's the squiggly black icon for/go to in the options list (Settings, Leaderboards, About, goes to a black screen???)?
- phest 13y ago
  Thanks! Music and sound were all made with Logic and a software synths. Would love to get into procedural music eventually though. The process for the sound was grabbing some video of the game, throw that in Logic, and hunt for sounds that match by tweaking the synth. The process for the music sometimes start by drawing semi randomly on the piano roll and listen to find for good bits, or sometimes by playing around with the midi keyboard, then tweak it to taste. One trick I often use is to stick to the white keys, it makes it easier when you don't know solfege like me. :) (But it does restrict you a lot harmonically.) Once I have a good riff then I move to a riff to add on top, and so on. This process can take me days to finish one song, but time seems to move very fast (faster than during a focused coding session).
htp 13y ago
Just wanted to say I loved the original Eliss. Can’t wait to give this a shot later tonight!
smickie 13y ago
First of all. This looks like great game (after reading the description on there), I'll be downloading. You may want to put a description of the gameplay on the site. I was only compelled to buy it after the video + gameplay instructions. Secondly, this is hugely inspirational. Can I ask how you taught yourself OpenGL?
- phest 13y ago
  Thanks! About OpenGL I don't know if I'm a good example to follow, in my case I mostly needed to understand how to setup, send vertices to OpenGL, set colors, activate blending, once I figured that out I abstracted that stuff away in a Processing-like API (setColor, drawRect, translate...) so I could forget about all that stuff. I figured things out mostly by skimming through this book [1], looking at the Processing code base, OpenGL tutorials, Stack Overflow... For the odd texture I still use the Texture2D class from Apple's examples. Note that at the time there were not many good OpenGL libraries for iOS, now things are different, OpenFrameworks works on iOS, there's Cinder, etc. Had I started a year later I probably could have skipped all that stuff instead of building my own library. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Mobile-3D-Graphics-Kaufmann-Computer/dp/0123737273 http://www.amazon.com/Mobile-3D-Graphics-Kaufmann-Computer/d... [2] http://processing.org/ http://processing.org/
  - moondowner 13y ago
    Pretty nice work, I like the approach that you took. Now that you know OpenGL if you choose some other library in future, you will have a better understanding how it works underneath; in my opinion it's good to do things 'the hard way' at least one time - in order to grasp a deeper understanding.
brightghost 13y ago
So surprised (pleasantly) to see this! The original Eliss is still one of my favorite games. Last I heard though you were working on Faraway? What's the status of that project?
- phest 13y ago
  Still working on it! :)
Mithaldu 13y ago
I found myself annoyed that after the beautiful and charming video you hide the "APPLE ONLY" bit behind the first scroll-down. It is not a big thing, but it has soured me a bit on any future products i might see with the name little eyes on it.
- Gracana 13y ago
  If you think the developer is taunting you with that, I think that's on you, not them.
  - Mithaldu 13y ago
    I don't and i'm not sure how you got the idea. It only speaks to me of a developer who at worst focuses so much on apple products that they don't even consider that other platforms might exist, or at best is slightly distracted and might be able to make use of an oversight being pointed out. In either case, whenever i see their name in the future, i'll have to look first whether their product runs on any of my devices, or whether watching their ad will just be a small waste of time leading possibly to unfullfillable desires.
    - Gracana 13y ago
      I thought you were saying you'd avoid them out of spite. Anyway, yeah, if they don't make apps for your device, it makes sense that you might not give them a look next time.
- phest 13y ago
  Sorry it made you feel that way, it's nothing personal against non Apple-y things :) I hope to be able to ship to Android too soonish.
  - Mithaldu 13y ago
    Cheers, that's nice to hear. :D Though, i guess i expressed it poorly. I didn't mean to imply that you intentionally hid it, just that the way you laid it out hid it to the average user no matter what and since you probably have both devices, weren't even aware that an important piece of information wasn't available until after the sales pitch. :)
eliteraspberrie 13y ago
It's inspiring to read success stories of indie developers. Thanks for sharing and best of luck.

by phest 13y ago

woebtz 13y ago

Hey phest! Great looking game! It has got a really unique style. Is the music/sound procedurally generated too? What is the process like for creating the soundtrack for the trailer or effects for the game? What's the squiggly black icon for/go to in the options list (Settings, Leaderboards, About, goes to a black screen???)?

phest 13y ago
Thanks! Music and sound were all made with Logic and a software synths. Would love to get into procedural music eventually though. The process for the sound was grabbing some video of the game, throw that in Logic, and hunt for sounds that match by tweaking the synth. The process for the music sometimes start by drawing semi randomly on the piano roll and listen to find for good bits, or sometimes by playing around with the midi keyboard, then tweak it to taste. One trick I often use is to stick to the white keys, it makes it easier when you don't know solfege like me. :) (But it does restrict you a lot harmonically.) Once I have a good riff then I move to a riff to add on top, and so on. This process can take me days to finish one song, but time seems to move very fast (faster than during a focused coding session).

htp 13y ago

Just wanted to say I loved the original Eliss. Can’t wait to give this a shot later tonight!

smickie 13y ago

First of all. This looks like great game (after reading the description on there), I'll be downloading. You may want to put a description of the gameplay on the site. I was only compelled to buy it after the video + gameplay instructions. Secondly, this is hugely inspirational. Can I ask how you taught yourself OpenGL?

phest 13y ago
Thanks! About OpenGL I don't know if I'm a good example to follow, in my case I mostly needed to understand how to setup, send vertices to OpenGL, set colors, activate blending, once I figured that out I abstracted that stuff away in a Processing-like API (setColor, drawRect, translate...) so I could forget about all that stuff. I figured things out mostly by skimming through this book [1], looking at the Processing code base, OpenGL tutorials, Stack Overflow... For the odd texture I still use the Texture2D class from Apple's examples. Note that at the time there were not many good OpenGL libraries for iOS, now things are different, OpenFrameworks works on iOS, there's Cinder, etc. Had I started a year later I probably could have skipped all that stuff instead of building my own library. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Mobile-3D-Graphics-Kaufmann-Computer/dp/0123737273 http://www.amazon.com/Mobile-3D-Graphics-Kaufmann-Computer/d... [2] http://processing.org/ http://processing.org/
- moondowner 13y ago
  Pretty nice work, I like the approach that you took. Now that you know OpenGL if you choose some other library in future, you will have a better understanding how it works underneath; in my opinion it's good to do things 'the hard way' at least one time - in order to grasp a deeper understanding.

brightghost 13y ago

So surprised (pleasantly) to see this! The original Eliss is still one of my favorite games. Last I heard though you were working on Faraway? What's the status of that project?

phest 13y ago
Still working on it! :)

Mithaldu 13y ago

I found myself annoyed that after the beautiful and charming video you hide the "APPLE ONLY" bit behind the first scroll-down. It is not a big thing, but it has soured me a bit on any future products i might see with the name little eyes on it.

Gracana 13y ago
If you think the developer is taunting you with that, I think that's on you, not them.
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  I don't and i'm not sure how you got the idea. It only speaks to me of a developer who at worst focuses so much on apple products that they don't even consider that other platforms might exist, or at best is slightly distracted and might be able to make use of an oversight being pointed out. In either case, whenever i see their name in the future, i'll have to look first whether their product runs on any of my devices, or whether watching their ad will just be a small waste of time leading possibly to unfullfillable desires.
  - Gracana 13y ago
    I thought you were saying you'd avoid them out of spite. Anyway, yeah, if they don't make apps for your device, it makes sense that you might not give them a look next time.
phest 13y ago
Sorry it made you feel that way, it's nothing personal against non Apple-y things :) I hope to be able to ship to Android too soonish.
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  Cheers, that's nice to hear. :D Though, i guess i expressed it poorly. I didn't mean to imply that you intentionally hid it, just that the way you laid it out hid it to the average user no matter what and since you probably have both devices, weren't even aware that an important piece of information wasn't available until after the sales pitch. :)

eliteraspberrie 13y ago

It's inspiring to read success stories of indie developers. Thanks for sharing and best of luck.