[LaunchingPadTristan]

Hi everyone!

I'm Tristan from Launching Pad Games. We're a tiny independent studio based in New Zealand, where (I can confirm) hobbits really do roam the land. Or at least, people don't stop quoting Lord of the Rings, years after the movies came out...

We formed out company to tell stories in games, and we're really happy to show our latest creation to the world: Scarlett and the Spark of Life for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Adventure Gamers has kindly posted a news article about it, along with some screenshots. Go check it out! We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Scarlett is the kind of adventure game we wanted to play on the iPhone. We're keeping things simple: there are no verbs to tap on for example, and in general the interface is pretty streamlined. It's all about getting the story across.

The writing is coming along really well. At least, we think so. It's shaping up to be an engrossing and fun world, and we have a lot planned for it.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about the game, please go ahead and ask! Fellow developer Tim Knauf and I are really happy to talk about this game.

[LaunchingPadTim]

Hi everyone,

Just thought I'd introduce myself as well. I'm Tim Knauf, and I'm co-writing and doing the code and audio for the game.

Some background about me: I made freeware PC adventure called Nathan's Second Chance a few years back that was quite well received. (Recently Trumgottist has put in some fantastic work on getting it to run on Mac and Linux as well - check out his forum post about it.) Many people will be relieved to know that it's not me doing the graphics this time around.

Making an adventure game work well on a portable device has been an interesting challenge, but Scarlett is shaping up to be a really fun game. Well, we think so.

[Shany]

Hi,

I'm afraid that I don't have an iPhone or iPod so I can't help you with your new game.
Still, I wanted to say that I greatly enjoyed both Launching Pad's "The Pretender" and Tim's "Nathan Second Chance" and wish you good luck!
(and hopefully we might see the game on the PC one day)

[LaunchingPadTristan]

Cheers Shany! We'd love to bring this to the PC, it's just a matter of finding the time and ensuring the game works well on a large screen.

I'm making the graphics as vectors in Flash, so blowing them up to larger resolutions isn't necessarily a problem - it'll just be interesting to see if it looks strange having overly-large objects to click on. But it's worth experimenting with!

[LaunchingPadTim]

Originally Posted by Shany

Still, I wanted to say that I greatly enjoyed both Launching Pad's "The Pretender" and Tim's "Nathan Second Chance" and wish you good luck!

Glad you liked The Pretender, Shany! (By the way, Part Two of the trilogy is out if you haven't played it already.)

And of course I'm extra pleased that you enjoyed Nathan's Second Chance so much. It still holds a special place in my heart.

[potan]

Good luck with the game guys !! Looks awesome so far.
I will buy it for sure when it's released

Let me know when you need a tester hehehe.....

[LaunchingPadTristan]

Originally Posted by potan

Good luck with the game guys !! Looks awesome so far.
I will buy it for sure when it's released

Let me know when you need a tester hehehe.....

Thanks man! Very good to know we've got at least one sale lined up.

[LaunchingPadTim]

Originally Posted by potan

I will buy it for sure when it's released

That's great to hear. Hopefully there are enough adventure-loving iPhone/iPod touch owners like you out there! That's the biggest "hopefully" for us right now. We have plans for more adventures if this one does well enough on the App Store.

[mylesb]

Hi Tim,
Thanks for the reply
I was looking for an Adventure Game Engine for iPhone. I would love to maybe play around with yours and if it suites my needs would be more than happy to license it off you to make a commercial game.
Would this be possible?

[LaunchingPadTim]

Originally Posted by mylesb

I was looking for an Adventure Game Engine for iPhone. I would love to maybe play around with yours and if it suites my needs would be more than happy to license it off you to make a commercial game.
Would this be possible?

In future we think we might have something to announce. At the moment, though, the adventure engine part is in heavy flux as we add (and subtract, and move around) features to suit the needs of Scarlett. I expect it will settle down a bit as we approach the game's release.

Just a bit of a warning, though: the Objective-C language makes adventure scripting quite awkward (even though I've done my best), so this is no SLUDGE. We would have liked to have used Python, Ruby or Lua to make things easier on ourselves but we were scared off by Apple's draconian policies regarding scripting languages.

[mylesb]

What do you mean makes it harder?
I know C++. Will that help?
Is it because of all the classes and stuff that you need for items and whatnot? Is it something to do with event handlers?

Cheers,
Myles Blasonato.

[LaunchingPadTim]

Originally Posted by mylesb

What do you mean makes it harder?

It's not that Objective-C can't be made to do adventure-gamey type things, there's just a lot of typing required and the syntax makes scripting... well, awkward, even when I do my best to simplify matters.

A good example is the creation of arrays, say an array of strings. Where in Python or Ruby I can write:

flowers = ['Rose', 'Petunia', 'Orchid']

In Objective-C the very least I can get away with writing is:

id flowers = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"Rose", @"Petunia", @"Orchid", nil];

As you know, in an adventure game you're dealing with arrays and especially strings a lot, and all that typing and those syntactical marks are wearying.

@ [ ] ( ) NSArray " " retain release *

[mylesb]

Hi Tim
I got Scarlett and it's awesome great work man!
I wanted to find out how things are going now that Apple has lifted it's restriction on the other language stuff?
Any chance that I can licence your engine?

Cheers,
Myles Blasonato.

[noknowncure]

Hey, just wanted to say how much I enjoyed The Spark of Life. Looking forward to future chapters! I love how apps have provided a fantastic new medium through which to sell adventure games.

Good luck!

[LaunchingPadTim]

Originally Posted by mylesb

I got Scarlett and it's awesome great work man!

Thanks — glad you like it! We very much enjoyed making it.

Originally Posted by mylesb

I wanted to find out how things are going now that Apple has lifted it's restriction on the other language stuff?

At the moment we're soldiering on with Objective-C, with some pure C for brevity. I'm still thinking about Ruby integration, in particular, for a future version of the engine.

Originally Posted by mylesb

Any chance that I can licence your engine?

I'm afraid it'd still be more trouble for you than it was worth at this stage! Our engine is currently idiosyncratic internally; it's full of gotchas and is very, very tuned to the needs of Scarlett rather than general adventure games. I'm hoping to refine it over the course of the remaining Scarlett episodes, and then there might be something worth distributing.

[LaunchingPadTim]

Originally Posted by noknowncure

Hey, just wanted to say how much I enjoyed The Spark of Life. Looking forward to future chapters! I love how apps have provided a fantastic new medium through which to sell adventure games.

I agree! I'm hoping to see many more adventures on iPhone and the iPad especially; I think they're a great platform for the genre.

Thanks for your kind words about Spark of Life. Here's hoping that you'll enjoy future episodes even more.

[Dwagginz]

I quite enjoyed it, but I did have a few concerns about it. If you want, you can read them here.

Here's to the next one!

[potan]

LaunchingPadTim, i bought the game & i enjoy it very much.

btw how was the sales so far, is it doing great ?
I saw it on New & Noteworthy last time, i hope it makes lots of sales so you can keep making adventure game for iphone

[LaunchingPadTim]

Originally Posted by Dwagginz

I quite enjoyed it, but I did have a few concerns about it. If you want, you can read them here.

Here's to the next one!

Thanks for the feedback, Dwagginz! Since you were concerned about the price, I'm pleased to report that Scarlett is on sale at the discounted price of 99c/£0.59 this week.

Originally Posted by potan

LaunchingPadTim, i bought the game & i enjoy it very much.

btw how was the sales so far, is it doing great ?
I saw it on New & Noteworthy last time, i hope it makes lots of sales so you can keep making adventure game for iphone

Hi Potan, glad you like it! We were very pleased to show up in ‘New & Noteworthy’ and ‘What’s Hot’ (in the US and Canada, at least). Sales figures have been... steady. We're hoping that the sale will get Scarlett out to lots more people — I want everyone to be able to enjoy it.

[mylesb]

I'm afraid it'd still be more trouble for you than it was worth at this stage! Our engine is currently idiosyncratic internally; it's full of gotchas and is very, very tuned to the needs of Scarlett rather than general adventure games. I'm hoping to refine it over the course of the remaining Scarlett episodes, and then there might be something worth distributing.

Yeah that happens
That cool though, I look forward to future episodes

Cheers,
Myles Blasonato.
PS: Have you had a look at DragonFireSDK? Completely C and C++ and all can be done from a PC with Windows.