Treemaker is released on Google Play today! Go ahead and get it right away from Google Play, it’s FREE! We have also released an update for the iPhone and iPad version today. The new version has lots of improvements and 12 new levels! Watch the original tailer.

Treemaker on Google Play
Treemaker on the AppStore
Treemaker Website

Now that the first version of the game is released, we explored the project archives a bit and found some behind-the-scenes material. I’ll give some explanation (mainly from technical point of view) to the different aspects of the development accompanied with images and videos.

Game concept and early prototypes

One of the main features we wanted was some kind of realistic rope physics and a game idea that would utilize that. Other main decision was to make an easy to approach game in the casual category. With these broad and simple ideas we started to do some quick programming tests.

Rope physics

Here is actually the earliest video that I found in my Treemaker project folder. Still looks like a prototype? =)

In this video we have already established a well working rope, but it still misses the important feature: it is not elastic. It was quite quick job to make a stiff rope but adding the elastic property was a bit tricky. It was an important feature for the game, because the “jump” of the character is actually made by the force the elastic rope causes.

Integrating 2d-physics and 3d-engine

As Treemaker’s 3d-engine we have used Capsule 3d engine from SVS Innovations Ltd. SVSi is actually a partner company of ours and we have been involved in implementing the cross-platform Capsule 3d -engine right from the start. 3d-engine served really well in this the game project, I guess the biggest job was to integrate it with 2d-physics engine in the start. But after that was done, 3d-engine side worked smooth for us.

Next video is the first version of 2d-physics integrated to 3d-engine with placeholder gfx and sounds from Super Mario. Some glimpses of the game concept are already there, but ropes are still not elastic in this version and player can’t cast new ropes.

Visual design

After the early prototypes and tests made by a programmer-only team we moved on to bit more serious designing of the game and graphics artists also joined the team.

Character design

This might one of the most important parts in the design, as the Treemaker character is in key role in almost all the material there is about the game. We worked quite a while before getting the final version of the character done. Here is an image collage showing some of the ideas that we thought of.

Level style design

Another important part of course was to get the level style designed. The process in this one was quite similar to character design; we tested out many different styles and slowly evolved towards the final style seen in the game.

Tree algorithm

Maybe the most interesting and challenging part of the project ( as a programmer ) was the design and implementation of the tree algorithm that generates all the tree and plant animations you see during the game. Idea to do something like this came out of some sketches by the graphics artist, who had drawn some kind of wine ropes at first. Then we started to thing would there be a way to present those as animation during the game play.

After about 10 hours of tweaking we managed to get some complex sinus/cosine algorithm running that made lines that remotely resembled trees. Then we tweaked that even more and started to get some nice looking results. Below you can see one of the first images of the tree algorithm test bench.

In the video there is an example of two random tree grow animations from the early version of the algorithm.

Finishing for the mobile

We did most of the game development in desktop environment and just tested on mobile regularly. In the end of the project about a month was reserved to polish each mobile build. Most challenging was to make the application installation package small enough. iOS universal build is about 18 megabytes at the moment – and that is quite an achievement because for example only one tree animation generates about 4 megabytes of 3d-polygon data. Here you can see a couple of images from the final game running on different platforms.

Finally thanks for reading. Feel free to send us comments or question! You can find more info on the Treemaker game in http://www.mikrotie.fi/games/treemaker

We’ve just finished an iOS version of the Treemaker and shipped the binary to Apple QA. It should be available on the AppStore soon! Meanwhile, here is some more information and screenshots from the game. Also, a full version for MeeGo Harmattan (Nokia N9 / N950) version has been submitted to Nokia OVI QA and will also surface later this week!

Watch trailer in Treemaker website
Read the “making-of” article

Download the free version: (41 Mb) http://bit.ly/nx2wVC
Watch video: http://bit.ly/nKmSQG
Screenshots: http://bit.ly/qhp6Py

Installation instructions:

1) Ensure the device has enough battery left or connect the power adapter
2) Download the file from the link above
3) Click once on completed transfer in MeeGo browser
4) Agree to install the package
5) Wait patiently for a while, about 30 secs or so.
6) Go to application menu and you should find the game there

If something goes wrong (we saw this happening once), MeeGo device can jam the installation somehow. The resolution was to reboot the device and uninstall treemaker app in application manager. After this re-install from the link above and it worked fine.

Today we have submitted the Nokia N900 game “Draw Challenge” to OVI Store QA-process. It will take about 5 days and then release will be shown in OVI Store. Meanwhile, some screenshots.

Draw Challenge gameplay

We had these kind of guidelines about the game idea: 

• Something that can be explained with one image, so very clear and simple idea
• Does not need language or doesn’t depend on players age etc.
• Playing should be somehow relaxing, not something that needs very high level of concentration and effort

The idea evolved into a simple drawing game. Afterall, it needed more work to implement than we thought, but the result is quite nice.

See more information in http://www.svsi.fi/modelsearch, http://www.svsi.fi/collada and http://www.svsi.fi/capsule.

Warcraft model in SVSi Model Search