Cylinder Windows, Mac, SteamDeck game

In 2008 I was working at the cell phone game developer, Oasys Mobile. We developers were eagerly watching Apple's market take over with the iPhone and waiting for the App Store to open. At this point I had only been in career level work for about 2 years (other jobs being some form of intern or retail) and during this time I'd finally been able to save a little money which was both my backup to keep from living paycheck to paycheck, and a potential job loss fund.

When the App Store finally launched I recall a few games standing out, such as Super Monkey Ball and Critter Crunch, but the interesting part of the app store for me was the absolute flood of games from want-to-be game developers. It was an exciting rush every day to check the store for something new. Seeing people experiment with touch controls was fascinating as so many different ways of interacting in and with a game emerged. Various implementations of virtual controls were popular, as were more direct tapping input and the emerging new style of gestures. It really took years to fully develop the now established methods we see in today's mobile games, and for me this is possibly the last time I have witnessed such monumentally vigorous attempts at creative thinking in game development. Though VR caused a similar creative burst, the platform still feels isolated and suffocated in my opinion.

The process of converting Cylinder from the last DirectX version to OpenGL on a mobile platform with Objective-C instead of C++ was quite the process. Since I knew I wanted to release Cylinder publicly for sale, I really wanted to go above and beyond the last 2 iterations in both quality and content. The new puzzle mode was finally implemented properly, and there were now sound effects!

I used OpenAL for the audio, which was my first time implementing any real audio in a project. This was the first version of Cylinder with music as well. As the last article for Cylinder stated, my brother Kevin wrote the 4 tracks I used for the iOS version of the game. He also made Cylinder's original sound effects.

Figuring out how to control a game which was originally designed for a mouse, and then a controller, on a touch screen was a tough process. What really felt right was using swipes to rotate the cylinder. Originally I did have gyro control implemented as a rotation method, but the gyro input quickly proved to be more annoying than useful. Something I would not realize before the first version released.

The big question though, and one I don't think I solved to satisfaction, was how to select a set of 4 pieces to rotate. I eventually settled on a tapping procedure in which you would tap the area of the desired pieces, then rotate buttons appeared and you must tap the desired direction. This was adequate at the time, and felt reasonable enough for the new puzzle mode and old relax mode, but in endless mode it felt more cumbersome and could lead to awkward deaths.

Unfortunately one major component of the Cylinder experience was removed for this iOS version, Multiplayer. I had not experience implementing networked multiplayer and it did not seem feasible at the time to do split screen on a phone. Maybe with a tablet it could have worked, and would have been rather interesting. Oh well.

One final major change to the formula was the grid size. The original game was a 16x16 grid wrapped in a Cylinder. This created a very tall cylinder which wasn't too difficult to navigate with a more precise input. On a touch screen however, the pieces just became too small to be any fun to play with. The game was therefore changed to a 16x8 grid, and is still using this format today. Along with some drop changes and other balancing, I do believe it vastly improved the fun of the game, allowing players to have an easier time tracking all the pieces on the play field.

The release time was exceptionally stressful for me. Having been laid off from my salaried job and losing predictable income towards the beginning of this decision, I was really banking on the Cylinder doing at least well enough to limp along so I could hopefully continue making more games. As many other developers probably experienced at this time, this did not happen. Being close to mid 2009, the rush of game development had peaked, and every unknown dev was plunging to 0.99¢ in a desperate bid to get any attention on the app store.

It was an emerging developer's worst nightmare, and one that I did not navigate well. Not understanding how I should manage pricing, I ruined my one good sales spike in Japan by trying to increase the price from 0.99¢. In hindsight, warning potential purchasers that you plan to increase the price in the app description DOES NOT WORK. I absolutely would have been better off leaving it at 0.99¢. It's one awkward moment of many where I realized how the disconnected public perception of entertainment value does not coincide with actual developer's income, capability, and output. So many people just say 'Just do X', and so often X is actual far more difficult than Y, but the people don't even know they can ask for Y, and to them it sounds harder to do than X anyway.

*SIGH*

Building the iOS game was an important step in my career, even if it wasn't immediately evident. I learned a lot about Apple development which I probably would not have learned otherwise. I've had mobile developer positions many times in my career since my initial experience. Building an iOS game also helped me learn about game engine development, as I did not use anything like Unity (which was still pretty new at that time) and created a lot of the architecture from scratch.

Due to the significant changes from past versions necessitated by developing technologies, The iOS version of Cylinder is a lot more recognizable as the precursor to the game we are coming out with today.