Downpour: A game making tool for phones

by homarp • 4 years ago

161 39 4 years ago

I really like this. As a kid I would make "flatgames" that were just Word docs that linked to each other, which in some sense inspired me to learn to code to make "real" games.

James-Livesey• 4 years ago

Same, but with PowerPoint! It's amazing how versatile the Microsoft Office suite is for purposes other than productivity...

procinct• 4 years ago

Same here! I had a basic game where an enemy moved across the screen towards the character and you had to shoot it. Clicking the enemy would hyperlink to a slide where you shoot the enemy, the enemies animation finishing (when it touches the character) would link to a slide where you died. Working out how to do conditional logic in PowerPoint at 11 opened up a lot of exciting ideas for PowerPoint games for me. Though it lead to a lot of slides…

ketzo• 4 years ago

I feel obligated to note here that PowerPoint is Turing complete. It's pretty radical.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8

nathancahill• 4 years ago

I built Tictactoe in Excel by creating every possible board state and then hyperlinking between them. I fixed the window size to 3x3 so the window would scroll to each state. Later learned AppleScript to automate parts of this process and eventually got in to HTML.

lynndotpy• 4 years ago

I did this but with folders! Then I learned about HTML maps (which seem very similar to Downpour) from Neopets, which is where things get real cool.

insomniacity• 4 years ago

Neopets has a lot to answer for in our generation :P

kderbyma• 4 years ago

I was lucky to get extra projects at school which were self directed flat games using PowerPoint, and a few other tools on the school computers. definitely some of my favourite projects as a young kid

petercooper2• 4 years ago

This is cool. I can definitely imagine my kids having a lot of fun with something like this which wins me over immediately.

However, it also got me thinking about how resistant I've been to digital note taking, simply because I like the physicality of writing and notes on paper. Yet they get super disorganized, lost, whatever. The idea seen here could work as an interesting way to digitize and "link" together paper notes too, perhaps!

kej• 4 years ago

You might like the Rocket Book notebooks. You write with a pen on paper, but then you use the app to scan your notes to email or cloud storage, and then you use a wet cloth to wipe the pages clean. You get digitized notes like an expensive note tablet, but also the feel and replaceability of a plain old notebook.

(Despite making variants of this comment multiple times, I have no affiliation with them beyond happy customer.)

petercooper2• 4 years ago

That's the sort of response I was hoping for - interesting lead, I'll check it out! :)

(At first glance, I think one aspect of the OP post that I'd still be missing is the ability to link different parts of notes together with other historical notes, perhaps. That "image map" type feature in the OP link is very compelling.)

omarhaneef3• 4 years ago

Adding the extra step of taking a picture loses a lot of the productivity gain.

I think the remarkable tablet is the right balance in 2022. It automatically pushes notes into the cloud.

svnpenn• 4 years ago

Save you a click:

It is a game making tool for phones

wy35• 4 years ago

That description isn’t enough to describe what the author is making. The context of what flatgames are is needed.

homarp• 4 years ago

1) you take photo

2) you create 'clickable' zone(s) on the photo

3) you link the "zone" to another photo

sample games: https://twitter.com/v21/status/1477220587080724480

kenver• 4 years ago

Back in the late 90s/early 2000s I worked at a game studio. One of the things we got in to were DVD games - we built a tool that was used to create quizzes on DVD players. Feels pretty similar to this - lots of fun.

rahimnathwani• 4 years ago

This sounds the same as the 'Prototyping on Paper' app from years ago: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pop-prototyping-on-paper/id555...

darylrowland• 4 years ago

I’ve started making a more modern twist on this where you draw the prototype directly on your iPad rather than needing to take photos. Also let’s you make the prototype interactive with text fields, camera components and logic. Might be of interest - https://roughups.com

mikechalmers• 4 years ago

How come this person's blog isn't responsive / mobile-friendly? I'm sure that they're capable so I think it might be a choice, but would be interested to hear why.

eloeffler2• 4 years ago

Huh! I didn't even notice that it isn't until I saw your comment.

Looking back at it again it feels quite comfortable to zoom in and read/scroll. But maybe that is just my phone being the right size (it's an S9).

I'd say the page is mobile friendly in a sense, even though it's not responsive.

5560675260• 4 years ago

Responsiveness is one of the more modern (as in wasn't a thing 10 years ago) somewhat advanced parts of webdev and just not in everyone's portfolio of skills. There is a skill level where it's possible to handcode a perfectly functional website, but miss most of the modern best practices.

allenu• 4 years ago

I followed the link to the flatgame game jam and tried a few of the submissions. I really like the aesthetic. There's something comforting about its non-digital art.

It's always nice to see creative projects like these, so thanks to whoever posted it.

simlevesque• 4 years ago

That looks absolutely awesome.

munificent• 4 years ago

My first thought reading the headline was, "But how do you author on a device where user input is such a chore?" Using the camera as the primary way to create content is brilliant. I love it.

mc4ndr3• 4 years ago

There's already an audiobook app with the same name. Google before writing code.

danShumway• 4 years ago

That is such a clever input method.

I also love that the example games work in a browser, because the ease of sharing stuff like this is a big part of it -- it's not just that if you're a kid you can bang out something interactive with a stack of papers and some pencils, it's a big thing if also once you're done you can just text someone a link or paste it into a group chat.

Hosting games is still kind of an annoyingly unsolved problem, but it's at least a lot easier to do with web games. It would be really cool to set a bunch of kids up with Itch accounts and have some kind of API integration with this tool where they could just start sharing web games back and forth, where the program just auto-uploads new builds over the API whenever they hit a publish button.

This just looks really delightful, I'm excited to see where it goes.

eloeffler2• 4 years ago

Sounds and looks nice!

Are you planning an Android version as well?

(Asking because it only mentions iOS on downpour.games which is linked in the provided post)

guyomes• 4 years ago

This looks lovely! One nice addition would be the ability to record sounds and link them. This feature in ScratchJr [1] allows children to make animations with cute voices.

[1] https://www.scratchjr.org/

jtvjan• 4 years ago

I remember reading about the "Hot-Spot Mode" on the Game Boy Camera, and I wanted to imitate it using the digital camera and the PC I had. I discovered HTML Image Maps, and while it did work, making them was such a hassle that I never got past making a few pages. Great to see there's a proper tool for it now, that I could've figured out how to use had it been available back then.

qbasic_forever• 4 years ago

Very cool! I would have loved this as a 12 year old. I used to play with Hypercard in a similar kind of way as flatgames.

robterrell• 4 years ago

Very cool. I get the vibe of those old HyperCard games (Myst, The Manhole, Inigo Gets Out). HyperCard was simple enough anyone could hack a game together, lowering the bar for creators. I bet something great comes from this. Kudos!

paraxion• 4 years ago

My 9yo was absolutely thrilled to find an app on iOS with a similar concept to this - I believe it's https://www.draw-your-game.com/. He's thoroughly familiar with ScratchJr so he's already making games there, but I don't think he's quite ready for me to stick him in front of Unity just yet.

Good on the dev for doing something in this space, it'll be appreciated.

d3fault• 4 years ago

This reminds me of Floors [0], an app where you could scan hand-drawn platforming levels on graph paper. I was only 12 or so, but I had so much fun with that thing. Unfortunately it seems the app has been discontinued as of 2016.

[0] http://www.projectpixelpress.com/floors

Downpour: A game making tool for phones

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