The making of Tap Tap Dance, part of the popular iPhone Tap Tap Revenge series

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41157136

by doomlaser • 2 years ago

4 10 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

doomlaser5• 2 years ago

One interesting fact about the game. We designed all the levels around Lua, which was officially banned from the App Store when we were making it. I remember deciding with the other main developer, that we should rename all our .lua files, .cfg (.configure) to buy us some time.

Ultimately, Apple eventually changed the rules to allow for this.

ClassyJacket3• 2 years ago

I don't recall Tap Tap Dance, but I loved Tap Tap Revenge!! One day I want to get an old iPhone or iPod Touch and jailbreak it and load up some of those old games you can't get anymore. I've always loved music games, and that was back around 2009 on my first iPhone and in the Rock Band era. It was great to be able to play a music game while on the bus.

I remember the App Store rules being even more draconian then than they are now - I recall a brief period where they tried to ban even tools that transpiled other languages into Objective-C by making a rule that all apps must be originally written in Objective-C. That insanity didn't last long, obviously. Now half of apps are React Native.

By the way if this post was supposed to be a link somewhere, it isn't working.

doomlaser5• 2 years ago

Loved working on those music games. And that we have a nice document of some of its creation in the video above. I have great memories of working on the series, spread out across Champaign, IL (home of UIUC), the NYU Tisch Center, even a restaurant in Montreal.

Steve Jobs even demoed Tap Tap Revenge at an iPhone keynote in 2009! Our little game!

IGN gaves us a 9/10 when it was released: https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/12/11/tap-tap-dance-iphone...

At the end of each difficulty tier, you unlock a new song that's accompanied by art specific to the track. Daft Punk's "Technologic," for example, has an old-school TV screen that flashes images and the band's name as notes stream down bars that are much shorter and shaped differently than the main game screen. Moby's "Disco Lies" also uses short bars that unfurl from what looks like the mouth of an alien designed by a nine-year-old using MS Paint. (And that's not a slam to the artist -- I think it's very cool.) Once you finish a boss track, that song become parts of the track list on the next tier.
Unless you want to stab your ears when you hear techno, Tap Tap Dance is the best music game on the App Store right now. The note placement and control sensitivity is just right, making it instantly playable to anybody. But Tap Tap Dance doesn't hold its fire. By the time you reach the hard tier, you are getting a serious thumb workout. With excellent song selection and super-cool graphics, Tap Tap Dance is a pleasure to recommend.

EvanAnderson2• 2 years ago

One day I want to get an old iPhone or iPod Touch and jailbreak it and load up some of those old games you can't get anymore.

That we live in a world where this is what you'd have to do to play an "old game" from the late 2000's makes me so sad.

doomlaser5• 2 years ago

The Making of Tap Tap Dance video, it apparently didn't attach. Here it is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XmWPATbkeM

I guess I should probably resubmit.

The making of Tap Tap Dance, part of the popular iPhone Tap Tap Revenge series

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