Neptic.com/blog

Paper Grid 1.0 in the App Store

I finally have an app in the Apple iOS App Store. So, wanna hear why?

Background

Paper Grid started years ago when my brother and I wanted to find a way to divert ourselves during long church meetings. (I encourage every one to listen in church, but as youngsters I think this kind of thing is common.) So the constraints were:

So like Chess we have a King, but it doesn't move. This is the "Flag". Then like Chess you have a variety of pieces. But nothing can move, so instead we have pieces stretch out influence lines. This is kinda like Chess, because if you learn basic strategy you learn to watch lines where each piece can travel and where it is pinning down other pieces. (A "pin", in the book I read, is when a less important piece is blocking an opponent's piece from taking a more important piece. So the less important piece is pinned because it cannot move without jeopardizing the other one.) The difference in power of the pieces is how many directions they can send influence lines. You then place pieces to get lines, place more pieces, to get lines into other places and so on to march your troops across the board. I realized later that these influence lines are also similar to Khett, where you position mirrors to bounce a laser around towards the opponent's "king" or "flag" equivalent.

The game, which we called Paper Grid at the time since it was played on paper on a grid, was lost when we got a little older (and so paid attention in church). But then in 2004, after my Freshman year of college, I found the piece of paper where my brother had written down the rules. So I gave myself a challenge to write up a Java version of the game in a single day.

By the end of that first day, on which I did about four hours of work, I had a version that was playable but did not enforce the rules. Meaning you could place the pieces to play the game but it wouldn't stop you from placing a piece where it didn't belong. Over the following week I added in rules enforcement and some nice UI features as well as the ability to switch between two tile sets: "Space" and "Paper". I had to have the paper one since that's the game's roots, but the space one fit with the thematic flavor we imagined when playing the game.

I revisited the game later in college where I added some animations of the influence lines, made a lame attempt at a sound track (you don't want to hear it), and added a "Wood" theme which goes along with playing a board game.

Fast-forward to 2012, I finally got myself access to the iOS developer program and the first game I started making was a port of Paper Grid.

What I have in 1.0

Remember that the Java version was initially done as a one-day challenge. So it is not very well organized code. That means that the port to iOS is also not very well organized, though I made a few minor improvements. So I really need a big refactor to add features I want.

Specifically, it would be hard to do an AI or even a multiplayer feature without separating the game board state from the rules logic and the display.

Why release now? Well, I started working on GameCenter support which means I had to create an app record in iTunes Connect. Then I got side tracked for several months by moving to a different job and state plus some other iOS projects. In March I got an email from Apple saying my 180 days were almost up and they were going to delete my app record and free up the name "Paper Grid" for anyone to use. Since I didn't want that to happen I figured I could do some fix-ups to get a playable 1.0 release out there that just didn't have AI or GameCenter. Then do all the hard behind-the-scenes plumbing later.

I did add some things. In play testing I got tired of always starting out the game by each player placing a couple power plants. Since my level format can hold any block in any location I decided why not start with some power plants already in there. Now this isn't completely new, since my Java version had a level that started with scramblers up to form a "frontier" (think "The Last Star Fighter"), which necessitated having a few power plants, but the player still started with zero power ready for use. These new levels I call "pre-set", for having both power plants and pieces in initial positions, and "pre-powered" for one where there are only power plants placed but they are blocked off so no one can attack them. Both options give strategic variations to the game.

Game Play 1.0

You can play on one device with two players. It's a turn-based game anyway and back in the good 'ole days people played games like this on a single board. Set your iPad between you and a friend and have at it.

Personally I like having the ability to play a multiplayer game on a single device, since it's annoying to require two separate devices with separate Game Center accounts to play a single game.

You can also play against yourself by playing both players. I do this all the time and still have plenty of fun. My brother does this all the time with Chess or with Magic the Gathering. So it's certainly a common and valid game mode.

What's Coming

The first priority is GameCenter support to allow multiplayer games across different devices.

After that, I'll try to get a reasonable AI to play against. Since this is not a well-known game there aren't well-known AI strategies for it, but I can work off of the basic idea of a AIs used in other board games. When it's good enough I'll release it, but it might take quite a while since I do this as a hobby not a job.

I also have various UI improvements in mind, and I'll be looking for game play improvements too.

I have not decided whether I'll make the game $0.99 or have an in-app purchase to unlock AI and GameCenter. I don't need to make money from this, but I figure I might as well try to get a small trickle. Plus it would give me an incentive to put more time into it. If nobody buys anything in Paper Grid but they do in other apps (forthcoming) then I'll focus more time over there.