Super Cat Tales: PAWS + Controller Support

kiwicode

Hi there,

Last week I launched my latest game Super Cat Tales: PAWS. It's been 2+ years in the making so I'm pretty proud about this one. You can check it out HERE

The reception has been great, with a score of 4.9 last time I checked. Adobe AIR games can be successful and they've got many advantages like not being 300MB in size for example.

I've got one issue though. Many players are asking me to add controller support, this seems to be a problem since I can't find any ANE able to unlock this feature for me. Have you got any solutions / suggestions in mind?

Thanks,
Gionathan

elegantdeer

kiwicode Wow, my congratulations, man!! Awesome look and taste. Did you used some physics libs?

kupo_games

The Super Cat Tales games use Adobe AIR? That's pretty cool!
I started playing through the first two a while ago, and they're a lot of fun. I'll check out the new one too!

With Desktop AIR, I use Zeh Fernando's KeyActionBinder class to add controller support. It may be a little bit out of date now, but it worked well for me for all of the common controller types, and was fairly easy to use.

I'm not sure how well it will work on mobile - I tried running my Desktop game Bullet Heaven 2 on an Android device with an Xbox One controller, and it kind of worked - but I think the controller buttons were mapping to keyboard keys instead, or something weird like that. So I think it can work with some tweaking.

If you decide to try it, let me know if you have any issues. I had an issue with the json file not being included correctly, so I hacked the code a bit to take it as a parameter. I also had to change a few references to "Windows 7" to just "windows" in the json file to make it work on my PC.

kiwicode

kupo_games

Thanks a ton, this new SCT game implements many features the community has been asking me for years, like cat customization, mini-games, daily quests.

I'll check out the Zeh Fernando's KeyActionBinder, I recall years ago I used a ANE I found on GitHub that was just working on Desktop and not mobile.. I'm wondering if it's this one from Zeh Fernando.

kiwicode

kupo_games

Just realized the ANE I used was called AlexanderOMara/AIRControl from GitHub. It worked great but was just for Desktop and not mobile.

I'd be happy to fund the development of a Gamepad/Controller support ANE for mobile if anyone is interested. @ma maybe? 🙂

pol2095

Try GameInput, it work on mobile.

kiwicode

pol2095

I'll give it a try! Can anyone else confirm GameInput is working?

eykatz

What a great game !
Excellent production value! And very fun game flow.
Run super smooth on my iPhone 13.
All praises for bringing such high quality game with AIR.

Can you tell us a little stats? Like FPS? RAM usage? GPU usage? Any interesting development challenges?

Again great work 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

kiwicode

eykatz

Thanks, I appreciate it. I tried using Unity in the past but honestly I prefer working with a simple, code first, framework like Adobe AIR / Starling / OpenFL. I can't help it! I feel with these new engines you've got a lot of powerful tools but little control.

As for Super Cat Tales: PAWS, the game targets 60fps. It's pretty stable on iPhone devices and most Android devices too (although on some old/crappy Android devices there are performance issues).

Regarding the challenges, it took me a lot to design the game and polish everything 😃

kiwicode

elegantdeer thanks! I coded the physics myself, it's a simple tile-based collision system 🙂

FlashFix

Hey kiwicode ,

I got GameInput working on iOS, Android and Steam but I did had another library for key-binding for the X axis to work good with triggers.

I even got the X-Arcade working with autoaim cause you only got 1 joystick with arcade...

kiwicode

FlashFix thanks for the protip, I'll check out GameInput then!

Daniel

Oh wow, what a great game! I'm digging the pixel style graphics, I love cats, I love platformers – so you're pushing all the right buttons for me! 😁

It's so great to see that games like these are still created with AIR and Starling. I totally agree with what you said about small, code-first framework. (Yeah, of course I'm biased! 🙈) Especially for 2D games, it's just great to have total control over everything PLUS not force the user to wait for something huge like Unity to download and boot.

Keep up the great work, and all the best of luck for this game and any possible sequels! 🍀
Thanks also for taking the time to letting us know about it.

P.S.: Happy to hear you could sort out how to add controller support.

kiwicode

Daniel thanks Daniel, appreciate the feedback 🙂

pol2095

I created an ANE for Android controller here, it's not finalised, I only tried using a Xbox controller Series X/S (1914) and need Android 9 (APi level 28) or later.