Dad, when will the game be ready?

kevinSharp | 14 June, 2011 00:38

Tero Paananen (tepaa to the Forum Nokia Community) is a full-time mobile developer and Mobile Qt team Team Manager at Digia in Finland, where he specializes in Symbian C++ and Qt development. In his spare time he recently began exploring mobile development for Windows Phone 7, and he launched the first two Forum Nokia Projects containing code for WP7 apps: XNASolitaire and Angry Monsters. Forum Nokia talked with Tero via e-mail about his experience as a skilled Symbian/Qt developer approaching Windows Phone 7 work. An earlier blog post presented our conversation about learning C#. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation about creating the Angry Monsters game with his two sons.

FN: Hi Tero. Thank you for taking the time to talk about your experience approaching Window Phone 7 work. Let’s discuss your Angry Monster game. Where did the idea come from?

Tepaa: Angry Monsters is the result of long-running challenge from my two boys: 6-year old Luukas and 10-year old Matias. They know I code for a living, and many evenings I code at home. They keep asking me “Why don’t we make our own game?”

What Dad could resist? I found the open source Box2D physics engine for XNA and I decided to give it a try.

FN: Why did you choose the Box2D engine?

Tepaa: My boys love to play Angry Birds, and they often compared the game they wanted to build to it. I heard Angry Birds uses the Box2D physics engine, which is available for both Qt and XNA frameworks. It seemed like a good fit. Angry Monsters uses the open source XNA Box2D engine from CodePlex under MIT license. Box2D for Qt is also available for free download. Both XNA and Qt versions have the very same API and it is quite fast to rewrite the game from XNA to Qt. There is also an engine for QML.

FN: What’s it like having your sons as working partners on a software project?

Tepaa: Every time I show them the demo they find something they don’t like. They’re constantly asking: When will the game be ready? Why don’t enemies explode? Where are the sounds? Why this and that…

So I guess in a way it’s not much different from any other project manager, except I can’t tell a project manager at my day job that it’s past his bedtime.

Graphic designers Luukas and Matias hard at play.

FN: Has anyone outside the family gotten to play Angry Monsters yet?

Tepaa: Yes, a few people have seen early versions of the game. Vesa-Matti Paananen from Microsoft Finland sent me an invite to attend Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Day at Helsinki after reading the previous blog post about XNASolitaire. I was there and our Angry Monsters demo was on Digia’s stand.

I showed an early demo to the company’s secretary and she started to cry and laugh at the same time. She was impressed and asks to see final version. My boys keep asking for the final version, too.

FN: What are Angry Monsters Rocks?

Tepaa: Angry Monsters Rocks was a small project so the boys could thank our big project enablers: Microsoft, Nokia and Digia. They painted Angry Monsters on rocks and wrapped them nicely for each of the people who helped. Angry Monsters was a difficult English phrase for them to write on the rock.

FN: When do you find time to work on Angry Monsters?

Tepaa: I have a day job at Digia Finland where I implement Qt and Windows Phone projects. I have to implement Angry Monster at nights, when the family is sleeping. For example now it is midnight and I answer these questions in my mobile house in the garden. The WiFi signal from the house is so weak out here that I have to walk nearer to the house when committing code into to the Forum Nokia Projects repository.

Developer / Dad Teppa outside the mobile house where he codes late into the night. This time of year in Finland it stays light late into the night.

FN: How much of the actual game design did the boys do?

Tepaa: The idea for the level editor and the interaction that allows users to hit the stone many times came from the boys. All graphics and the theme are from the boys. They like to design and break down levels and store these for later gaming or breaking again. Breaking seems to be the most fun for them.

Video: The boys designed a level editor that lets them create custom game levels any time they want.

FN: How did you set them up so they could create graphics that you could use in the game?

Tepaa: That was easy; they were very exited to draw the game after I told them I would start implementing it. It’s waiting for the final game that is almost too difficult for them. Luckily I have Angry Birds on Nokia N900 and the latest Angry Birds Rio on Apple iPad.

FN: What are your next steps with Angry Monsters?

Tepaa: The game still needs sounds, exploding enemies, better game play, game over… I have also been asked to implement a QML version of it.

It would also be nice to share self-made levels to friends.

Any interested developers can follow the Angry Monsters project by clicking the “Follow” link on the project page. Followers will get updates every time the project publishes updates.

14 June update: here's a new video of Luukas and Matias playing Angry Monsters in an emulator, now with sound!

Qt , Games , Windows Phone , XNA | Next | Previous | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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Latest video

tepaa | 14/06/2011, 14:08

See the latest video abut boys playing Angry Monsters first time with the sounds enabled

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibw8gTEP040

Video embedded

kevinSharp | 14/06/2011, 18:43

Thanks for the link. I updated the post to include the video -- the boys look like they're having a great time.

New version exists

tepaa | 20/06/2011, 23:57

Boys changed their plans, again. Now the ammon is returned / reloaded back to start position after every fire.

I drww the class diagram also that can be see at http://projects.developer.nokia.com/xnabox2demo/wiki/classes

Version 1.0 is ready

tepaa | 03/11/2011, 12:09

Angry Monsters is now Marketplace at

http://www.windowsphone.com/fi-FI/apps/137901a1-61d3-45e1-96a1-594efc8a4582

Box2D XNA

dheeraj_pk@hotmail.com | 03/03/2012, 19:57

Am new to XNA and your Box2D mention is good.

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