Paint Stuff: WP7 Pictionary made in XNA

[baflink]

I have tried a few of the pictionary games and they are pretty buggy to say the least. My girlfriend was getting flustered with playing with me because of the bugs. She wanted a simple pictionary game that didn't make random lines in your drawing, that was fast, had colors, took screenshots, could undo/redo and didn't have a time limit. So I sought out to make such a game.

I give you Paint Stuff... it has all and more of what she wanted. If your search for it doesn't come up, its because MS hasn't indexed it yet. Just look in the New section. Its not far from the top.

The trial mode is the full game minus screenshots, minus more colors and ad supported. :] so don't think you need to spend a dime (though it would be nice if you did XD).

Dedicated to my loving girlfriend Danielle Diaz (she loves turtles, thus the turtle theme)

Zune Link: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/73d6e48a-5f45-4f04-9d3d-e60c2c613a1f

 

[btbam91]

This is looking great! I can't wait to play it with my girlfriend!

 

[baflink]

Haha

Thanks for playing. I took a screenshot of that turtle that you drew and sent it to my girlfriend. She was pretty happy about that :].

 

[btbam91]

Haha, I'm going to be honest. I handed that one off to my little brother. But my gf is loving this game! We're having a blast with it! A few questions/suggestions.

1. A way to chat with your opponent would be great!
2. Is there any way to tell if my opponent guessed my drawing correctly/incorrectly?

Actually, that's all I can think of right now. Absolutely love the music you added by the way! Having music in these kind of games is a must!

 

[baflink]

XD, well that turtle made her happy so I thank your little brother.

That is a great point. I just sent out a quick fix for an audio bug, the whole letter dissapearing when your guessing, and accidental sends (if you swipe the checkmark when your drawing). So I will first work on seeing if your opponent has guessed correctly or incorrectly. I will make sure to have that in an update after this one that is being reviewed.

Chatting is another beast, a friend of mine just suggested that to me too. I am defiantly going to start working on that one, but I can't proclaim a release date yet as it will have to go under a lot of testing to make sure it doesn't slow down the servers too much. That being said it shouldn't be a ridiculously long time from now.

As for now, you can tell if your opponent has guessed right if your score increases after their turn (this was not done on purpose but works as somewhat of a temp until i get that update.)

:] Thanks for your feedback and if you come up with anymore great ideas let me know!

(oh) and thanks about the music thing :] I agree, games should have somekind of sound, it helps the design!

 

[btbam91]

I am very proud of my "boxing" picture!

 

[btbam91]

Also, I find it kind of annoying that random people are starting games with me. I now have a large list of random games with random people. I would suggest you model this based on how Chess by Post. I start a game with a random person and I am notified when the game finds a game with another person who was searching a challenge.

Thanks!

 

[baflink]

Haha, oh yes I took a screenshot of that boxing painting.

Until I can get an invite system going I can do you the favor of separating games for the next update. Say the games with friends are on home screen and then you could swipe to the right to see random games. That way your most important ones stay on home and clutter moves off to the side when you feel like playing them? :]

Since there isn't a friend system at the moment I will have to devise a way for you to separate your friends from the rest.

 

[btbam91]

That'd be pretty good until you figure things out!

 

[baflink]

D: it is taking forever for MS to approve my first update >.>; I'm still waiting to send out this other update that has all the major updates.

 

[btbam91]

Hey bud.

I'm starting to think that your app is the ultimate battery sucker. Is it running under the lock screen?

Last weekend, I was right next to my gf playing with her. I put my phone down at about 40% and went to sleep. 6 hours later, when I went to sleep, it was completely dead. The same thing happened to my girlfriend last night.

As of now, I make sure to hit back>back>back to make sure the app closes out that way.

Just a heads up! Maybe you should run a test yourself to see if you experience similar results!

 

[baflink]

Thanks for this important information. I actually do not run any background processes. Microsoft automatically reduces games updates to I think they said 1 frame per second. This is obviously not good if it is draining it though. I will take a look into and see if I can do something to fix this issue. I'm sure I can come up with something :].

Also I sent a support ticket to MS because its taken over a week for the first update to get certified and this really big update is still waiting until that one is done...

I suppose while I wait on this update to finish or that support ticket to get back I will look into the battery life issue. Thanks again!

Btw, the big update that I will be submitting after this first update goes out will have:
High Scores table
Review the last players tern (if they won/lost and what they guessed)
Some small better looking UI fixes
The ability to favorite/un-favorite games to the main screen (rest of games stay in other pool of games)
Your turn to paint games show up on top
Your turn to guess games show up below your turn to paint
Pending games show at bottom of those 2.
And if MS takes any longer to send out the first update I may have a fix for the battery issue >.>

 

[baflink]

Great news. I have added a few features that should DRAMATICALLY increase battery performance under lock screen and when running in the background. Thanks so much for this information too :] helps me learn some new tricks for the future.

 

[btbam91]

Great news! I'm glad you are supporting the app and I look forward to the updates!

 

[baflink]

I have now submitted this big update. Hopefully it wont take a week like this last one and may be out by Friday. Also I hope that they approve how I did the battery saving, if not then I will have to find another way to do it.

 

[baflink]

I also wanted to let you know that I have a blog for Paint Stuff and its drawings. Users can submit screenshots by emailing the picture to paintstuff@blogger.com. The blog is Paint Stuff

 

[btbam91]

The app is currently unplayable! Crashes after guessing a word currently!

 

[baflink]

Yeah, I am really sorry about that. I was juggling 3 job interviews when I put that one out and plus all the added features I didn't even test guessing. It worked if you guessed by the fifth... I put up an update immediately after finding this out (on release date).

The update just got indexed into the market and I just got finished playing everyones games ...

I'm really sorry about that big bug though D:

 

[btbam91]

I hope to see my last move on the blog!

 

[btbam91]

Especially since I forgot to save the picture!