[GAME][2.1+] Total Pool

Search This thread

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
Ok first pass of AI is complete. I am sharing it here so people can try it out and give me feedback/report bugs before I put it on the store and push it to a couple of thousand people.

This should be absolutely fine to install over/run alongside your other version without damaging your save file, however since it has not been thoroughly tested it is slightly more risky.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13593420/TotalPoolFree.apk

I'm only sharing the free version, however it's fine to run alongside the paid version (they will share the save data).

Features
- 4 difficulty levels of AI for every single game mode
- AI can sensibly lag, break, call balls and pockets, opt to replace cue ball, rerack, push out
- AI can play shots at varying speeds and spin

What you can tell me
- does it work? is it fun? is it realistic? is it slow? are the difficulties what you expected? any glaring bugs? any ridiculous strengths of the ai? any obvious weaknesses?

This is by no means done, I still have a nice big list of ways I can improve it, however I know a lot of people wanted to try this out so I wanted to get something playable in your hands as quickly as possible. As well as improving on the ai and performance I want to add game modes and unlocks related to the ai, is there anything here you'd really like to see (no promises).

Thanks a lot for your time, please try it out and give me feedback.
No one biting? It even has a bug which gives you an unlock for free.
 

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
Playing with the AI version now. Will let you know how it goes.

BTW, it's impressive you managed to have an almost-complete AI version in like a week...
Cheers, it's been a lot of work already but as I say since so many people are asking I want to get this into people's hands as quickly as possible.

As I say I'm not completely happy with it yet, and some of the rulesets I'm not particularly familiar with so am even less sure about those (I'm a world rules guy), so outside feedback along with my observations should really help push towards something good.
 

MustNotSleep

Senior Member
Feb 12, 2010
50
4
Well, the AI is genuinely fun. I didn't find any bugs as far as I'm aware of. I'm not familiar with the different rulesets so I can't comment on that, but I did have quite a challenge beating the AI on medium difficulty and it was downright impossible for me to do so on Hard or Expert, but I'm not a very good player (IRL and in the game).

Let me know if you want me to test something in particular, but it was pretty fun as it is. Can't wait to have it in the full version.
 

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
Thanks for this app, it's great :)
Thank you.
Well, the AI is genuinely fun. I didn't find any bugs as far as I'm aware of. I'm not familiar with the different rulesets so I can't comment on that, but I did have quite a challenge beating the AI on medium difficulty and it was downright impossible for me to do so on Hard or Expert, but I'm not a very good player (IRL and in the game).

Let me know if you want me to test something in particular, but it was pretty fun as it is. Can't wait to have it in the full version.
Cool, I will tone down the difficulty. Developing it I was playing it on PC mainly which is actually quite a bit easier than on phone. Nothing in particular to test, just wanted to get a multitude of opinions on it as well as having it running on different hardware to see if there's any massive problems there. Did you ever have that save problem repeat?
 

MustNotSleep

Senior Member
Feb 12, 2010
50
4
Cool, I will tone down the difficulty. Developing it I was playing it on PC mainly which is actually quite a bit easier than on phone. Nothing in particular to test, just wanted to get a multitude of opinions on it as well as having it running on different hardware to see if there's any massive problems there. Did you ever have that save problem repeat?
Don't tone down the difficulty just based on my experience, I'm really not great at the game, plus I enjoy the challenge. Wait until more people comment on it. And I've seen the CPU miss a few shots on Medium, so that's good.

I'm running it on my Galaxy S2, with MIUI (2.3.7) and it runs great, same as the stable version as far as I can tell.

And no, haven't had the save file issue again, although I make a backup every now and then, just in case. :)
 

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
Don't tone down the difficulty just based on my experience, I'm really not great at the game, plus I enjoy the challenge. Wait until more people comment on it. And I've seen the CPU miss a few shots on Medium, so that's good.

I'm running it on my Galaxy S2, with MIUI (2.3.7) and it runs great, same as the stable version as far as I can tell.

And no, haven't had the save file issue again, although I make a backup every now and then, just in case. :)
Hey, it's not just your experience, but reaching a bit of a consensus now :). The more opinions the better as far as this one goes.
 
  • Like
Reactions: *se-nsei.

*se-nsei.

Senior Member
Sep 28, 2011
884
467
London
My word, hats off to you developer. This is the most amazing, polished and superbly designed game I've ever played. I'm a big snooker/pool fan, and trust me this is as good as it gets on a smartphone!! I love it man.

Just saw the AI pre-release, will test asap. Thank you. Just a quick suggestion - while progressing with this app, I'd say keep it as simple, fast and efficient as possible. This is what I love about it.

Also, it runs very smoothly on my Wildfire S. Running only at 806mhz with Adreno GPU binaries on CM7.2. :) Lags only after playing for a long time.
 

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
My word, hats off to you developer. This is the most amazing, polished and superbly designed game I've ever played. I'm a big snooker/pool fan, and trust me this is as good as it gets on a smartphone!! I love it man.

Just saw the AI pre-release, will test asap. Thank you. Just a quick suggestion - while progressing with this app, I'd say keep it as simple, fast and efficient as possible. This is what I love about it.

Also, it runs very smoothly on my Wildfire S. Running only at 806mhz with Adreno GPU binaries on CM7.2. :) Lags only after playing for a long time.
Wow, thanks a lot, I'm a big snooker/pool fan too, I hope it shows. I'd love to do a snooker game too but it's just too tiny on a phone if I do it the same way!

I can give you my word that the game will stay as sleek as I can keep it. No "wacky" modes, no in-game currency, no facebook/twitter integration.

The game shouldn't really lag as I've tried to do no allocation when in game, however in the free version there is some unavoidable slowdown when switching adverts (I try to minimize this by having it happen between shots) and some allocation when requesting adverts which may lead to the garbage collector being invoked (nothing I can do about this).
 
  • Like
Reactions: *se-nsei.

Itslife

Member
Feb 12, 2011
10
2
Fantastic job

You have done a fantastic job with this game. I haven't had the opportunity to play for very long, but I did not experience any issues while I was playing. I have a few suggestions for your consideration:

- Add the game of snooker - I am a big snooker fan and would love to be able to play snooker;

- Mute button (minor point) - This may be there, but I could not find an easy way to mute all sounds other than setting all three sound bars in options; and

- Replay speed control (minor point) - It's great how you can re-watch a match. I wonder if it might be possible to replace the three speeds with a slider which would provide the player with more control? (as an aside, is it possible to save a played match for viewing later?)

Great job!

Richard
 

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
You have done a fantastic job with this game. I haven't had the opportunity to play for very long, but I did not experience any issues while I was playing. I have a few suggestions for your consideration:
Thanks a lot.

- Add the game of snooker - I am a big snooker fan and would love to be able to play snooker;
I am a big snooker fan too, and of course a lot of the systems I have written for Total Pool would work great for snooker. The big problem however is the size of the balls on screen, the initial tests I have done are not promising. Either I could keep the same camera and controls and restrict the game to large screen devices, or I could rewrite controls to allow a movable camera (perhaps using multi-touch). I feel that either way I would want to do the game justice and it would be a separate entity to Total Pool, rather than a sub-optimal tacked-on experience. I hope this makes sense.

- Mute button (minor point) - This may be there, but I could not find an easy way to mute all sounds other than setting all three sound bars in options; and
This is true, there is no mute button. I will bear it in mind and certainly try to add it if I get more feedback saying this is an issue.

- Replay speed control (minor point) - It's great how you can re-watch a match. I wonder if it might be possible to replace the three speeds with a slider which would provide the player with more control? (as an aside, is it possible to save a played match for viewing later?)
The slider thing would not be difficult to implement, sounds like a nice idea, plus it will probably look better than those icons.

Having saved replays would be lovely, many a time have I not wanted to quit because I've just played a great shot and have no-one to show. The reason that is hasn't been done yet is twofold.
- I haven't thought of a way to fit this into my UI, but mainly:
- The replays are saved as just the initial shot parameters (ball positions and orientations, cue speed, angle, spin, elevation, calls if you're interested) and the deterministic physics does the rest. Thus if I change how the game works in any way, either in the physics simulation (not out of the question) or how a shot is defined (I did this massively when writing AI, and might again if I can do network play) then none of your saved replays are guaranteed to work any more, definitely a sub-optimal user experience. If this does come it will only be when I am totally satisfied that the game is mature and I won't change it again.

Thanks for your suggestions, all the best.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Itslife

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
To keep people informed on AI, I am not particularly happy with the iteration I posted here earlier and am currently working on rewriting a lot of the fundamentals of shot selection. I think we are looking at a release to the market some day next week. Thanks for your patience.
 

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
Hello all,

I'm back with a much better (hopefully) ai opponent. Try it out here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13593420/TotalPoolFree.apk

Free version only, but can be run alongside the paid version. A couple of notes though about save games. If you try and use a save game from this version with an older version of the game it will crash (should only happen if you install the paid version after this free version without uninstalling this). From now on there shouldn't be any crashes due to save games going forward.

in this version:
- 4 difficulties of computer player to play against in every single match type
- harder difficulties unlock after beating the easier ones
- fixed a couple of crash issues
- fixed rendering bug on turn arrows
- fixed total snooker logic bug
- balls are placed properly on a break (previously could overlap slightly)
- save games should be more robust
- balanced a couple of challenge levels
- 3 challenges unlocked at a time instead of one
- minor bug fixes

please please please try it out and give me feedback, it would be really useful, is it fun? too easy? too hard? any ridiculous strengths of the ai? any glaring weaknesses?

thanks a lot, I look forward to hearing from you.
 

chelsea_fc

Senior Member
Sep 15, 2007
519
20
Jakarta
The ai version was great

Bugs :
- landscape orientation always on left side (latest paid version was fine on both orientation)

Suggestions:
- add fine tuning
- add ball rack sound in the begining of rack
- multiplayer mode via bluetooth, wifi or online

Tested on nook tablet using cm9

Thanks

Sent from my NookTablet using Tapatalk 2 Beta-5
 

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
Thanks for the feedback.

The ai version was great

Bugs :
- landscape orientation always on left side (latest paid version was fine on both orientation)
Could you clarify this? I'm not quite sure what you mean. The adverts are persistently at the top but the orientation can be changed in settings.

Suggestions:
- add fine tuning
- add ball rack sound in the begining of rack
- multiplayer mode via bluetooth, wifi or online
I'm still not convinced about fine-tuning, it's hard to think of a nice way to integrate it with the current controls, and the further shots should be more difficult than the closer ones, I don't like cue sports games when you line up your shot and then just press "go".

The ball rack sound is on the cards, my audio guy is extremely busy with other work at the moment but there is plenty more polish to add here.

I'd love to do multiplayer, and will look into the possibility seriously after this ai stuff is all out there. Of course the more people buy it the more compelling multiplayer becomes for everyone.

Since this build I've already made a couple of fixes, you don't get to see the first collision any more when ai is playing a shot (or when watching a replay), this helps with you being able to tell exactly what will happen on the ai shot.

Also the settings screen has been fixed to only show single player controls when playing vs an ai.
 

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
Quick update

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13593420/TotalPoolFree.apk

- no more preview of ball collision when ai takes shot or on replays
- fixed problem with quitting and restarting while computer is thinking
- fixed straight pool unlocks (first to 50 rather than best of 3)
- fixed lag being played perfectly by ai
- settings for single player used when against ai
- fixed issue when quitting while balls are being moved around
- updated to latest libgdx (0.9.3)

please give feedback on the performance and playability of the ai, particularly the games i'm less familiar with (anything except world rules basically!)
 

Itslife

Member
Feb 12, 2011
10
2
Thanks for the updates. The games is running well for me. Is there currently a way to change the view and play as if you are standing at the table rather than always above the table? (See International Snooker HD by My interactive for an example).

P.S. A stupid question, but how do you save/retrieve games?
 

The Friendly Monster

Senior Member
Mar 22, 2012
68
48
Berlin
Thanks for the updates. The games is running well for me. Is there currently a way to change the view and play as if you are standing at the table rather than always above the table? (See International Snooker HD by My interactive for an example).

P.S. A stupid question, but how do you save/retrieve games?
There is no alternative view, the game is designed to be played top-down and I can guarantee that is how it is going to stay. If you want a 3d pool game then I'd say either pool break lite or virtual pool are the best ones out there.

There is no functionality to save a game beyond navigating away from the game (with home) and back again at present.

I will be posting one more update here later today, then hopefully pushing to Google play tomorrow.
 
Last edited:

Top Liked Posts

  • There are no posts matching your filters.
  • 30
    Pool is a touchscreen pool game for Android, with loads of features and extremely polished physics and graphics. I believe it's the best pool game on the market. Feedback is hugely welcome.

    ibzPWPbhhJAioy.png


    ioqjZACllkhWh.png


    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13593420/TotalPoolFree.apk

    Cheers!
    3
    Hey cheers guys, your very own friendly monster here. Great to see this thread didn't die an instant death as I am planning on supporting this game heavily and really appreciate a forum such as this to be able to communicate with the players.

    Thanks for the great feedback. After hearing about how many people want to see an ai opponent to play this is my number one priority for the game. The signs are good so far and I hope we will all be playing against a believable, fun, computer player soon.
    2
    Quick update

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13593420/TotalPoolFree.apk

    - no more preview of ball collision when ai takes shot or on replays
    - fixed problem with quitting and restarting while computer is thinking
    - fixed straight pool unlocks (first to 50 rather than best of 3)
    - fixed lag being played perfectly by ai
    - settings for single player used when against ai
    - fixed issue when quitting while balls are being moved around
    - updated to latest libgdx (0.9.3)

    please give feedback on the performance and playability of the ai, particularly the games i'm less familiar with (anything except world rules basically!)
    2
    Great game!

    First of all can I say, what a game! Easily the best pool game on Android, I reckon the best on a mobile device bar none. The execution is just fabulous, the attention to detail, the simplicity and ease-of-use of the menus. The graphics. I love the whole thing.

    Issue:
    Now, I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 2.3.4 (Unrooted) and it crashes for me a lot, almost every session it crashes. It just hangs, no force close error. There doesn't seem to be any particular circumstance other than it's usually mid shot towards the end of the motion of the balls.
    ** As I was writing this I was actually playing Total Pool and it happened to crash. This time I waited and the crash report actually appeared and should be with you now. Hope you can sort this! Thanks!

    Suggestions:
    1. Definitely fine-tuning, I like the 2 finger method mentioned by someone else earlier but i don't know how easy that would be to implement if at all. If I think of anything I'll get back to you. Maybe do it such that the shot isn't executed as soon as you aim and lift your finger, but rather that only decides the rough direction and shot power, the aiming guide should remain on the screen after lifting your finger. Then you can have left and right buttons for fine tuning and a shoot button to complete the shot. These can be on the bottom cushion out of the way...
    - It definitely loses a bit of the slickness so I would suggest making this an option in the settings menu so people can choose to use if they wish.

    2. I don't know how it looks on other devices but on the SGS2 there is some empty space either end of the table, I think here you should put a graphic of what balls have been potted like the rack at the side of tables in real life.

    3. I cant wait for Snooker. You have got to do it at some point! And it will work, no doubt at all. Furthermore I'd be happy to pay again, ie make it another app. Same for Carom and others.

    4. As others have said, online multiplayer would be fabulous.

    It is testament to the quality of this game that I continue to play it and have even rated 5 stars in the store. Of course I have the paid version.

    Thank you for a wonderful game! I also admire your dedication to listening to peoples suggestions long may that continue!


    Hardy

    ---------- Post added at 08:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:44 PM ----------

    Ah, something I just noticed... In world rules and black ball, if the opponent fouls and you are playing the black, there should not be two shots? Or am I wrong?

    Thanks,


    Hardy
    2
    Playing with the AI version now. Will let you know how it goes.

    BTW, it's impressive you managed to have an almost-complete AI version in like a week...