It Only Takes 18 Lines Of Code To Clone Flappy Bird

A person has managed to resurrect the lost (but never forgotten) mobile gaming wonder with a fierce economy of technical language.

[KidKenobi]

It can be created on Gamemaker for even less. Thanks to Flappy Bird I got a great mark on my end of year game in my first year of college because half the class made Flappy Bird Clones while I created a simple Space Shooter I got extra marks for being different and refreshing !

Crazy how much money the Dev made for such a simple game!

[Amuro]

say that it was a "simple game" is too much praise for that pile of trash.

[hkgamer]

just proves how crazy things get when it goes viral

[tekksin]

..............the app I'm making right now has over 100 scripts talking to each other in 2 different languages,and communicating online through 3 other languages.

And I sleep well KNOWING it will never reach the levels of flappy bird. I won't start a new project unless its level of difficulty to pull off is far out of my depth.

[Amuro]

why over-complicate your life so much instead of just using a common language? And why you say "script" instead of code? Scripting is more to make automated applications that would other wise be done manually by the user. Hence why the term "script kiddy" to those that make crappy apps like shutting down a computer and stuff when clicking on a bat file.

And by communication you mean through an API? What exactly are you even making? haha

You know, the secret to good coding according to Naughty Dog is to always follow KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid. (this is not an insult BTW, that's really their motto when coding)

[tekksin]

Who said my script wasn't simple? The game/app isn't simple, but the script is. It offers more than "tap the screen", so it in turn becomes robust. I'm sure naughty dog would laugh at 100 scripts in my scene and perhaps the length of most of them.

And I run many more API's than I do languages. When communicating online I was referring to PHP, which subsequently has to talk to SQL and so on to echo back relevant info from my database.

I write in javascript but many of the API's I implement are easier to communicate with in C#, so I use that as well while I code. To be clear, neither I nor any developer I know messes with API's, because they reference services they didn't even write. I would otherwise implement a facebook API, but I wouldn't ever try to rewrite it as if I knew better.

I load and save 64 constantly-changing/editable variables on this one object, during the main game, linked to 12 possible selection types, bringing the total number of variables I must be able to save and load as per the player choices to 768, all on one object. Not including the rest of the functionality it offers. But for that loading and saving information to work, I wrote a script (I call it a script because that's what it's called, considering "code" would speak for what's inside of it, rather than what it is) and it's not overly complicated or even lengthy, since I made choices that create a sort of algorithm that does the work for me. And that took some meditation.

I guess the meat of what you should leave with, is it's not the fact that my code is overly complex, because I have so many scripts on one object. It's the fact that I offer the user options with constantly influenced events. When a game does more than tap one button (there are many buttons which in some cases need their own logic), or swipe to control everything on the screen, you're going to need separate scripts that link up to other gameobjects so that everything communicates in harmony. And you can't do that in 18 lines of code or anything close.

I could very well write everything in C#, but I'm far more at home with java.

And rebel_scum, I did not even know you could program games in html and css--I'd dare say you can't, but people are getting creative. HTML 5, maybe--but barely. I call those apps glorified webpages.

To the premise that I might be making my life harder than it needs to be, and that their might be easier ways to do things: That's the point. I want to challenge and test myself before I sell out. I've already learned a lot and shortened my code to fractions of what it was. I started this project with absolutely no idea of how I would make 700+ save files that are customized, without having to account for them one by one.

Lastly, php, javascript, and html are indeed all programming languages lol. Idk why you're suggesting they aren't, r_s.

[Rebel_Scum]

I'd be interested to hear more about your app and what programming languages you're using. From your post it sounds like its either more complex than it really needs to be or you consider scripting languages (php, javascript) and HTML/CSS as programming languages.

[Rebel_Scum]

Yeah that's nice and all but no one codes like that. So unreadable and not that big of an accomplishment really.

[PCpower]

I can tell no one here programs games for Android. Games are made using the JAVA programming language, geez people. JAVA does not go through API's because it is a language that is executed by a "virtual machine" that you install, which is the Java plugin. The beauty of this programming language is that I can just code once, and it will run on ANY device that has the Java plugin instead of going through the pain of having to recompile code to work on certain processors and video cards. Java, is bit a slow though, but not as slow as people may think. It can hold its own against native compiled code in speed tests.

[Rebel_Scum]

You can use C# for Android also. Google Xmarin. Your first sentence is a bit presumptuous.