Christmas Run [Android] - [Tutorial]

[Nemecys]

Hey guys,

So i challenged myself to make a game in December before the Christmas period, I’ve been a big perpetrator of procrastinating and never released projects.

You can check Christmas Run out on Google Play right now, any feedback or reviews are greatly appreciated!

](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AkariGamesStudio.ChristmasCrunch)

So I gave myself a week, a handful of free assets and a basic tutorial/gametype to expand on.

My game began as the simple Endless Runner Tutorial, from there I expanded by adding Lanes, which adding a complication with corners…

So I decided to remove that aspect to simplify development and gameplay, allowing me to come up with a different mechanic to add a skill curve.

From there I developed simple lanes for the player to follow and it allowed me to place obstacles and items efficiently. However, a lot of the games style comes from the assets placed in the background

In the above image, the only items manually placed are the Trees, Snow, Floor/Walls, everything else is generated based on game decisions and random numbers.

*These Items are placed using the same technique found in the “Endless Runner” tutorial, but their X axis is limited to 3 specific selections.
This allows items to spawn on a player path. *

Another tutorial worth mentioning was the XmasLights Tutorial by RATSGAME

This was used to allow me to create the lights seen in the game and found on the houses, it really just helps add to the Christmas theme.
However, my lights were more simplified as they weren’t generated individually like the aforementioned tutorial.

](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.AkariGamesStudio.ChristmasCrunch)

There is much more I could share about this project, including the Google Play Setup, if anyone is curious or has any questions I will do my best to answer what I can!!

Thanks for checking this out!

[Nemecys]

**Reducing my APK Size
**

Chances are, I’m just totally oblivious, but, during development I would HIGHLY recommend taking the initial 60 seconds to run this test after every build/repackage of your game.
If you were anything like me, you were repackaging for testing almost every day or 2 days depending on progress.

While this technique is talking about in the Doc I found myself skimming by it giving the BoD to Epics’ art assets.

(This problem was most prominent in the Infinity Blade Assets)

So, my advice to you when using assets you’ve found or created is this:

After every package and build, navigate to this folder - ** (ProjectName)\Saved\Cooked
**

You may see a WHOLE bunch of folders, you may have less don’t worry about that.
I was working with ETC1 so that MOST Android devices could play this game in some way.

So once in this folder:

1. 
2. 

Once you have done this, Windows will find ALL the files larger than 1mb!
(Feel free to do this for the other values as well - but nothing should be over 6mb)

But, you may still find a beast or two lying around…

You can fix some of these by either replacing the Alpha with its own standalone B/W image,
In some cases I just forwent the Alpha entirely, and uploaded an image with essentially a greenscreen, and used the Chroma Key Texture saving so much time, effort and MB

Please bare in mind that not all size reductions correlate directly, e.g. my reuction of that 20mb file to 2mb resulted in a 1-3mb APK decrease, and the reduction of 4 2k textures (5mb each) only resulted in a 5mb APK decrease.
These small changes are well worth it though!

---

Total Reduction: 135mb to 95mb

Total Saving: 40mb

This app now fits entirely into its APK (100mb Limit)

[dacster13]

That looks pretty cool, I like Christmas games. Unfortunately, I don’t really have an android device to try it out though.

[Nemecys]

Thanks Dacster, It’s a shame you can’t give it a go, feel free to use something like Bluestacks and emulate an android device!

[Vetx]

thank you for sharing

[z00m3r]

Hi,

I tried to play it on my wife’s low-end Android phone but the framerate makes it unplayable. I guess it runs fine on high-end devices though.

I’m building a runner myself and after one whole week of trying to adjust the rotation after turning corners I eventually gave up and i will make it a straight liner like yours I guess.

Would you care to share some of your BPs, like the random object placing around the floor tiles and random terrain building?

[M4RIUS]

How do you manage to do the fog

[anon26787504]

Hi i wanted to test this game out unfortunately it killed my girlfriends samsung phone it froze and we had to remove the battery to get it running again . This is not a criticism at all just a heads up.