QUAT

By Caleb Foust (Code) and David Seitz Jr (Design)

About

QUAT is a mobile game written in C++ and Cocos2DX that in theory can be run on both Android and iOS. Back when I was working on it I did the majority of the development on Linux, which was handy since I didn't have a Macbook at the time (nor an Android phone, so I wasn't winning too many battles in the "developing a mobile game" department.)

The concept is simple. QUAT gives you two four-letter words, such as BANK and PARK. Your task is to change one letter at a time to change BANK into PARK, but all of the words you make have to be real words. For example, you could do BANK->BARK->PARK but not BANK->PANK->PARK.

The game is complete, as far as I am concerned. I just decided not to ship it. I don't have a lot of confidence in the mobile market for premium games without microtransactions. We have so many other distractions these days that poking around a decidedly un-fun mobile game didn't appeal to me, nevertheless to my target market. Add in the "schlep" of buying a new Apple computer and paying $100 a year to put it on the App Store and I stopped caring.

Make no mistake, though: the game is finished and playable, if not a little lacking in functionality. Perhaps someday someone will iterate on the idea and make a bajillion dollars. I just hope they remember the little guy who did much of the legwork.

Building

There are two different versions of the game found in the cpp and js directories. The former uses Cocos2DX's C++ bindings and is the game I am referring to when I say that it is "complete." The latter was mainly as a proof of concept. It, too, has a lot of functionality, some of which simply didn't make the cut into the final C++ version. There is probably some way to get it running, but I remember it being a bit fussy. It's better if you just try to run the C++ version, if anything.

To do so, you need to install Cocos2DX.

When that's done, you can do the following:

$ cd cpp
$ cocos run -p linux

Your mileage may vary on other platforms.

The cocos2dx toolchain was a bit janky at the time, so I did include a full installation in the cpp/cocos2d directory. It made sense at the time and worked just fine even if it pollutes the git repository. At the very least the code builds.