Kind of. Its basically a blue circle that is controllable by a virtual joystick, and some red block on a green gird background using a top view perspective. It basically is a base for a Zelda game. The same game can be viewed at http://bluestar03.com/Chronicle/Alpha, save for keyboard controls instead of touch controls. But why publish, and charge $0.99 for, what amounts to a finished tutorial project? Well, to make some money. One can download the trial version and ads will show up, by purchasing it, the ads go away. So I can make money either way. It is basically a jimmy rigged kick starter. But also as a motivational tool. Having something out there in people hands can give one and extra push to continue to work on it.

Thou it still is not nothing. The virtual joystick was a pain to do. Mainly because I was unable to find any info on gliding joysticks. All info I found was on static and dynamic joysticks. Static joystick have a fixed origin on screen and the joystick "tilt" is determined by measuring a touch point in relation to the fixed origin. Simple, but it feels awkward to me. In Dynamic, the origin is determined by the first time the screen is touched, and the tilt is determined as one drags the touch point around the origin. But it still has some awkwardness. This is, I think, because the origin doesn't change while using the joystick. There is no physical limits on a virtual joystick, unlike a joystick on a gamepad that it is mimicking. So, the touch point can end up far from the origin, which when changing direction, one has to travel a long distance to reach the desired new direction, or to release and touch again, which may cause the player to stop.

The gliding joystick drags the origin if the touch point is far enough. Thus when changing direction, the origin is close by, so travel distance to change direction is not much. It does introduce new problems, but I think that, so far, are acceptable. In future builds, when pause and menu are implemented, I'll add a setting to switch between the three so I can get more feedback, but I think Gliding is the best overall, and it will be the default. I think the reason there is a lack of info for the gliding joystick may be because I have only seen it in one game, Halo: Spartan Assault, and I call it "Gliding" because the devs mentioned that their solution for twin stick gameplay addresses the gliding the finger does. I don't know if "Gliding" is the proper term, and that could be why I couldn't find anything. Additionally, it isn't evident that the origin is being dragged in Spartan Assault. After, building the joystick using the dynamic style, I figured that changing the origin may mimic what halo does, and it did.

So at the very least, I can show off the gliding joystick. The web version uses keyboard, and the pc version also supports the gamepad. Both are straight forward, easy to implement, nothing to special. But the gliding joystick couldn't be show cased on the web. So putting the phone version up can help me get feedback on something that was truly hard to make. However, if I did a good job, no one will notice. Hope people download the game and give me feedback so I can make this game the best I can deliver The store page is http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=8929b97c-c911-4033-8ee8-b18902273ff3. And by the way, the trial and web version will only have one level available. The paid version will have three more, and the price will be higher for the final release, maybe $5. So get it while it's cheap