Nitrome Touchy

Nitrome Touchy is an upcoming application for iOS devices, and will shortly be released after for the Android. . It allows particular games to be played by more than one player on the same screen using devices running the application as a controller.

Ten games are planned to be made compatible with Nitrome Touchy within six months of its initial release, which is currently undetermined. The application itself will be free to download, along with the mini game Super Snot Put. Players will be required to pay an additional fee to have access to all games made available to play on Nitrome Touchy.

Development
Partnered with the developers Brass Monkey, Nitrome Touchy allows for "local multiplayer opportunities that we could never achieve within the confines of a normal keyboard", this allowing Nitrome to somewhat expand the size of the controls used to operate their games, thus allowing more people to simultaneously play a game that the regular limit of two or four.

Features
The Nitrome Touchy app will act almost exactly like a Nintendo Wii Remote, as the technology Brass Monkey provides supports almost all the features of a Nintendo Wii Remote. Although Brass Monkey has access to a number of functions, Nitrome has only confirmed two they will be using for this app (not counting touch screen interface): motion control and local multiplayer.

Motion control
Motion control means that movement of the iDevice (such as rotating it, jerking it quickly in one direction, or pushing one side up or down) can be done to interact with some games.

The Wii Motion Plus style control method of Super Snot Put gives a good idea of how motion control works - swinging the iDevice around takes advantage of the gyroscopic motion control of theiDevice.

Local multiplayer
Local multiplayer, in the case of Nitrome Touchy, means that games that can be played support the ability to allow multiple people to play the same game. Double Edged is a good example, as this Nitrome Touchy game would allow four people to simultaneously play the same game on the same computer screen.

Despite local multiplayer in this sense meaning the ability for multiple people to connect to a game, it is commonly interpreted as being able to wirelessly play video/computer games with nearby people.

Menu interface
Nitrome Touchy, as seen from the September 25th 2012 blog post, will feature four sections: Games, Shop, Help, and Options.

Top bar
The top bar of the Nitrome Touchy - this bar likely present on all pages - has four buttons that each link to a different page. Listed from left to right is the games button, shop button, help button, and options button. Above this bar is a black box that contain the word Nitrome (in small font) which is above the word Touchy.

Bottom bar
The bottom bar is seen to be at the bottom of the game's page, although it is unknown whether it will be present at the bottom of all pages. On the right side of the bar are the words "powered by Brass Monkey", which is just across from two buttons: a heart button and sharing button.

It is uncertain what the heart button is for, although the sharing button is likely for informing other people about the app. As this bar is seen only on the large image of the app that Nitrome provided on September 25th, it is possible it is only going to be when one selects a game.

In this case, the heart button may record how many people have "hearted" (Nitrome.com 2.0 version of liking a game) the game, while the share button is for sharing the presence of the game with a friend.

Games
The games button is not much different from the games button in the 100th Game skin, only the Turbo Controller is much more detailed in this rendition of the icon. The game's page will list the game's the player can play, the game's icon, and how many people are currently playing it.

Shop
Nitrome has not revealed what the shop is for, although it is possibly used for buying other games for the Nitrome Touchy and other features for already purchased games.

Help
The help button is likely for explaining how the Nitrome Touchy works.

Options
This page is presumably for changing certain parts of Nitrome Touchy, such as sound, quality, etc..

Controller interface
One's iDevice will function as a controller while playing a Nitrome Touchy game. When the iDevice is used as a controller, the iDevice's touch screen, gyroscopic motion control, and local multiplayer functions may be used, depending on the game.

Below lists the layouts and use of the controller for each Nitrome Touchy game. As first seen on the layout of the Double Edged controller, a gear image is placed at the top right side of the screen. As with the Music, Sound FX, and Pause button of regular flash Nitrome games, this gear will likely serve as the options button of the controller, allowing the player to possible toggle the controller's layout to their liking (such as reversing the layout of the controller).

Double Edged
Buttons: d-pad (+ shaped), Circle Button 1, Circle Button 2

Use: The d-pad's four arms will move the Spartan in the direction the arm of the d-pad is extending. Thus, the upper arm will move the Spartan up, lower arm will move it down, etc.. Although not revealed which-is-which, one button when pressed will cause the Spartan to jump, while the other button will cause him to attack. Although not revealed yet, as seen in the flash Double Edged, if both the attack and jump buttons are pressed, the player will perform a melee attack. It is possible this will be carried over into the Nitrome Touchy version.

Nitrome Touchy Games
Nitrome has revealed that 10 games will be available on the initial launch of the Nitrome Touchy, with 20 more games available within 6 months of the app's life. Nitrome has revealed that the Nitrome team have been porting some of Nitrome's "favourite games" to Nitrome Touchy format, so thus, Nitrome Touchy will likely be used for playing old Nitrome games and new games made for the console.

Available games

 * Double Edged
 * Super Snot Put
 * Magic Touch

Game changes
Nitrome has shown that several of the originally flash Nitrome games will have new features given to them. Some of the features range from only supporting 4 player multiplayer, to new game modes.

Requirements
To fully use Nitrome Touchy, one has to first download the app from the iPhone App Store or Google Play Store onto their iDevice (iPhone, iPod Touch , iPad ). Upon downloaded, the player has to just go on to Nitrome.com.

Supported phones
Nitrome will first release the Nitrome Touchy for the iPhone family of smartphones, then soon after release it for the Android smartphone.

iPhone family
Although Nitrome has not announced what iDevice's Nitrome Touchy will be compatible with, it is assumed they will be compatible with the same lineup of device Ice Breaker: A Viking Voyage is compatible with.

Android
Nitrome has not yet announced what type of Android smartphones Nitrome Touchy will be compatible with.

Experiments
Nitrome possibly said on their Facebook page that they had tried an experiment where they made a Nitrome Touchy controller that had two analog sticks, and tested this setup using Dirk Valentine. They indicated this using this possible comment "we tried making up a duel stick style controller for Dirk Valentine as an experiment but I think without having shoulder buttons (which we can't add to a phone) it is not comfortable to play so at least for the moment we are not persuing that or Final Ninja for the controller. If we come up with a decent way to control it that may change but we really want to concentrate on making games that play well on the controller and ideally where the controller brings something extra to the gameplay. Having said all that we keep coming up with new ways to use it and we are constantly surprised with what can work well for a game."

Trivia

 * Despite the Nitrome Touchy expanding the size of the controls for each player, two previous released Nitrome games allowed four people to simultaneously play - Go Go UFO and Rush. However, Rush only requires one key per person (a total of four keys in use if four people play), while Go Go UFO only requires three keys per person (a total of twelve keys in use if four people play). Games like Double Edged???? would require another form of controller, as since Double Edged required six keys to be used for one person, if Double Edged???? were to use the same controls, a total of 24 keys would be in use if four people were to play. Due to the size of the keyboard, it would be hard and uncomfortable to play Double Edged on a regular sized keyboard.