Names...

...are very hard to pick.

Week Ten / Day Three

Got two more levels done today despite feeling like hell.

Here is the first:



The two white planets that don't look like they line up with the three below the blue are orbiting, and the player must dodge them while moving towards the goal.

The second:



Here the player starts in the middle of six orbiting planets (three pairs of two, where each two are on the same orbit traveling in opposite directions). They must time their moves through the planets, stopping on the brakes. While it may be possible to take a shortcut, it's risky.

This brings me up to fifteen completed levels so far, with nine of those being levels that basically just teach the player something, five reinforcing those techniques, and one regular level. I have a few more teaching levels to create reinforcement levels for, and then it is on to making more regular levels. More tomorrow.

Week Ten / Day Two

Off day. Just got some level corrections done and tweaked some things. I fixed the tip text:



I also changed the gameplay border so that it matches the color of your ship, and created a new texture for the gameplay buttons that highlights the current opposite color:



Subtle changes, but every clue helps the player.

I also found a sound to play during the intro, when the studio name (I'm working on this) comes up. It's pretty cool, and everyone will get to see it when I put a video together soon showcasing development, that is once I've gotten music in. I'm still playing around with ideas (simple ones), and hopefully will have something decided upon soon.

The level building is extremely tedious, and without a true level editor basically lacks gratification. I can't wait to start coding again.

Week Ten / Day One

I almost have everything from the list I created last week completed. This morning I added the 'Thanks for Playing' style banner at the end, which just replaces the 'Next Level' option at the end of the final stage. It needs some tuning, but it also has placeholder text for when I figure out a studio name (this needs to happen soon) and can polish it all up. Also, the memory leaks I had last weak apparently were erroneous, as I cannot replicate them, and the only leaks I get now are from an Apple library regarding the display. I have a feeling it believes I'm not releasing the view I am given to render to, but that happens towards the end. The leak is just a blip in time, and leaks a very small amount of memory, and is within an Apple library, so I don't think I need to worry too much.

I played around with GarageBand a bit today. I need some music, and I haven't quite decided on what I'm going to do yet. I thought I had something neat with the synth tool, but apparently I don't know what I'm doing with GarageBand, as the sounds made when recording are clearly different than when just playing around with the instruments. Also, after a few recordings and subsequent undos, GarageBand apparently ran out of memory and complained I had too many tracks to handle, despite there being none. Fantastic. Seems like some garbage thrown together with audacity, the teli and anti-bass is going to have to do:


Maybe playing Gauntlet would help...


I did get some level stuff straightened out today. Here is the newer version of one of the levels mixed in with the tutorials:



It plays decent, gets the point across about dead planets, teaches the player about timing and is aesthetically pleasing. I suppose a puzzle game level can't ask for much more.

I have a few small things to do, like fix the play button artwork (it's a little off) and the tip text (the border is funky since I changed the text size), but other than that I believe it is down to music and levels. While creating each level I'm also trying to draw up a final plan for the number of levels and the 'meta' idea of each. Each new concept taught only needs a level or two to solidify, so I'm trying to balance that with combining multiple concepts together. I said earlier that my game is hard, but I would like to modify what I said. When a level is good, the game is hard. The nature of the beast of these planetary equations is that the systems are stable when everything is in smooth motion, or at least one of the bodies is in motion. Once you start reversing forces (or fine tuning their magnitudes as I hate to admit I've done), things get quirky. The levels that require rhythm and smooth gameplay are the hardest, yet they are also the most satisfying to complete and feel right. I'm trying to find a happy medium, and it's proving to be quite difficult, but the show must go on.

As I near the end of the development of Chromovis, I'm torn. While I am proud of what I have completed, it isn't quite what I envisioned. Perhaps I have more secrets to unlock and something will click, but right now Chromovis hasn't lived up to what I thought it could, nor do I think it will. It doesn't play quite how I wanted, and it isn't the complete package I imagined my first game would be. However, I need to remember that this project was just to serve as a stepping stone. Every developer has to create their first game, and this isn't even what I wanted to do at the beginning, it was simply the result of a compromise with myself in regards to the timeframe available. My original game idea still crosses my mind everyday, and desperately needs to be put into a playable prototype. I think upon the completion of Chromovis and once I get my research squared away I'm going to start fresh with two projects. The first is on the technology I need to develop in order to create the next game proper, with a respectable engine. I'm drawn more and more towards tool development as I read about jobs in the industry, and I feel writing a much more robust and customizable engine with complimentary tools is the next logical step. The second is to bang together a demo of the next project. I feel like an idiot, because I had a few of the parts built but scrapped them when I started to modify my tornado simulator. I suppose it would be better to go back and start fresh regardless. With regards to Chromovis, if I could be done by Friday, it would be a great feeling, albeit not what I expected.

No matter, this is only the beginning.

Week Nine / Day Five

Hello devoted readers, just a half day update today as I have alternative obligations.

I didn't quite feel like working on levels right away this morning, so I looked over my list of changes that still needed to be made. I started off working on getting the user defaults to work on iOS 4. I managed to crash the simulator:



There are supposed to be icons there, which required a reset of the simulator to fix; oops. Luckily, I can only get it to crash while debugging, and even so it is under specific conditions that it's happening, so hopefully it shouldn't cause any problems on the release. I did get user defaults working though, so now high scores and the player name should remain between play sessions. Sweet.

I also decided to do some updates with the 'About' section to create a proper credits section, as at the very least I needed to list the files I used from free-sound.org as well as their creators. After playing with the text size and location, I've got the following:




I think I may want to animate something along the right side now that I've freed up the extra room. We shall see.

I also played around with the art a bit today, as the play interface buttons are driving me nuts with their lack of any design. The planets also needed something a little different, so I just threw a picture of the moon over the gradient planet texture and turned the alpha way down, and got the version you see below. Also, I've always had the border around the play field, however it needed some adjustments, as it was too flat. Here are those changes with what I had as of yesterday for comparison:



I'm going to need to create an alternative texture for the opposite color, because the big 'O' there (no runtime pun intended) looks like crap in my opinion. Just a placeholder though. I also did some level tuning work as well, so things are going smoothly. Hopefully someone sees my post regarding the debug crash on the apple developer forums, as I'd like to know what the deal is with that. I also did some memory testing. Apparently the sound manager is full of leaks, which needs to be taken care of, but doesn't worry me too much as it is a small amount of code that wasn't release ready anyway. There also seems to be a leak associated with a vector when a level is first loaded, so that needs to be taken care of as well. I think that is it for this week. Enjoy your weekends, see you all (any?) on Monday.

Week Nine / Day Four

Had to babysit earlier today, as well as make a grocery run, so while I didn't get a full day in I still made some decent progress. I'm going to come right out and say it, building levels the way I have to build levels does sort of suck. It's slow, tedious, and doesn't really inspire creativity, as instead of being able to just throw planets around and try stuff it's the level designers equivalent of data entry. However, this is the path I've chosen and I am sticking to it.

I got three levels done today, all of which fit into the tutorial section. I don't think I'm going to actually call the tutorials, tutorials. I'd rather them just be easy levels which are meant to teach. That way I can incrementally increase the difficulty of the levels dispersed amongst them. Otherwise, I would end up laying a ton of information on the player all at once and then expect them to start playing knowing everything; rather, I'll introduce a concept and give the player a few opportunities to play around with what they've learned. Here are two of the levels:




There first requires the player to switch back and forth between the planets, moving up the middle to reach the goal. The second requires them to approach the red, stop, move towards green and then down towards blue without hitting the dead planets.

I added a crash animation, or rather I made it so the ship shrinks when you crash into a planet. It's quite simple, but works. The visual cue complementing the audio explosion seems to fit.



Another neat thing I added today was a 'skin' over the ship that rotates based on the velocity of the ship. There is a cutaway on the skin so that you see the old ship texture beneath it, which gives the ship a twirly top look as its moving around. I don't like static things, and this was a simple solution to give my ship some life:




I made a few adjustments to some other levels, either to make the hints clearer or to try and get them to play a bit smoother or more intuitively. I also did some necessary cleanup of the application bundle. I had lots of old textures still being packaged with everything and mixed around in folders, multiple copies hanging, etc. It makes it easier for me to work when I'm at peace with the organization. The code is a spaghetti mess, but I'd say for my first game it isn't all that bad.

That about rounds up today. I'm not exactly getting as far as I wanted to this week, but things are getting chipped off the list. If tomorrow can be a banging day that should give me a good vibe for starting next week. Also, mixing code changes and updates with level building helps keep things interesting. On that note, Good Night, and Good Luck.

Week Nine / Day Three

Today went fairly well, as I got a few small things that were bugging me taken care of. A few of these were issues my stepdad had. First of all, he said the buttons were too hard to see, so now instead of just outlines in the corners they are filled in. In my opinion it doesn't look very good and needs some playing with to fit better, but I suppose it does make for an easier gaming experience, although it doesn't look tron-ish anymore. He also said I should have something that signified what the opposite color currently is. For instance if the ship is red, blue should be highlighted in some way to give the player a small reminder. This should also help players become comfortable with the controls while they are still learning the game.

He also mentioned that the level tip should show up again when a level is restarted, either intentionally or after a crash. Since it is only two simple clicks to clear the tip and start the level, and really shouldn't be too much of a burden. There was also nothing that told you what to do after you crashed. A simple touch anywhere on the screen resets the level, but I hadn't explained that to the player. Also, I wanted the player's zoom settings to stay the same when a level was restarted. These are all implemented now.

I also took the time today to recreate the logo. If anyone hadn't noticed, the logo I made last time actually has a bit of a problem. The yellow circle is bigger than the other circles:


So I fixed it and made the following:



While I could not for the life of me get the impression effect on the colors again, I am fairly happy with how it looks. It sort of amazes me to think that a couple months ago this was my logo:



I believe that's the majority of todays work. I would post some more screenshots but we have a pretty heavy thunderstorm rolling over right now and I have everything shutdown and unplugged, so I'll get some more up tomorrow. In the meantime, happy coding.