Where Are We Now?

You’ve made it to the final chapter of my novel! We’ve covered a lot of ground these past few days, and by now you’re probably starving for some real info about our game. Well don’t worry, papa’s gonna feed you baby birds: 

Wow that's perty!

Oh, that's nice

BAM! Wow! Is that not the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life?!?!?! Don’t answer, that was rhetorical dummy. I know your mouth is probably agape in amazement right now, so I’ll give you a second to compose yourself before I continue.

….Ready?

Ok, good. Allow me to take you on a magical tour of this revamped design. The most obvious thing is the UI. We did away with those ugly, grayscale boxes and chose a much more updated and sleek looking setup. The EKG timer has been replaced with a more traditional timer bar that drains as your time runs out. The number on the clock represents what speed setting you’re on and increases every few rounds. As you can see you earn a bonus for completing each game ahead of time. The multiplier bar on the right is a design inspired by all our time playing Guitar Hero back in the day. Every time you get one right a circle fills in. 6 in a row equals the next higher multiplier. The 3 tabs on the bottom show your score, game title, and lives remaining. We chose to have the title on screen instead of having an intro to each game as the pause in game play really threw off the feel of urgency. The last part of the UI is the info bar along the top. This will be a pop-up that displays two things: green bars will signify that you’ve unlocked an achievement while red bars will contain love-filled, randomly chosen insults sent from the bottom of our hearts.

Now I know I’m a little over excited about this, but we just got this done last night so I’m still in that “honeymoon” phase. I’m sure we’ll be back to our normal love-hate relationship in no time. As a matter of fact, here’s the current laundry list of things I’m working on:

      i.        Develop a first time training system

     ii.        Adjust multiplier function in accordance with new design

    iii.        Develop bonus system associated with time remaining in round

   iv.        Create new animations for timer, multiplier, and achievement bars

    v.        Add a draw text function to enable use of custom fonts

And that’s just the top five. I didn’t even include the fact that we still need a main menu, sound effects, high scores screen, and, oh yeah, around 24 MORE GAMES! The good news is that tomorrow Ryan will be down visiting yours truly for the upcoming 3 day weekend! We’ll be locking ourselves in the house with nothing but a case of Monster and dream. I’m hoping we get tons accomplished and have a lot more to show you through the weekend. I’m sure there will be a few more screen shots and maybe, if you behave, even a video or two.

This completes my 3 part journey through the games brief history. Hopefully there are many chapters left to be written. Until next time!

FIN

    • Chris says:


      This game is very serious my good sir. I know it doesn’t look like a whole lot going on just now, but keep coming back and you’ll see the best mini-game game ever develop right before your eyes. Definitely check back this weekend as Ryan will be visiting and we’re going to have a 3-day game dev fiesta! As far as where we’re from, that’s kind of a loaded question. I’m born and raised in sunny South Florida, went to college in freezing upstate New York, and now reside in traffic congested Washington, D.C. I’ll let Ryan speak for himself. Thanks for reading.

    • Ryan says:


      Woo! As Chris stated, heck yes it’s serious! As for me, I’m from eastern Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia), went to college in ‘freezing upstate New York’ as well, and residing back home in good old PA.