Design | Midnight Tangent Devblog

I’m baaaaaaaccckkkkkkk. Finally! I know you were probably worried sick about my safety since I haven’t posted in a couple weeks I think, but in case you haven’t noticed, I was hard at work sexifying our site. It’s been hard, and VERY frustrating, and we still have some work to do, but I finally feel good enough about it to move on and get back to why we’re here. UPSAT!

Unfortunately, I haven’t done very much coding lately unless you count PHP and CSS, but I promise I will be getting back to it today. Some of the minor things I have worked on have been finishing that Big X animation I talked about last time and adding a cool press-down effect to buttons on the menus so they look like actual buttons. I’ve also revamped the training system a bit to make it more intuitive to the user that the first time you play, you MUST complete training mode. After the first time, you can quit and come back to training at your leisure. Today I plan on getting back to it by implementing the game over screen that will list your stats, achievements, and let you enter your initials if you get a highscore. read more

ZOMGSH we got so much more done this weekend than I ever thought. The game looks awesome and a lot of fun too.

Here’s some pictures Kelsey took of us hard at work:

Thank goodness for $5 Anytober!

So much easier to work in person

Towards the end we became increasingly more inefficient as every change we made required about 30 minutes of ~~playing~~ “testing” before we’d ever get back to work. If you haven’t seen our two gameplay videos yet then be sure to head over and like our Facebook page to get notified when we do super cool things. But first, watch the videos below: read more

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:

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. read more

What Have We Done So Far?

Hmmm, good question. The answer is so much, yet not NEARLY enough. We’ve managed to do a lot of work, but unfortunately we made the mistake of not having a clear plan in place before we started. This has caused us to constantly double back on our design efforts to change things that we decided didn’t fit or just didn’t look right. I’ll go back to the beginning and try to capture some of the major hurdles we’ve had to overcome.

The first major hurdle was that neither of us knew jack about Android development, or Java for that matter. This wasn’t as big of a deal for Ryan (he just has to worry about the art), but I needed to know this stuff if I wanted to have any shot at making a game. So, two weeks before we started I took an Eclipse and Java for Total Beginners online class. (I wasn’t exactly a total beginner, but this class was great for brushing up on the syntax and I highly recommend it) After I freshened up on Java, I started reading through a couple of Android development books I picked up. Ryan and I both got about half way through Beginning Android Games before we decided we couldn’t wait anymore and had to start making our a game right away. That was the first major mistake. (The framework from this book gave us a good starting point for our game and is a great reference) read more

I figure it’s time to actually talk about our game. To not slam you in the face with a giant wall of text, I’ll divide this post into 3 parts: What is UPSAT, what have we done so far, and where are we now?

What is UPSAT?

You mean you don’t KNOW?!?! I’m hurt. It’s only the most amazing reflex game ever to be in development for the android mobile gaming platform! In one sentence: UPSAT is a game comprised of a multitude of small, stupidly easy, and fast-paced mini-games that are chosen at random where the pace increases based on performance. Easy right? read more

Midnight Tangent Devblog

Ice Cream Paint Job

IT’S ALIIIIIIIVE!!

UPSAT: A History Chapter 3 – Where Are We Now?

UPSAT: A History Chapter 2- What Have We Done So Far?

UPSAT: A History Chapter 1- What is UPSAT?