Game | Midnight Tangent Devblog

Woo! So after 24 hours of working, we have some pretty nice stuff to show off. Right now I’m going to give you a peek at the artwork for two more of our games, ‘Balloon Popper,’ and ‘Sink Da Battleship.’ (Ignore the UI text, it is just an example overlay; each game will have it’s own descriptive text in the bottom portion.)

Now we don’t want to give away any more details on how the games will actually work or how they progress as levels get higher, so for now all you can do is feast your eyes on these screenshots. It’s back to work for me on some more Main Menu screens and UI work. read more

I’ve finally arrived here in DC, and I’m ready for a long weekend of work. First order of business, however, is to bring you up to speed on the art end of things here for UPSAT.

Art Style:
UPSAT is going for a cartoonish, fun, casual feel for art. We want to lull you in, nice and gently, then, “BAM!” welcome to the world of pain and frustration. For the backgrounds I am dropping the heavy black outlines in exchange for a clean, sleek, readable environment that doesn’t take away from the main gameplay objects. The gameplay objects, however, will have the characteristic black outines to differentiate them from the background and help the player to more easily recognize them. In such a fast-paced game, visual clues like this will greatly enhance usability. 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

Art Update: Balloons and Battleships

Art Update: Art Style

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?