A new game every single week! [currently on a break!]
Daily Blog – Y7 – D127 : Adding Layers
Developments
Not a lot of progress, yesterday.
A LOT of stuff happened, but nothing substantial enough that I can show it off!
I started adding background layers to SpikeDislike3, but at the minute it’s all nasty looking temporary art. I’m quite surprised, however, that it worked as well as it did in the Faux-3D mode. Mmm.. Parallax!
It took a LOT of effort to get the new elements in place, and I’m hoping that the iPhings (at least) can cope with everything that’s going on.
Seriously, this game has WAY too many random sprites being flung around on the screen at once. I’m totally going overboard, and will no doubt have to scale RIGHT back once I try it out on my poor little iPod Touch!
..Meanwhile, here’s an ALChoon!
This tune is currently the tune for the Faux-3D mode.
Yesterday I decided to try out something a little unusual for me. I attempted THREE DEE!!!
Not “proper” 3D, of course. I’m too lazy for that!
Instead, I took the 2D game engine, added a Skew function to tilt everything at an angle, then plonked the standard graphics over the top.
I wasn’t expecting the result to be playable, but oddly enough, it’s absolutely 100% normal. In fact, since the engine sticks to the original 2D principles, the game’s entirely playable like this, and there’s no adverse side-effect.
Awesome!
The entire game will NOT look like this, though. This is simply ONE of the many graphical themes that are being implemented into the game, much like the varied themes in SpikeDislike2.
So, that was yesterday’s “theme”.. Quite what happens next, is anyone’s guess, but I’m going to be playing with every effect I can, this time around!! (Assuming the devices can keep up with all the chaos, that is!)
Continue reading Daily Blog – Y7 – D126 : THREE DEE!!!
Daily Blog – Y7 – D125 : Loveheart
Developments
*shrugs*
That might change at some point in the future. For now, it’ll do as it is.
It only appears once, right at the start, anyway.. So it’s not going to keep cropping up all the time.
Lazy and cheap, but it gets the point across.
There’s going to be a lot of love crammed in to SpikeDislike3!
.. Even if it does look exactly the damn same! 😀
Continue reading Daily Blog – Y7 – D125 : Loveheart
Daily Blog – Y7 – D124 : Future Proof
Developments
I spent a lot of yesterday faffing about with the “Start” screen of SpikeDislike3.
At first I intended to have a giant spike be in the center of the screen, and in fact that’s what happened for quite a while, but .. I’m not sure why, but I decided to switch to circles instead.
Reusing my generic stripy circle from my basic menu meant I didn’t have to redraw anything, and the new “Start” screen looks rather neat. .. or at least, for something I’ve done, it does!
I spent some time working on background stuff, adding counters, and even adding a new score-tracker feature that counts up lots of stats which may or may not end up being used in the future, for badges and what-not.
I missed a lot of tracking out, in SpikeDislike2.. Stuff that I was originally counting in the first one, but didn’t know what to do with it all, so left it out in the sequel.
As that project grew, I found myself wishing I’d left them in, so .. that’s happening this time!
Whether I use all these stats will remain to be seen, but they’re definitely in there this time!!
Yesterday I settled into “Music Mode”, where I can generally whip out an AL CHOON for whatever purpose.
Unfortunately, after a good two hours of twiddling dials and buttons in Korg Gadget (iPad only) I came out with absolutely nothing decent whatsoever.
Ashamed that I’d wasted a good amount of time pretty much doing nothing, I instead decided to load up some old Choons, and see if they worked within the new SpikeDislike3 engine.
Good news! SpikeDislike3 will have music!!
On the plus side, this means that SD3 will now have a “proper”-ish soundtrack, just like Sheep Goes Right did.
On the other hand, assuming I put one piece of music in for each and every graphical style, this filesize is about to rocket!!
SD2 was already 15Mb or thereabouts. SD3’s going to be QUITE a bit bigger, what with all these mp3’s in there.
Eeek!
Still, the titletheme works well, and the switch between menu/ingame/back is working nicely enough, so I think the engine’s stable enough to allow me to go ahead, and use oodles of silly Choons throughout the game.
It still needs .. something.. between the menu and the game, though. I’ll need to work on that, next, I think, and then it’s time to start creating all those graphical themes….
.. I’m not looking forward to that bit!
Daily Blog – Y7 – D122 : Oranges, Spikes and Apples
Developments
Continuing with the new edition of SpikeDislike, and I’m still adding basic elements into the engine.
I’ve a whole lot of work to do on the game, including all the graphical styles and things like that, but for now I’m happy that it’s totting up the combos in the way it should be.
Scoring and Death are now both firmly inside the engine, and you can easily go from menu to play to death in just a couple of seconds! Exactly the way SpikeDislike oughta be.
As you can see, I’m also testing out “Goal” limits, so those should be making a comeback, too. (You’ll have to unlock the “50 Shades of Dislike” mode in SpikeDislike2 to see this!)
Anyway, on we go, and hopefully things will turn out nice in the end. *fingers crossed*
Continue reading Daily Blog – Y7 – D122 : Oranges, Spikes and Apples
Daily Blog – Y7 – D121 : Neon Spikes?
Developments
Yesterday was spent fixing up little things in SpikeDislike3.
I got Predetermined Layouts working, but still haven’t bothered to implement any sort of collision detection!
Still, you can now start a round, have it spawn the spikes in the same place, and then exit back to the menu.
Having the spikes show up in the same place, is of course super important in SpikeDislike, as you learn the layouts of the level, and try not to die for ages and ages. I’ll have to add a couple of random modes in there, too, but for the majority of modes, things will be predetermined.
The idea of specific layouts is something that’s been in both the original and it’s sequel.. For SpikeDislike 1, they made up a lot of the “Challenge Mode” levels, whereas in SpikeDislike2, they formed each mode’s first spike layout. (Hence why the Basketball one is so obviously a great big ^ shape! That was “designed”!!!)
If I’m honest, I mostly neglected this feature in SD2, but I’m hoping to make more out of it for SD3.
.. maybe.!
You’ll probably notice that the spikes are now numbered. I found myself playing the original SpikeDislike (from the 2010 Advent Collection) and thought the numbers helped push you along a little. Every little onscreen helps, I guess!
Feel free to comment below, if you feel otherwise.
