Fairy Hop

Project Name: Fairy Hop
Author: Laura Lake
Release Date: Summer 2012
Platforms: the iPhone with C++ (with an XNA test version)
Update Schedule: Tentatively every Sunday

Purpose:
Fairy Hop is a game I've begun development on for a class at college. Because the expectations of the course are fairly minimal I'm planning on continuing development beyond this semester until I've got something worth publishing. This will be my first full-fledged solo game.

Mostly what I'd like to get out of this project is a portfolio piece to present where I am as an artist and programmer. In the future I'd also like to design an engine geared towards the kinds of games I'd like to make as an indie developer (or, you know, an entire virtual machine. That would be fun.) so anything that I can reuse from this project would be super.

Theme:

You play a Fairy running through a psychedelic fantasy world picking up flowers. I'm taking an everything-goes approach to setting; anything from cyberpunk metropolises to inside the belly of a whale. Same with enemies. Above you can see a draft of the title screen. I'm going for a motion blur kind of effect; eventually, I'll draw the main character running forward without this effect to give the impression of a camera following it with a high-speed tracking shot.

Basically you have a lot of hazards and items constantly scrolling onto the play field (procedurally generated). You have to collect the items (flowers) for bonuses and points while avoiding the hazards.

This game works with the iPhone's touch and drag capabilities. Basically, you can touch anywhere on the screen to hop to that position, and if you hold down or drag the fairy will follow your finger.

If you get hit three times the game ends. If you achieve a high score, it is saved and displayed on a scoreboard.

Update:

So far what I've done is make a demo in XNA with the mouse replacing the iPhone's touch interface. I've implemented 5 layers of parallax scrolling composed of overlapping objects. You can see in the foreground what the finished graphics will look like once I have the time to do all the illustration work. In the finished version the scenery will be procedurally generated given a few different themes (as well as the draw order for object overlaps). Right now I'm working with a fungal theme. Unfortunately, a still screen shot doesn't quite capture the magic of parallax scrolling...

You can also see a rough version of the Fairy. I currently have 6 frames of not-displeasing animation. More will be needed for hopping and injury. I haven't even touched the hair... Of course the first time I go and try to animate something by hand I immediately jump straight into a run cycle with flowing drapery and wings and long hair. I'm just a little crazy like that. Anyway, I finally have the hopping mechanic programmed the way I like; the figure jumps from point A to point B using linear interpolation along the X and Y (adjusting point B for every frame the player continues to touch the screen). Each jump lasts a fixed span of time and rises to a fixed height with quadratic interpolation creating a smooth parabolic trajectory on the Z-axis.

You can also see a mock-up obstacle that doesn't do anything yet. I figure that's going to be the next big thing. Well, right now I'm concentrating on porting everything I have in XNA over to C++. I'm still thinking of how I'm going to replace C#'s lists... I'd kind of like to implement managed arrays or linked lists rather than just using a standard template.

Anyway, that's about it for the time being.