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[oodavid]

Lets talk about the name again soon, it needs resolution.

In other news, my main man Gav has been tinkering with minimal map styles, I think it looks lovely:



click for big

[EpicVesselGames]

Really nice line art.

That rock in the middle looked like a big frog at first glance.

[oodavid]

That rock in the middle looked like a big frog at first glance.

So it's not just me then? Might pop differently once some colours are added; I think he's adding a subtle palette for each "chapter" represented on the map, really excited to see how that turns out

[oodavid]

Well this is a nice surprise!

You've been picked for an Early Bird Pass for Silicon Milkroundabout 8.0:

What does this mean?

You can arrive an hour early for a chance to meet the startups before everyone else, in a quieter, less rushed environment.

Why was I picked?

We vet every person's profile, to make sure that they're suitable for our event. In addition, we hand-select people whose skills and/or seniority stand out as particularly relevant in relation to what our startups are looking for.

You were one of those people -- so you should feel very special

[JobLeonard]

  I guess? Trying to turn this into a full-blown indy game company?

[oodavid]

@JobLeonard - at this point it's just about getting on the radar of a few indie games companies; if anyone feigns an interest in my work then I want to have a conversation with them!



Stripped back the level buttons on the map to fit the new colour scheme and to generally suck a bit less. Rather happy with this now!

[Zorg]

I like the map, but it does not match the gameplay screen style at all. It looks like different games.

Map associations: western, old book illustration, nature.
Gameplay associations: science, laboratory, clean.
And the cherry, colorful star fireworks and the font from the 'Perfect' animation remind me of tv ads for mobile games with gems. (Which is not necessarily bad!)

It seems you did not determine the central theme of the game/visual style, yet.

I really hope this did not sound too harsh, i really like the game and want to help with my criticism to make it better!

[oodavid]

Please, I'm very open to the feedback! It is a bit piecemeal at the moment, but this is (mostly) part of the plan!

The reason I stripped back the game from it's previous "cluttered" incarnation was twofold: Firstly, I found it very time consuming to do anything as GFX would slow me down and I was never satisfied with the result; Secondly, I wanted a blank canvas to give to a designer without presenting pre-formed graphical ideas.



In the latter I have pushed the UI right to the edges and removed everything I deemed extraneous: hi-score, background image, board background, stylised menu, auto-scaling of board. The map had a similar interim blankness, but Gavin has been quick to give me artwork so it never got posted here.

With only a couple of days to release my plan is to:

• Tighten up the palette of the UI
• Refactor the tutorial to suit the new multi-bond feature
• A final review of the release levels

[Zorg]

I think my main problem is, that i don't see a connection between the level select path and the game view. What does the path have to do with molecule bonding?

If the path would have been some kind of a clean 3D molecule like structure (like FEZ map for example) it would match the gameplay, imho.

Do you plan to design all maps in this style? Do you plan to push the gameplay view away from the clean lab view to maybe handwritten to match the maps?

[oodavid]

Another evening with Gavin™. I'm really glad to have his input on styles, colour palettes and general art awesomeness.

@zorg - I completely agree with you on the disconnect, the thing is, I've struggled with the art direction with this from day 1, I'm more than happy to give over the art reigns to Gavin. He's a coherent logical thinker and I trust him completely. As you can see below the plan is to converge the gameplay screen with the style of the map.

I think once the atoms have been re-coloured on the gameplay screen it'll really come together!

[oodavid]

The tutorial now suits the new style, and has been re-written to match the new multibonding logic:



The first tutorial...

The endro still needs a little TLC GFX wise but that's up next!

[oodavid]

Today is a goooood day!

New Release Available on the Play Store!!!!

[oodavid]

It's been submitted to the app-store, and now we wait!

[JobLeonard]

Is it alright for me to share this with my friends on facebook? Or do you want to keep it a bit hidden until later versions?

[oodavid]

Please do!

According to appreviewtimes.com, there's a 5-day turnaround for newly submitted apps, I guess it'll be available for iOS next week

[JobLeonard]

Well, 7 likes by friends so far, so there's at least a few more players now.

Also, 16D is broken: I keep getting 4-connectors in the edges without shuffling options when I have to clear sludge...

[JobLeonard]

There is no smiley to adequately depict my rage.

[oodavid]

Well, 7 likes by friends so far, so there's at least a few more players now.

Also, 16D is broken: I keep getting 4-connectors in the edges without shuffling options when I have to clear sludge...

Good spot! I've made a tweak that will be int he next update

Cheers for the likes too, is Erik Weitenberg a friend of yours? He's just given me 5-stars!

There is no smiley to adequately depict my rage.

Oh man, that boils my piss too! Sometimes (well, I guess half the time) the total board valence is an odd number and you'll always end up with a single unbondable atom.

[JobLeonard]

Erik is indeed a friend - not surprised he likes the game either :D

EDIT: In fact, Erik is one of those highly intelligent friends that will probably soon be better at this game than either of us... If you get a spike in high scores, it's probably either him or one of the other semi-geniuses I still hang out with from my physics days.

Good insight regarding total board valence - funny how you can easily predict why a perfect atom is by definition unattainable in half of the cases. I wonder if the opposite is true though: if you can always make a perfect atom with even valence. I got a hunch that there's already a graph theorem out there that would cover this...

[oodavid]

In other news - I've just finished writing a Press Kit, I don't enjoy writing this sort of stuff as it feels a bit strange to write about myself in the 3rd person.

You say that, but has he bet level 38 yet? Only 1 person has, and she's also a bit of a semi-genius... Glad the intelligentsia are playing and enjoying the game though, feedback like yours and Erik's is invaluable!