Just three weeks until IGF Mobile submissions end, and we're frantically trying to get stuff done.
As you've probably seen from the videos, a few of the systems are in place, but the game isn't really balanced yet, and doesn't really have a narrative or game flow. So that is what I'll be working on this week! That, and a save manager, because we don't want to inflict a non-saving iPhone game on our poor judges.
While initially I was hoping to just throw the player into the world and do a slow reveal of what is going on, I think that requires a bit more subtlety and nuance than we can conjure up in three weeks, so (on the helpful advice of some friends) I'll probably set up an initial text crawl that roughly explains the events that have gone on leading up to where the game starts. We may remove it again before final release depending on how it feels, but at least at this point I feel like there is (read: will be) enough mystery and interesting events within the game itself, without having to resort to the "unfolding the backstory" method of storytelling.
This act of forcing at least an iteration of the game's narrative to get done is really the reason why we're submitting to the IGF - progress has been good, but we need (or at least I need) a motivator to stop working on the small picture, and start doing some big picture laying out of the game flow, just so that there's an initial version in there that we can then critique, analyse, and then iterate upon.
The good progress mentioned earlier has been work on the UI.
There are a few elements in play here:
- The grey gradient box on the bottom of the screen is a speech box for the characters - this week the temp graphic there will be swapped for something more resembling the rest of the style. Also, Ban's begun work on some portraits for the characters - the one in the green box is a work-in-progress Dr. Akira
- The panel labeled "Akira" is the "command panel" - each character has one. The command panel is how you control the characters, and it extends and retracts depending on which character you currently have selected. The buttons on there are Build, Walk, Repair, Upgrade and Cancel.
- The red outline tower in the top right of the screenshot is displaying where your current tower will be placed - it snaps to the grid of the gameplay.
- On the top and bottom edges of the screen we've done a bit of nudging to allow some space for various UI elements - along the top bar will be your current game stats (at the moment there's Light Capacity, Health and Wave No.), and along the bottom will be some system buttons (pause, menu, volume, etc).
If you're a discerning and good-looking person you may have noticed that the red outline tower is actually quite a ways above the mouse pointer in the emulator. While playtesting yesterday something wasn't feeling right about the outline display, but I couldn't put my finger (hah!) on exactly what it was - it just felt wrong. So I did what all game developers secretly do when they're stumped on an interface problem - I loaded up a good game in the genre (in this case, Fieldrunners), and checked to see how they do it!
Of course, if your finger is on the iPhone screen, it obscures your view of where you're about to build - so what Fieldrunners defaults to (and what we'll most likely default to) is to place the outline around 32 pixels above the finger's "point of contact". After implementation it felt blindingly obvious, but that's often how these things go. Anyway, cheers Subatomic Studios!
Back to work now! I'll try to keep this updated with some smaller updates with how we're going as we near the deadline.
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