Sum of Parts

The game’s assets are building up now and the more you add the more like a ‘proper’ game it seems to be.  What was initially a one screen prototype has evolved to something with a menu screen and ‘win’ screen, and with each addition it feels more like a game.

Last night the sound effects were added into the main game screen, and what a difference.  It makes you think that those developers who spend hours and hours getting sounds just right aren’t wasting time after all.  It’s the age-old thing that you often don’t seem to notice something until it’s no longer there.

So, with the editor in a useable state – and soon to be pumping out the XML our game needs – and the sonix and graphix coming along, we are making progress.

Scope Agreed

We had a bit of a brainwave last night, and we think we’ve got the scope nailed down now, right from the menus to the number of levels through to the way everything is presented.  We’re limiting the colours of balls to just three colours for the time being, but introducing a padlock icon to a few puzzles to change things around a little bit.

The game will now consist of three difficulty levels, each with 36 levels in each.  There’s no longer a time limit, but there is a move limit and the option to ‘ace’ a level if you do it within an even stricter move limit, which will be reflected on the main level select grid.  We’re going to do a full ‘Puzzle Mode’ where you can pick the levels you want (with later difficulties unlocked as you go) and then a ‘Quick Play’ mode which will either push a non-completed level to you at random or give you the option to work through all the non-completed levels in sequence, which might be handy.

We’ve also made a start on the music, which will be subtle loops of background musak, at least initially, and we’ve got the main sound effects sorted, although XNA is struggling with MP3s as spot effects, so we’ll need to convert them back into WAVs.

So, yeah, full steam ahead still.  Just got to keep that motivation up and hopefully we’ll have something playable by the end of the weekend.

ThirtySix – we’ve started

So, it’s been a couple of weeks of mock-ups, name changes and even core mechanic switch-a-roos, but we think we’re now happy with the basic idea of the game.  Essentially, it’s going to be a 6×6 grid of balls that can be shifted horizontally and vertically, with the aim being to match the main grid with a smaller grid off to the left.

Think picross, but simpler, and more colourful. There’ll be lots of levels, a random mode, time trials, leaderboards and (hopefully) some kind of two player battle, whether that’s local or over Live we’ve yet to decide. The art-style is almost there, but we’ve yet to decide on final graphics, and there’s zero work on the sound effects and music at this stage.

So, welcome to our little developers diary.