So here I am, working at home and writing code on an Acer Aspire 5532 I bought during college so that I could write papers. A cheap deal at Best Buy and something never really built to be coding on. Build times are a good bit longer and I can barely play Overflow, the good news is that I don’t really need too since I’m working on the map editor.
The overhaul is coming along pretty well after I finally broke the bug that had stumped me for three hours the other day. Players will be able to switch map sizes, play player tiles on the board, save & load to multiple save slots!
What I need to finish up is in the preview options have the tiles display player colors (at present they only know what grey tiles are) and in the actual game I need to make sure that the pre-placed player tiles show up and function correctly.
Matt talked to Dean, the Ai professor at Champlain, and he gave us some great advice. That is probably the next thing I dive into.
Had someone on Facebook ask about Android, and it’s a total possibility. Flash can apparently build straight out to Android, which is awesome. The biggest thing that is stopping me from doing so is that I don’t have a device to test on + I don’t know if there is even an android device with the same resolution as the iPad. If not then I need to scale everything to fit a range of particular resolutions which just becomes another thing on the long list of things to do. So we will see.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Friday!
Today we are going to try to hit our list of contacts Mike put together for us yesterday; we have around 30 people thus far. We did this last time for Loc, and from experience it’s super hit or miss. Sending an email to webmaster@somegamesite.com is a dead end. Stuff just gets buried under a landslide and quickly lost.
So this time around we are going to try communicating via twitter with some people, skipping the unknown webmaster and going straight for people who actually write the articles. We will see how it goes.
By end of day today I will also be rolling out the team/replay build of Overflow on Testflight, which will also update our game submission for the Pax East Indie Showcase.
Starting to pull together a list of stuff I might be working on over break:
Map Editor Overhaul: Currently it works, but functionality wise it needs a little help. A player cannot create and save multiple maps easily at the moment. They have to save the game in a particular slot, go back out to the main menu, go to the game setup screen and select another slot to save in.
What should happen is from the map editor the player should be able to switch easily between map sizes, be able to add player pieces to the board, test it (right from the editor) and save to any slot.
Map of the Day: thought of that yesterday. I would create a map every day, throw it up on a server and have the game pull it down. Would provide a new (official) gameplay experience to those who might have gotten bored from playing the official maps and don’t want to create new ones.
Ai: Might want to start working/thinking about how this is going to work. Never written Ai code before, so could be kinda hard. The largest hurdle will be making the Ai not brutally difficult.
Might be in on Monday, probably for a little while, my flight doesn’t leave until 5ish, but stay tuned. I will probably be updating the blog over the holiday.
So this time around we are going to try communicating via twitter with some people, skipping the unknown webmaster and going straight for people who actually write the articles. We will see how it goes.
By end of day today I will also be rolling out the team/replay build of Overflow on Testflight, which will also update our game submission for the Pax East Indie Showcase.
Starting to pull together a list of stuff I might be working on over break:
Map Editor Overhaul: Currently it works, but functionality wise it needs a little help. A player cannot create and save multiple maps easily at the moment. They have to save the game in a particular slot, go back out to the main menu, go to the game setup screen and select another slot to save in.
What should happen is from the map editor the player should be able to switch easily between map sizes, be able to add player pieces to the board, test it (right from the editor) and save to any slot.
Map of the Day: thought of that yesterday. I would create a map every day, throw it up on a server and have the game pull it down. Would provide a new (official) gameplay experience to those who might have gotten bored from playing the official maps and don’t want to create new ones.
Ai: Might want to start working/thinking about how this is going to work. Never written Ai code before, so could be kinda hard. The largest hurdle will be making the Ai not brutally difficult.
Might be in on Monday, probably for a little while, my flight doesn’t leave until 5ish, but stay tuned. I will probably be updating the blog over the holiday.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Submitted!
We have successfully submitted Overflow to the Pax East Indie Showcase!!!
Originally we were delaying until apple approved our build (which also happened yesterday) to send them a promo code. However, Mike went back and started looking through the rules and discovered that you may send your build via testflight! Test flight allows for mass ad-hoc testing without having to pass the build through apple.
Wish us luck!
In other news, I got a replay feature working in Overflow. At the end of the game the player will have the option to view a replay of their game. The replay will auto play from the beginning and show every moment stored in the timeline. Players will also be able to tap anywhere on the timeline to move to a particular moment in time.
Today I want to try to get a fast forward button which would increase the speed of the replay so players can watch a time lapsed version of their game. From our own experience, matches can last upwards of an hour and as of this moment the replay is in real time, so in order to watch that hour long match it would take almost as long.
And because Apple got back to us and our build is now approved we will be sending out emails/twitter requests to the press. We have a decent list of contacts thus far, but it anyone is interested in getting the game on the iPad please let us know and we can make that a reality.
Originally we were delaying until apple approved our build (which also happened yesterday) to send them a promo code. However, Mike went back and started looking through the rules and discovered that you may send your build via testflight! Test flight allows for mass ad-hoc testing without having to pass the build through apple.
Wish us luck!
In other news, I got a replay feature working in Overflow. At the end of the game the player will have the option to view a replay of their game. The replay will auto play from the beginning and show every moment stored in the timeline. Players will also be able to tap anywhere on the timeline to move to a particular moment in time.
Today I want to try to get a fast forward button which would increase the speed of the replay so players can watch a time lapsed version of their game. From our own experience, matches can last upwards of an hour and as of this moment the replay is in real time, so in order to watch that hour long match it would take almost as long.
And because Apple got back to us and our build is now approved we will be sending out emails/twitter requests to the press. We have a decent list of contacts thus far, but it anyone is interested in getting the game on the iPad please let us know and we can make that a reality.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Preparation
Apple should be responding as early as tomorrow and by latest by Friday. So we have some preparation to do. Checking up on press contacts, writing those emails, getting facebook/twitter banners, backgrounds, still working on our gameplay video, get another batch of screenshots up, etc.
Yesterday I successfully got team gameplay working! And from our own playthrough’s its pretty fun. That new update went live on the website and by the end of the week ill put it out on test flight.
With the completion of teams I completed my short list of to-do’s. What remains are some of the bigger ticket items. From feedback it seems that Ai will be the next major update that will happen, but before I start work on it I’m waiting to speak to the Ai professor at Champlain. So until then, I’m going to focus on a replay system for the game.
Once a game has been completed, players will (hopefully) be able to watch their game. This replay system will become a learning tool for player to examine their moves and see what they could have done differently at any point in time during their past game.
Yesterday I successfully got team gameplay working! And from our own playthrough’s its pretty fun. That new update went live on the website and by the end of the week ill put it out on test flight.
With the completion of teams I completed my short list of to-do’s. What remains are some of the bigger ticket items. From feedback it seems that Ai will be the next major update that will happen, but before I start work on it I’m waiting to speak to the Ai professor at Champlain. So until then, I’m going to focus on a replay system for the game.
Once a game has been completed, players will (hopefully) be able to watch their game. This replay system will become a learning tool for player to examine their moves and see what they could have done differently at any point in time during their past game.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
The Little Things
I’m headed home next week, just worked out that way with the price of airfare. And while I can do some things at home, I cannot build out to iPad, Which limits how much work I can do. So this week I took my giant wish list, looked forward at the future and began to make some plans.
Yesterday was sound day. I created a Sound Manager for Overflow, which will be (like its name implies) solely responsible for the in-game sound. Button click noises and all of that I’m not really worried about. The major hurdle in front of us when it comes to sound design will be how the tiles sound when they cascade.
I built two different methods yesterday that would give unique sound effects to the cascade depending on how long it goes on for, what I’m waiting on now is to coordinate with Griffen Fargo, a good friend of ours who is helping us with that department.
The goal is to hopefully push an update that is sound oriented the week after we get back from break.
But until we then there is some quality of life stuff and some little things I’ve mapped out to work on over the course of this week.
For you hard-core fans who don’t allow take-backs, the undo button can now be removed from the game! It’s on by default, but in the options menu you can turn it off. In addition, all choices made in the options menu will now be remembered. You like playing with the percent bar always on, well good news, turn it on once and it will always be there.
The map editor got some love yesterday as well; you can now draw the tiles on the board! (Before you had to click each tile) it’s a little laggy, but for the most part I think it works well. + When saving your own maps the font size is no longer ginormous. Still don’t know why the font gets bigger on the iPad, but whatever Apple.
Today is dedicated to creating team play! 2v2,3v1,2v1 that kind of thing.
Yesterday was sound day. I created a Sound Manager for Overflow, which will be (like its name implies) solely responsible for the in-game sound. Button click noises and all of that I’m not really worried about. The major hurdle in front of us when it comes to sound design will be how the tiles sound when they cascade.
I built two different methods yesterday that would give unique sound effects to the cascade depending on how long it goes on for, what I’m waiting on now is to coordinate with Griffen Fargo, a good friend of ours who is helping us with that department.
The goal is to hopefully push an update that is sound oriented the week after we get back from break.
But until we then there is some quality of life stuff and some little things I’ve mapped out to work on over the course of this week.
For you hard-core fans who don’t allow take-backs, the undo button can now be removed from the game! It’s on by default, but in the options menu you can turn it off. In addition, all choices made in the options menu will now be remembered. You like playing with the percent bar always on, well good news, turn it on once and it will always be there.
The map editor got some love yesterday as well; you can now draw the tiles on the board! (Before you had to click each tile) it’s a little laggy, but for the most part I think it works well. + When saving your own maps the font size is no longer ginormous. Still don’t know why the font gets bigger on the iPad, but whatever Apple.
Today is dedicated to creating team play! 2v2,3v1,2v1 that kind of thing.
Monday, December 10, 2012
And now we wait
Apple will get back to us sometime this week and until that happens we wait. But there is still plenty to do. Need to get the gameplay video in order, Marguerite is working on that. Looked over our press contact page, updated it and added a few more people who would be more appropriate to contact, beginning to create new marketing material (banners, backgrounds, etc).
And what I did over the weekend was start to shift through my code and try to find more efficient ways to do things. Those of you with an iPad might notice the lag time it takes for a mass number of tiles to flip over in a single move. That is what I am trying to alleviate.
In addition I’m going through and ripping out defunct functions and unused variables that have just been sitting around since I tried this or that. In addition I’m going through and commenting on what some of the functions do or why I did something in a particular way so that down the line I will remember.
I started a giant wish list of things to add to Overflow as well, ill sort it into major and minor in a few days and see if I can start work on some of them. Based on the feedback from testing most people wanted to see AI added to the game first, which would be a major task. I’ve never coded Ai and it’s a scary task, :<
Matt setup a meeting with a professor from Champlain who teaches Ai, so he will hopefully help to get us on the right path.
And what I did over the weekend was start to shift through my code and try to find more efficient ways to do things. Those of you with an iPad might notice the lag time it takes for a mass number of tiles to flip over in a single move. That is what I am trying to alleviate.
In addition I’m going through and ripping out defunct functions and unused variables that have just been sitting around since I tried this or that. In addition I’m going through and commenting on what some of the functions do or why I did something in a particular way so that down the line I will remember.
I started a giant wish list of things to add to Overflow as well, ill sort it into major and minor in a few days and see if I can start work on some of them. Based on the feedback from testing most people wanted to see AI added to the game first, which would be a major task. I’ve never coded Ai and it’s a scary task, :<
Matt setup a meeting with a professor from Champlain who teaches Ai, so he will hopefully help to get us on the right path.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Gold Master
The deadline kinda crept up on us. Remembered that the contest was a mobile one, which means they somehow need access to the game. The best way to do that if your building an iOS game is to give your promo codes out. Now The only way you can do that is to submit your game to Apple. Good thing we already went through the first round of apple submission, but we still need to update the build.
So today has become the deadline. At noon we will ship it off to apple, and hope it takes them less than a week to approve it. Once approved we can email out enter the Boston Indie Showcase with our game.
Yesterday was a flurry of activity, looking through tester reports, gathering together the bugs, selecting an icon/new symbol.
Matt and I finally!!!! Squashed the undo bugs that began to appear. He ended up taking the wheel and rewriting a good portion of my code for that to be possible. It was all an issue of restoring the state of the selector tiles…. And ended up being and 3 or 4 hour slog, but in the end we won.
I was also able to tackle the tile flipping bug, where tiles would get permanently stuck in mid flip. Simple fix, thank goodness.
Three little things today and that will be it!
So today has become the deadline. At noon we will ship it off to apple, and hope it takes them less than a week to approve it. Once approved we can email out enter the Boston Indie Showcase with our game.
Yesterday was a flurry of activity, looking through tester reports, gathering together the bugs, selecting an icon/new symbol.
Matt and I finally!!!! Squashed the undo bugs that began to appear. He ended up taking the wheel and rewriting a good portion of my code for that to be possible. It was all an issue of restoring the state of the selector tiles…. And ended up being and 3 or 4 hour slog, but in the end we won.
I was also able to tackle the tile flipping bug, where tiles would get permanently stuck in mid flip. Simple fix, thank goodness.
Three little things today and that will be it!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)