The Making of Deep Sea Trapper

We've released our second game for Android devices: Deep Sea Trapper. I thought that this was a good time to show some images from early on in the game's development.

 

We'll start off with a picture of the main page. The first thing to explain is that our working title for the game was "Zingo" because we originally wanted to associate it with the Bingo aspect of winning. However, once we determined that Zingo and pretty much all good names even resembling "Bingo" were taken, we decided to change it. Originally there was no Arcade Mode, so the main page was taken up almost entirely by buttons for the 4 difficulties. The colors of those original difficulty buttons carried through to the final game.

Though they were never intended to stay that way, the initial images that are now the creatures behind the portholes were originally just letters of the Alphabet, A through P. This was even before we had decided to go with the ocean theme for the game, but the circles look very similar to the portholes they turned out to be.

Later we decided on the ocean theme and added them too the game board. Arcade Mode was also added and the main page started to take a familiar layout. You can see my beautiful Deep Sea Trapper placeholder title bar at the top of the main menu page. Later Tia made our sweet ocean background.

 

Then we gave the main menu and the rest of the buttons the porthole theme, added a Scoreloop button, and Tia came up with a title image featuring our sweet diver. 

 

And there you go. A completed bingo/memory game with ocean theme.

More Summer Games

I've been working on the Olympics style game a lot lately in an effort to get it out before the actual Olympics start. Its a little daunting at this part because I've still got a lot to do even though I've made some really good progress. Currently the game has five completed mini-game events in it: Hurdles, Long Jump, Triple Jump, Freestyle Swimming, and Single Sculls Rowing. I had to axe the Javelin because I thought the actual gameplay of it would end up being way too much like the long jump. I'm going to a Cycling game as well, but I've stepped away from the mini games a little to work on getting some more of the little important stuff set up. In each event I've set a gold, silver, and bronze level for scores. When the event is over, a window now pops up and shows what medal you got, what score you just got, what your best score is, and there is a little badge on the window if you've just beaten your high score for the event.

Now I need to start setting up the main menu and some of the other pages. I need to make a settings page for things like sounds and music, but it will also have a toggle button where the user can switch the game into "left handed mode" which just swaps the side of the screen the buttons are on to make it easier for left handed people. I had a left handed friend test the game and he had to play it upside down so the run button was on his left, which makes me feel like this is a pretty good option to have.

I'm also planning on putting in a game mode where the player plays one game after another and their placement in each event is taken into account and they are awarded a medal for their overall performance, sort of like the Decathlon but with events outside of track and field. This is going to have to go on the back burner for now though, because there is a lot to do and the London Games start in just over a week. Maybe I can add in this mode in an update after the games have already started.

I've made a lot of good progress so far, but there is still a lot to do and I might have my work cut out for me here but I'm hoping Tia and I can get it all set up before the Olympics start.

Summer Games and Bounded Chase Cameras

Today I started working on another minigame type pack. Tia and I decided to work on a track and field/summer games type setup to celebrate the upcoming 2012 Olympic Games in London. Today I was working on a Hurdles game, but a lot of the stuff will form the basis for some of the other minigames included in the pack. So far we are thinking of adding the Long Jump, Freestyle Swimming, a Javelin Toss, and possibly the Triple Jump. I'd like to add a few other games that aren't centered so much around track and field or swimming, but we'll see how we are looking for time once the other games are done. The Olympics start the 27th we'll have to get things all set at least a couple days before then. If we have 4 or 5 working games at that point then we can either decide from there whether to add a couple more minigames or focus on some of our other on going projects. Either way, I'm excited to work on another minigame project that lets me dive in to some more AndEngine feature that I haven't yet taken a look at.

In this project I've been using a bounded chase camera to follow the player's sprite as they run down the track, for example. It allows me to have a track that is longer than the screen itself but still move the player sprite and not the background behind it. Everything I've read points to this being the best way to go about making a side scrolling shooter or platformer, so I'm happy that I'm learning more about it because I've got ideas for both of those genres. That's a while down the road though. At this point I just need to focus on finishing up and polishing the games I'm already working on.