Game Tweaks

Not too much has been going on lately development wise. Tia and I have thrown around some ideas for the art in the game we are currently working on and she's started some feature graphic stuff. I think it is going to turn out pretty cool eventually.

I've also been tweaking some of the other games I've been working one. I made a couple small changes to my puzzle game that I think better the flow of game. Most people probably wouldn't even notice the change, but I think it will help with more serious type players.

I have also been playing around with my carnival game pack, specifically the Basket Catch and Pachinko games. In the basket catch game I changed up the way the balls fall. They will now fall at one of 2 speeds, which will be faster if in the hard mode, and will either fall straight down, curve to the left, or curve to the right a bit. I also made the balls fall more frequently in the hard mode. After some play testing with the way it was before, I found that in hard mode it was actually much easier to get a high score, even though the balls were falling faster. This was because the balls fell so fast that the first one was caught before the next one spawned, so while in the easy game mode the player might have to deal with multiple balls falling at the same time, in the hard mode the player just had to get in "groove" (so to speak) and they could potentially just keep going forever provided they had fast reflexes. Now, the increase in frequency at which balls are spawned in hard mode (one every half a second), should fix this problem. Also, the addition of balls falling at different angles in curves also should increase the difficulty of catching them since they might bounce off walls or each other.

In the Pachinko game I added the use of the accelerometer to kinda make the puck drift left or right. I've watched people play the game and they seem to just naturally think that tilting the device might make the puck move sideways. I also feel that it adds a needed amount of control. Before the only real control the player had was to pick where the puck drops from, but now if the puck falls and it's kind of hovering balanced on the divider between a 5 and a 20 point zone, you can tilt your phone to direct it in to the 20 zone. That being said, the tilt control is pretty subtle. The pegs that the puck hits on the way down cause it to bounce so much that the player might not even notice the effect their tilting has on it, but in the instances where the puck is falling straight down for a 5 zone or teetering on the divider between two zones, you can direct the puck a little in to a higher point zone. It's just something subtle the player can do to take an active role in the game while the puck is falling. Overall I think it is a good addition, but a subtle one that doesn't affect the game too much.